This is just something I'm going to try to accomplish next month, and I thought it'd be fun to make an event out of it/see if anyone else was interested. Basically, the goal is to animate 2 seconds (48 frames) every day in December, and have a complete 60 second animation to submit to the portal on the 31st and end the year with a bang!

I got the idea from NaNoWriMo which is a writing challenge people do every November.

For more info see the Thread! Hope you guys'll join me!

EDIT: Now that I've calmed down a bit, I'd like to preface this with a RANT WARNING, lol. I'm still mad, but in more of a smoldering sort of way, and I'll begrudgingly admit that the new tween tool is a real improvement (but look, they left the classic tween option in there! What a concept!). But that's all you get, Adobe! Better tweens don't make up for burning my soul with your hellfire of evil! Okay, now read on. :3

Well, I was hoping I would be able to recall my hatred for Adobe as a company with this new release of Flash, but instead they've destroyed any hope of reconciliation.

I'll keep this short and sweet.

First of all, WHAT THE HELL were they thinking in making such a huge change to the properties window without offering the option to revert back to the old style? I work on a tiny 12" tablet PC, I don't have room for a monstrous properties window. It was just fine on the bottom of the screen. Now I have to leave it floating around if I want any hope of seeing a stage that's bigger than a postage stamp.

EDIT: And no, I'm not going to stick it into its button format. You try that with your properties menu and see how annoying it is to open it every 2 seconds just to see the name of a frame or change the color of something.

Next, they decided to turn the stage into a flash movie that's ALWAYS RUNNING, and there's no option to turn it off. Who came up with this profoundly stupid idea? If I want to see how my movie looks, I'll test it. If this "feature" ran smoothly I wouldn't mind, but there's always lag.

The sad thing is, aside from adding some eye candy, like 3D effects, Flash CS4 is nothing new. I bought it because I wanted to use the new vector class in AS3, but it seems like I have to sacrifice usability to do this.

Here's an idea, Adobe, why don't you fix your buggy/laggy interfaces, craptacular scripting tools, and make some significant improvements in the drawing tools, rather than slapping a few new eye candy features onto Flash 8 every few years.

I had high hopes for CS4, but instead of delivering, Adobe decided to kick me in the balls and laugh.

P.S. If you know of any way to fix the problems I'm having, I would really appreciate it.

It's been "Coming Soon" since last year. LIES I SAY!

I got a bunch of NG stuff in the mail! Thanks everyone for the great score on Ether War! I finally have that Tankmen T-shirt I've been eyeballing. (I'd post a sexy picture, but I have no camera...) Also, no one joined my contest so I'm keeping the $250. (Drat you lazy dregs of society! My collabs always fail!)

I'm working on an RPG now too. In my last post I asked for likes/dislikes. I've settled on an action RPG (kinda like zelda...maybe) with a fairly linear plot. It should be out in, say, a few months! lol. I also have a platformer I've been wanting to work on, but that'll come later I guess. There's a preview for it in the NG Sketchbook Tour, whenever that comes out.

Alright, I'm starting work on an RPG and I'd like to get opinions on what people look for in a good RPG. What kinds of battle systems do you like? Is an epic main story or side quests more important. Do you like big boss battles or more free range epic maps to explore?

The battle system I'm working on is heavily influenced by some of my favorite game from the SNES, like Chrono Trigger and Secret of Evermore (even though those are pretty different lol). It'll probably be more action oriented like SoE than turn based, but I'd like to see some opinions on this.

EDIT: Most of you said you want a good combat system, but what do you like better, action oriented, or turn based with menus?

OMG It's OUT!!! :D

I've got the submission rush right now! :3

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/
462253

Hey everyone! My new game has finally been released on the sponsor site, but they have asked for some exclusive time to host the game and they sign the checks so, of course, I agreed that it was a good idea! :3

Anyway, since it's site locked and the game won't spread around for a little bit, I figured it's the perfect time to get some beta testing in before it hits NG. So if you aren't horribly opposed to playing on another site you can try it out over and Candystand and let me know what you think here. They don't have comments or ratings there, so this is the only place I can get feedback.

http://www.candystand.com/play.do?id=1 8347

Mainly I'm concerned about the difficulty, so if it's too hard, feel free to yell at me. :D

Whoo! I'm all done with the sequel to Ether Cannon!! It's called Ether War, and it's kind of a defense, space shooter, epic boss fight combo! It'll probably be a few weeks before it's on NG, but until then, here's a picture to hold you over!

EDIT: I like this pic better. :3

I wasn't expecting much when I went to see it, but it was actually really good! None of that silly pop culture referencing, no gross out humor, beautiful visuals, and an engaging story with believable characters. Sure, it's pretty easy to swallow, but there are more than a few genuinely serious moments in there and it was refreshing to see that they didn't put childish humor before character and story development.

The thing that got me the most, though was that, as a Kung Fu movie, it was spot on. If you're a fan of the genre, you won't be disappointed.

This is from The Adventures of Mark Twain, a movie from the 1980's. It was meant for kids, but was banned from TV, lol. It's really disturbing, but also fascinating. It made me want to buy the movie. :D

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The Blender foundation finally released their newest cartoon! This was made 100% with free and open source software. The 3D program is Blender. Just helping to spread the word!

EDIT: Here's a higher quality version.

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