Games

These Flash games are emulated via Ruffle, so should work without a Flash Player.

Invasion

Invasion 1

XGen Studios had a fun game called Defend Your Castle. I wondered one Hallowe'en what it would be like to play against the castle. Invasion was born!

My original intention had been to make minor in-place updates to Invasion 1, but on portals like Newgrounds you get more traffic if you release anew.

This is why there are mysterious greyed-out units in Invasion 1. The idea was: "Invasion is unfinished; wait for the update".

For 8 years I received emails from people trying to "unlock" those units.

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Invasion 2

Invasion 2 introduced a new hand-drawn "death" animation for the stick figures (instead of a fading skull), of which I am still quite proud.

The main gameplay change is the introduction of rams. They have more health, but they are more likely to get hit.

Upgrades no longer increase your speed.

There were, uh, problems with speed in Invasion 1.

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Invasion 3

KorteX brought to Invasion a new level of graphics, which helped it stand out from other Flash games of the time. Invasion was the first of many projects upon which we would collaborate.

Invasion 3 launched on Newgrounds, to great acclaim. It secured a coveted Daily 2nd Place award, and today has been viewed nearly 6 million times on AddictingGames.com alone.

Invasion 3 is noteworthy for introducing actual trigonometry upon the flight paths of the arrows.

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Invasion 4

Invasion 4 aimed to address the balance issues of the previous games (i.e. that it was moreorless impossible to lose).

I believe the idea was:

Prefer upgrading troops, rather than just buying more
- (This was actually to reduce the number of objects on-screen; Mac Flash Player could only handle ~100 at the time)
Never spend all your money.
Try out the other unit types

KorteX drew up some new environment art, which helped distract people from the fact that every level is actually the same except with two numbers increased.

The launch was a complete failure; we went live without ever checking that the game could load over a network. Essentially the preloader didn't work, but running it from disk never revealed this.

Apparently there was a high score table at some point? I guess I took it down after it became super-obvious that only hackers used it.

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Invasion 5

Just kidding

Commando

Commando 1

In the early days of Flash, there were very few games resembling real-time strategy.

I suspect it's because the RTS genre forces you to tackle the problem of "pathfinding" at some point; I designed Commando to require no collision avoidance, nor obstacles.

The first Commando game has no controls; it is just a battle simulator. I actually think this is an interesting take on RTS combat. Legion is the only game I've seen like it.

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Commando 2

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Commando 3

Made for the Armor Games Challenge, this is a comprehensive RTS made in Flash — with full AI, troop command and particle effects.

The game is inspired heavily by Command & Conquer Generals. This explains the "Particle Uplink Cannon" cameo, whose animation is drawn entirely in code.

This was my most ambitious Flash game. It contains 10,000 lines of code. As the contest deadline approached, we faced a tense release — and launched just minutes before time ran out (Hawaii time counts, right?).

Part of the contest reward went to fund the Red Cross, after Hurricane Katrina.

Voice acting provided by Andy Dennis, and original soundtrack created by my uncle Mark Rainbow.

Jamie provided some of the art assets; I believe the Heavy Tank and Helicopter are both traced from military blueprints.

Inglor (of Armor Games) asked if I would be up for building a sequel. My first thought was to add flamethrower troopers and flame tanks. Sadly I found that the Flash Player produced… undefined behaviour (e.g. sprites flickering) once I added any further code.