If you’d like to try it, please bear in mind that this is a very early release, and hasn’t been as thoroughly tested as the flixel 1.45 and 1.47+ export targets (you can help by reporting any bugs or issues you find with the exported code, or any trouble you have with installing the export plugin).

The update is available here: http://www.thewasabiproject.com/downloads/wasabi-m/WasabiM-Alpha3-2-Flixel200.zip

To install it, simply replace the existing “Export_Flixel.dll” file in Wasabi M’s plugin folder with the new DLL from the download. As long as you’re running the most recent version, you should see “flixel 2.0″ as an export target in the Project Details window the next time you start Wasabi M.

This version is still an alpha release, but it does have quite a few bug fixes, updates, and new features.

You can jump right to the download here: http://www.thewasabiproject.com/downloads/wasabi-m/WasabiM-Alpha3-1.zip. As before, Wasabi M is free for non-commercial use, and is pretty reasonably priced for commercial use.

The detailed changelog for this release follows:

• NEW: Brush support added for tile painting
  • Supports circular, square, rectangular, and stair-step brushes
  • Circular and stair-step brushes also support inverted mode
  • Brushes interact correctly with the three painting modes

• NEW/FIXED: Added Wasabi M application and main window icon
  • This should resolve issues with the icon changing when Wasabi M is pinned to the Windows 7 taskbar

• NEW: Relative path support for embedded assets
  • Applies to the flixel 1.47+ and flixel 1.45 export plugins

• FIXED: Removed CsvPath from exported per-Layer data (it’s redundant and is always recalculated during export, so it was just bloating the XML file)

• NEW: Added internal support for file type association
• NEW: Added default “.WasabiM” extension when loading and saving files
• NEW: Added options panel to add or remove file type associations
  • This should enable recent items and Windows 7 jump list items for Wasabi M

• NEW: Added a new “Layer” menu, to distinguish layer operations from map operations
• FIXED: Tileset image files should no longer be locked while Wasabi M is running
  • NOTE: Sprite images may still be locked — this will be resolved soon

• UPDATE:  Wasabi M now prompts for confirmation when you attempt to exit
  • This is a temporary approach until proper change detection is in place to prompt only when there are unsaved changes

• NEW: Options window added

• NEW: Right click can now (via the options window) be set to select the tile under the cursor, or to paint with tile zero
• FIXED: Exporting a project containing a map containing a sprite with an empty import value no longer crashes the flixel or FlashPunk exporters

• NEW: Added layer fill tool; filling supports tile stamps and random painting mode

• NEW: Added flood fill (ALT-Left click) with support for tile stamps, origin aligned painting, and random painting

• NEW: Added internal option to export individual layers to CSV files

• NEW: Added internal option to import CSV files into individual layers
  • Note: Out-of-range tile indices are (silently) set to zero after the import
  • Note: Importing may or may not lead to sensible layers, depending on the currently configured tileset

• NEW: A basic progress window is now displayed when exporting projects

• NEW: Preliminary auto-edging tool implemented with three modes: flixel, flixel-alternate, and WasabiM

• NEW: Added “$class” replacement variable to sprite code generation — $class will be replaced by the sprite’s class name, eliminating the need to specify the class name in two places when creating sprites
• UPDATE: The default code for a new sprite is now “new $sprite($x, $y);” instead of “new foo($x, $y);”

• FIXED: Resizing sprites out of existence should no longer be possible — the minimum size for sprites should now be 1×1 even when resizing while ignoring the sprite grid

• NEW: Optional and adjustable (see the Tools -> Options window) translucent layer rendering
  • This is not exported — it’s just a design-time convenience

• FIXED: Some tile alignment and scaling issues should be resolved (gaps should no longer appear at >100% zooms, and tiles should no longer be distorted at 100% zoom)
  • NOTE: I’m not sure if this resolves all the tile alignment and scaling problems, so please feel free to report any issues that you run across here

You can also check out the new dedicated Tropical Dragon Slaughter page if you’d like to see all four of the gameplay videos side-by-side in one place.

Here’s a medium length (about one and a half minutes) run through the first area, which has finally been named “Crystalline”:

And a medium length run through area 2, “The Deep”:

In both videos you can see the player earning medals for both total score and time survived — these medals appear on the title screen at the end of the video as well. The double progress bar along the top of the screen tracks progress towards the next medal (or towards the player’s previous high score and best time).

It may also be of interest that, after some poking around, I’ve found a solution for recording Flash games at a completely respectable frame rate, so hopefully I’ll be including a video with the next update to TDS.

But for now, here’s a collection of screenshots from the second area:

Each area (which might better be called… “motifs”, I suppose) uses a slightly different mechanism to generate and control its various obstacles. The first motif, mentioned in the original TDS blog post, takes a very direct approach and presents obstacles which are primarily flying towards you from the top of the screen (with just a bit of sideways movement to make things interesting). This second motif uses rotating and spiraling movements to force the player into using different movement patterns to avoid destruction.

In the end, all four motifs are still certainly mouse-avoider / shmup hybrids at their cores, but I hope they’ll each provide some interesting variations on the basic theme of the game.

