New Lights. New Beta!

Additions:
1:
The lighting has been enhanced. There may be some lag issues that happen
during the breaking of light fixtures. Depends on how fast your computer is.
I will be working on fixing this. There are, in general, just a lot of optimizations
I need to make.
2:
Lights have been added to a majority of JoshicusLD's levels to show off the changes
to the lighting. There is nothing new about the levels besides this.

Fixes:
1. Pause during other menus works.
2. Flares do not come out of bricks when bashing them.
3. Do not go back to starting menu when dying on level#1
4. Weird Focus Glitch on start of game fixed.

Leverage Existing TileSets for UI art

By using this:
AutoTileThingy
We can leverage existing tilesets to create the user interface.

JSONSolidifier

So, I was working on getting the new lighting integrated into the game, and gave up for 2 days to make this:

I sometimes go on coding side-projects when I am spending days coding something that I will see ZERO results until finished. It kinda keeps my moral up and keeps me interested. If I am not interested or passionate, I do not code well. So better to take on a coding side project and be productive, than to work slowly on what I should be doing. Anyways. Now I need to finish my JSONSolidifier than will automate the conversion of a .JSON file into a concrete class. Once that is done, I will be able to export my lighting presets into the final game. Once lighting presets are exported into the game... The game is going to look 1000x better. It will also play better because it addresses some visibility issues. :)

Deving Hard With Auto Tiles

The tools I used to make this may eventually become the level editor.

Make Your OWN FRACTAL with AwesomeDraw FractalMachine

>>>> Meow >>>>

Gameception

This image was created using the pre-loader minigame for MakeChoice.
The strategy:
1. Use this minigame to make fractal art we can post to deviant art.
2. Provide a link that says : 
"I made this image with MakeChoice" (link to game.)

They think they are playing with a fractal art creator, 
but they are really playing with a mini-game in the 
pre-loader of MakeChoice. When the game is done loading, 
they are abruptly brought to the level select screen.
If we've got their attention this far... 
They might be curious to know what more is in store for them.
Or maybe they will just be angry that their art is lost.

But hopefully if they get angry, they leave me a comment!! 
Any publicity is good publicity.

SandWiched Lighting and Bitmap Hijacker Class

Further progress on Matt's lighting tool.
The lighting system has been abstracted in 
a way that allows me to extract the 
plasma and lumen layers and draw
them at different times.

Now need to put in the SAVE feature for this.

After that... 
I have 2 more controls I want to 
add to our preset controller:
1: Alpha of bombs sprites control.
2: Alpha of tilemap control


How will I do this?
I will make a bitmapHijacker class.
It will hijack a bitmap reference, 
and make an INTERNAL UNALTERED copy of it.

THEN it will use the 
INTERNAL UNALTERED copy 
as a template used to 
ALTER the original hijacked bitmap.

Lighting Refactor Thoughts

In order to get the plasma and lumen layers 
drawing at different z-depths.... 
We will need to attach the object's layers
to FlxObject*s.

Right now both layers are part of the SAME flx object...

This is going to be a difficult refactor, 
but should really help out nailing down
better lighting presets without
requiring more CPU cycles.

Lighting Changes

Working on a lighting tool for my artist. By creating different lighting presets we can make the lighting awesome yet keep the visuals clear.

Joshicus

BETA #3 -Joshicus