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matt-likes-swords
I made Epic Battle Fantasy!
Currently working on Matt's Hidden Cats.
Using Flash for 21 years.

Matt Roszak @matt-likes-swords

Age 35, Male

Developer

Glasgow University

Glasgow, UK

Joined on 6/12/04

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matt-likes-swords's News

Posted by matt-likes-swords - August 7th, 2020


Hey guys, I'm currently working on updating Brawl Royale for the Epic Battle Fantasy Collection.


This game was made when I didn't know how to program, so it's basically an animated slide-show. It's getting some cool new features in this update, the biggest one being difficulty options; hopefully this gives it some more replay-value, and allows almost anyone to beat it. It's also getting a new techno soundtrack by Phyrnna, and the timing of the levels is randomized slightly, so you can't cheese the game like before.


Oh yeah, all the copyrighted characters have been re-designed too.


Due to some minor file corruption, I actually had to reprogram the game in ActionScript 3, which luckily didn't take long. The nice part about this is that it can now run on mobile using Adobe AIR, and since it only requires one button to play, this might be a quick little practice game for me to put onto phones.


Of course the original game will also continue to float around the internet forever, if you ever want to play that again.


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Posted by matt-likes-swords - July 25th, 2020


Hey guys, after slacking off and playing Age of Empires 2 for a few months, I’ve gotten back to work – on the Epic Battle Fantasy Collection!


I’m re-releasing 8 of my very old games on Steam, which involves censoring a lot of copyrighted stuff. So here’s some new creatures for Epic Battle Fantasy 1, which are definitely not Pokemon. EBF1 is also getting a new soundtrack, since all of the original music was stolen from other games.


The other games that will be in included in the collection are: EBF2, Adventure Story, Bullet Heaven, Brawl Royale, Mecha Dress Up, The Kitten Game and Cat Cafe. Some of those are pretty much good to go already, but a few of them will need some changes. Besides removing copyright infringement, I'm also adding some Quality of Life features, like volume controls, easy modes, bug fixes, and Steam achievements!


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Posted by matt-likes-swords - July 2nd, 2020


Hey guys, it’s the end of an era.


Kongregate.com is going into archive mode and no longer accepting new games. A lot of the main staff already left a while ago, but there was still some really good web games being published there, so I’m a bit surprised that it’s no longer working out for them. They were even doing the monthly cash prizes for games up until the end, which I appreciate. I guess now they’re gonna be focusing on publishing mobile games, and on their store, Kartridge.


When I published Epic Battle Fantasy 3 on Kongregate 10 years ago, it got a million plays in the first week, and eventually 11 million in total. I think that was the biggest long-term boost to my reputation and career. The people at Kongregate were a lot of fun to work with, especially Greg the badge guy, and I don’t think any indie game platform today has anywhere near the same influence. I’m glad I published Epic Battle Fantasy 5 on there while I still could – it’ll be one of the last games to ever get badges!


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Personally, I’m gonna keep checking the site every once in a while. There’s still lots of fun badges that I’ve missed. Even when the Flashplayer plugin is disabled, there’s still browser extensions to get around that.


A lot of the popular Flash games I’m sure will eventually make their way onto other platforms like Steam, but there’s also preservation projects like BlueMaxima’s Flashpoint to keep these games alive.


Anyway, you should go have a browse through Kongregate’s badge categories. I’m sure you’ll find something fun to play every time you have an hour or two to spare. This news also motivates me to be more active on Newgrounds, as I'd really love for this website to stay alive for as long as possible!


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Posted by matt-likes-swords - June 10th, 2020


Hey guys, I’ve added Epic Battle Fantasy 4 to Itch.io’s massive charity bundle. For $5 you get 1,000+ games – mostly obscure stuff, but there’s a few well known indie games in there too, including Celeste, Night in the Woods, Minit, Nuclear Throne, Super Hexagon, Oxenfree, OneShot, Octodad and GNOG. Some hidden gems I’ve noticed include Water's Fine, Blitz Breaker, Lenna’s Inception, Heavy Bullets, The Floor is Jelly, Tiny Dangerous Dungeons, and Cuckoo Castle. I’m sure there’s much more in there that’s worth checking out, and if you agree with the cause, you should probably chip in a bit more than the minimum price.