Addicube is a collaborative project between The Wasabi Project and Zakelro Story Studio: Corvus Elrod (who I had the good fortune to meet about a year ago) is providing the design and art assets while I’m handling the development and programming work.

Not only is Addicube the first collaborative project for The Wasabi Project, it’s also something of an experiment in open and transparent development. Corvus and I are both committed to sharing as much detailed information about the development process as possible, and to releasing the source code and many of the assets under flexible open source and Creative Commons licenses.

To support this open process we’re steering clear of traditional approaches to funding Addicube’s development, and instead relying on community support through a Kickstarter project to pay for any supplementary assets we need, and to help support The Wasabi Project and Zakelro Story Studio. (Of course, aside from supporting a couple of indie developers, and encouraging this experimental development process, you can also get some nifty swag if you back the project.)

In keeping with the experimental theme, Addicube itself is an experimental game about limited resources, emotional health, and indirect interaction. You’ll be responsible for raising a growing family of cubes, all of whom need to receive a healthy, balanced diet of colored food puffs in order to grow and multiply. Imbalance and excess leads to cubes with increasingly dysfunctional moods, which can ultimately threaten the health of the entire petri dish!

First up is “Tropical Dragon Slaughter” — the spiritual sequel of sorts to Eruption.

Eruption is strictly a mouse avoider game, and so the player’s ship cannot shoot at the various obstacles that fly around; that was part of the design from the beginning, and I think any allowance for the player destroying the objects in the game would’ve made it into something entirely different. Nonetheless, being able to shoot back was a popular request, and Tropical Dragon Slaughter is an attempt to grant that wish.

You can’t get something for nothing, though, and the price of being able to shoot back is a substantial increase in the number of obstacles flying at you at once. Some screen shots from the prototype of the first of several levels in the game are below:

If some of the graphics look familiar, it’s probably because they’re from the Tyrian sprites released by Dan Cook over at Lost Garden. I’m not sure if they’ll survive into the final version of Tropical Dragon Slaughter or not, but even if they don’t, they’re certainly some snappy placeholders.

Unfortunately the screenshots don’t convey the motion of the white crystal blocks, which are not only rushing towards you, but also move sideways, and occasionally bounce off one another.

In the end, I hope to provide three or four different areas or themes which each require slightly different dodging and shooting strategies, and two or three levels for each area. I should have some new screenshots once another of these areas is in a playable state. In the meantime, here’s a question to mull over: is this next screenshot a quick Photoshop job, or do I actually expect players to survive some of these levels in the dark?

To coincide with the name change, a new version (Alpha 2) has been released. You can read more about Wasabi M here: http://www.thewasabiproject.com/wasabi-m/ and you can download the newest version from http://www.thewasabiproject.com/downloads/wasabi-m/Wasabi M – Alpha 2.zip.

The updates to this version are rather minor, but a detailed list of changes follows:

• BUG FIX: Exporting sprites with properties should no longer change the case of the property name
• BUG FIX: The flixel export plugin should now set the draw index of the tilemap before loading the tileset
• CHANGE: The progress dialog displayed when loading a project should now be more tolerant of quirky exceptions; this may or may not resolve intermittent crashes related to loading projects
• CHANGE: The tileset management button in the layer window now displays a gear icon instead of “…”, to help make it clear that it invokes the tileset management window
• CHANGE: A browse button has been added to the base path field in the project settings window
• CHANGE: Some tooltips have been added, and others updated, primarily on the toolbar
• NEW FEATURE: An experimental export plugin for FlashPunk is included; I’m 100% sure this isn’t ready for “prime time” at this point, but it might be worth tinkering with if you’re experimenting with FlashPunk anyway
• NEW FEATURE: A naked CSV export plugin is also included, which will export just CSV files (with no AS source code, etc) into the data directory of the project; might be useful if you need to use your maps with a different engine
• MISC: Some behind-the-scenes changes to the export plugin hooks; hopefully I can make some export plugin documentation available to coincide with the next release for anyone who might be interested in writing their own plugins
• MISC: Also behind-the-scenes: started tinkering with changing the right-click functionality — should have several options available for the next release, along with a basic configuration dialog for the entire application
• MISC: The FamFamFam silk icons are now mentioned in the about window

As always, feedback is welcome. This is still an alpha release, however, so be sure to take care to keep backups of any work you do in Wasabi M, and expect to run across a few bugs here and there.

Since I couldn’t find a tool with the features I wanted, I built one.

While it’s still rough around the edges, and isn’t yet “finished”, I thought it might be a useful tool for other people, so I’ve made it available for download. At the moment it’s Windows only (it’s built on top of .Net 3.5), but I have been looking into getting it running under Wine and / or with Mono.

Currently, it’s designed to work with specifically with flixel 1.45+ (though you could probably use the CSV files it creates with other engines and environments already, and more export plugins will be coming along in the future), and it will generate both CSV and ActionScript files for you once your map has been setup. It also has substantial support for creating, placing, and editing sprites, and for “large” projects (in particular, it’s meant to work with projects made up of many related maps).

Wasabi M is free for non-commercial projects, but there is a small licensing fee for use with for-profit, commercial projects.

If you give Wasabi M a try, please keep in mind that it’s an early release and that feedback of all sorts is welcomed and appreciated.