So, the last one was good an’ fun, so let’s have another crack at adding some polish to your games. Remember, polish can make a good game, great, and a lame game, not too bad. So it’s worth doing y’know!

Navigation

Fancy pants navigation systems are shiny. You know it’s true. So instead of a bog-standard button menu, go nuts! Hunt out some fancy menus, and get designing! Try experimenting. Menus, are the first impression players will get (minus preloader, if it’s a custom one) so try to make it count.

Here’s a nice page to get you started with animated buttons, and here is a cool swing-in menu, just some examples of what you could be doing with your navigation ingame!

Sounds and Music

Sounds and music add a lot to your games! Be it a simple background loop, or a piece of professionally made music, your game just feels better. Here’s a nice tutorial on attaching sound using AS2, and you can find various sound effects and loops over at FlashKit.

Another useful reference is this tutorial (Requires FGL account with at least one game uploaded) by Porter, on making your loops, loop right.

Add a mute button!!

And other various options for us to set and fiddle about with! We like the options, even if we rarely use them (we use a few a lot, but y’know, options are fun!). This includes things like a quality toggle, Music/SFX toggle and perhaps some specialised graphics options. Being able to set our own controls is handy too, but not particularly nessecary. The way to implement these in your games will vary depending per case, but a general mute button could go something like this:

With soundon=1; somewhere on your first frame. You don’t have to do it this way, you could use a toggle key, or anything. It’s up to you, just remember, we like choices!

Filter Effects

If you don’t have a natural artistic ability, or the abiliy/desire to hire a professional artist, try adding some filter effects (Flash 8+) for a nice and easy way to add some graphical flair to your game. Just remember, too many filters will slow your game down, and may annoy players. Just, don’t go overboard!

Here’s a nice tutorial on using filters, here’s a downloadable resource of text effects and here’s a handy resource on applying filters using Actionscript.

Remember the list to avoid?

Well here’s a list to print out, pin to the wall and make continued references to!

(I edited into the last post, but it’s important y’see!)

Well, that concludes the second adding polish post, as always if you have any tips or tricks that you’d like to share, comment below and I’ll start compiling a part 3!