Anyway, all of the games are DRM-free, no Steam keys.

Good luck, have fun.


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Posted by matt-likes-swords - May 24th, 2020


Hey guys, the entire EBF3 source code and assets are available on my Patreon for $2 for personal use. So if you have an old version of Adobe Flash (CS3, CS4, CS5 or CS6), you can try making some changes to it for fun, or just take a look at how the programming and animations are done. It’s ActionScript 2, so it’ll be a blast from the past, and it’s not my tidiest work. In fact it's incredibly messy, so you'll definitely need some Flash experience to make sense of it.


If people find that interesting, I may share the source files for the newer EBF games.


Anyway, I figured I'd announce this on Newgrounds since there may be some oldschool game devs on here who want to take a look at some AS2 stuff again.



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Posted by matt-likes-swords - January 18th, 2020


Hey guys, I'll be publishing Epic Battle Fantasy 5 on Kongregate sometime next week, and hopefully on Newgrounds very soon after.


I've not been very active in the browser game scene for a few years, so I'm catching up. I've noticed that Newgrounds requires you to download their player to run Flash games, while Kongregate asks you to enable Flashplayer in your browser.


I'm taking a look at the NG player, and it seems to run my old games fine - but website links don't work!

I'd very much like to advertise my website and deluxe version of the game. So it would be a shame if I couldn't do that on Newgrounds. But I understand this might be a limitation of Adobe's desktop Flashplayer - and I'll modify my ads accordingly if I need to.


I haven't checked - but do NG medals still work on it? Cause I'd still like to implement those.


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Posted by matt-likes-swords - March 29th, 2019


Hey, here's the first 4 winners of the EBF5 Foe Competition - these monsters are all designed by fans!


Angry chair is by Dumfro, Treagure is by ScepterDPinoy, Guoye is by Jay, and The Maw is by Mico. Additionally, the sword that Guoye summons is by Bolt Zyphyr.


I'm working on a big update for EBF5, which will include over 25 new foes, extra dungeons, and other cool stuff. It's not going to be finished any time soon, but I'll still try to make regular updates. EBF5's Steam launch has been a major success, and I'm trying not to work too hard.


I'll have to bring the free version of the game to Newgrounds soon - the series' 10 year anniversary is coming up in a month! Maybe I can convince Tom to host a fanart competition...



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Posted by matt-likes-swords - March 20th, 2019


Hey guys, I’m not working this month, but I still wanted to do something for my patrons, so I’m sharing the entire EBF5 source code with them.


It’s just for the purposes of personal education, and datamining (for walkthroughs etc).


The code is quite messy in many places, and the comments aren’t always accurate or useful. Timeline code from the animations is not included, so some important stuff is missing, and none of the code will compile unless you edit it to stand alone. You’re best opening the files in FlashDevelop, but any code editor should do okay.


Some files are easy to read without any programming knowledge, like the lists of item stats. While other files will require you to be familiar with Actionscript, Java, or similar languages.


So if you want to see what “real” code looks like, as opposed to ideal textbook code, toss me $1 to get it. If you're an EBF fan, you might also enjoy finding bits of unused code to see what might have been.


If people find this useful or interesting, I might release some of the animation assets in .fla format later. Not many programmers are using Flash these days, but I'm sure animators would still enjoy looking through it.


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Posted by matt-likes-swords - February 11th, 2019


Hey guys, as you might know, Epic Battle Fantasy 5 launched on Steam a couple of months ago, and has been doing very well so far. I'm currently working on more dungeons and secret content for the game, which you can see on my website or YouTube.


I'm also doing another Foe Competition, so you can design monsters for EBF5, and if I like them, I'll animate them and put them into the game! The full details and instructions are here. We're doing pixel art this time, so check it out if that sounds interesting to you.

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Posted by matt-likes-swords - December 20th, 2018



I'm doing a Christmas EBF5 Steam Key give-away!
Just leave a short comment on my website to enter.

In related news, EBF5's Steam launch was a massive success!
The game's selling way better than I hoped for, and is getting mostly great reviews.
I've been frantically busy over the last month, but I think I'm finally ready to take a break and enjoy my holidays.

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