Flex Quirks I Learned About Today

1) Class names in Flex “css” cannot have underscores.
2) backgroundSize is percentage-based, and is based on the size of the container, not the image. Handy! Inconsistent and weird, but handy.

Hauler .003

Another alpha release, this time with a functioning fuel consumption/purchasing system.  Fuel capacity is now shown, and can be increased by purchasing external fuel tanks.  I have also implemented turns, which are decremented (from 100) every time you jump to another location.  I do not yet, however, stop the game when the turns reach zero.

One major bug I have is that I’m recalculating prices for all of the items in the Trade and Shipyard views each time you switch to them.  I need to have those calculated only once per visit to a location.

Hauler .002

I’ve made another alpha release of Hauler, this one being .002. The Shipyard view is full of upgrades like cargo pods, etc. I’ve moved the view buttons and info panel up to the top, and I think that’s working out a lot better.

I haven’t quite finished implementing the upgrade system, so there are bugs such as the ability to remove cargo pods even if they drop your total cargo space below your inventory count!

Building yet another game…Hauler!

I’ve been working on a Flex/Flash-based space commerce game for the past few weeks. I’m taking an extended hiatus from WoW, so I have quite a bit more time to dedicate to living an actual life, and building my own games is part of that.

I’m keeping this one pretty simple. The concept is a tribute to classic commerce games like Dope Wars, Solar Wars, etc. – travel from place to place, buying and selling commodities. Make money, upgrade your vehicle, haul more cargo. Rinse and repeat. Every now and then an incident occurs at one of the locations that affects the prices of one or more commodities. There will also be occasional turn-based combat using extremely simplified stats and dice-rolls.

I had Solar Wars on my Palm Pilot years ago, and literally wore down a few spots on the screen from playing it so much. I hope to make Hauler visually appealing and just as addictive.

Once I finish it, I plan to port it to several different platforms including Silverlight, iPhone, and Android. Maybe I’ll even make a Palm Pre version…who can say? It would even be nice on a dumbphone like the one I carry.

I don’t have anything playable to show yet (it’s uuuuuugggleeeeee right now), but at this point I’m further along on this game than I have been on any game since I was a kid banging away at my TI-99/4A or C-64.