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Showing posts from January, 2009

Cheezeworld - another great blog about making Flash games


Following on from yesterday's recommendation of Game Poetry, here's the excellent Cheezeworld blog, with in-depth discussions on game Entity frameworks, collision detection, game Maths and lots more, with loads of great source-code for you to, err, borrow...

Game Poetry - absolutely the best blog about making Flash games


How did I miss this one? The Game Poetry blog has literally dozens of great articles about creating Flash and/or games. Sensible advice combined with a nice writing style make Urban Squall's little blog a great read. More like reading a book really, but in a good way.

Super ActionScript3 optimisation and a type-safe tweening engine - goodies from Shane McCartney


A couple of months back I worked on a project with super talented Flash developer (and all round nice guy) Shane McCartney. A few days ago I read his blog for the first time and found some awesome stuff on there including Tweensy - a type safe and super-fast tweening engine and not one but two great posts on optimising ActionScript3 scripts for better performance. Cool stuff!

Unity3D for PC - I, for one, welcome our new 3D overlords!


I'd heard this from an "insider" a while back, but now it's official (thanks Ryan) - Unity3D development is coming to PC. 900% more developers should mean 900% more games, which will lead to client and user acceptance of the technology. For some of the work I do, at least, it will mean an end to worrying about poly-counts and clipping bugs, and more time to make cool games! Sweet.

JavaFX - first impressions from a Flash developer (me!)




First impressions of JavaFX, having used it for about an hour. Can't be bothered with proper sentences for this! Here's the bullets:

  • The code IDE - NetBeans 6.5 - is great.
  • There's no visual editor that I could find - export from PhotoShop, Illustrator. For free versions try Paint.NET and Inkscape.
  • The language (JavaFX Script) seems like MXML and ActionScript rolled in to one language. A very different programming model to how I work. You never really write thing = new VisualThing(30, 20), it's all done with literals, so more like thing = VisualThing{param1:30, param2:20}.
  • That takes some getting used to, but I imagine if there was a good reason to use JavaFX for a project I'd be fine.
  • Certainly much easier to get started with than normal Java applets.
  • You can also use straight Java classes.
  • The plug-in update experience is still pretty horrible compared to Flash and even Silverlight.
  • Lots of the demo's are using Java Web start, which is also horrible.
  • Couldn't find anything about easy embedding - what's the Java version of swfobject?
  • Run-time performance seems fine and renders graphics nicely.
  • This technology has picked up seemingly zero traction amongst Flash community. Maybe will be a slow burner like Silverlight? Certainly Sun haven't thrown loads of money at Flashers like they did with Silverlight. (They probably can't afford to).
  • I hope it's not a flop because competition within the plug-in space can only be a good thing, but we'll see.
  • Nice range of 2D effects like we got with Flash 8 - drop shadow, blur etc
  • No 3D as yet, but it's on the roadmap.
  • Properly free and Open Source I think.
  • You can also develop Flash / Flex for free with MXMLC compiler, so that's not a reason to use over Flash.
  • Mobile version coming soon - don't know which platform supported yet - not iPhone or Android so who cares!
  • Now that I've sniffed around it I have no reason to use it, so back to Flash for now! Wish Sun the best of luck, because the technology actually seems ok.

Notes on Designing and developing multi-user Flash games



I was very pleased this morning to see that an attendee of my recent FlashBrighton talk on creating multi-player games has written up some very comprehensive notes, so if you want to know what I talked about, head over to ELECTROBUNNY's blog right now:

Read attendee notes on Designing and Developing Multi-User Flash Games.

If I get time I'd like to write it up myself, but who knows if I will, so enjoy!

Designing and developing multi-user Flash games - my session at FlashBrighton on Tuesday (13th January 2009)



Seb of FlashBrighton / PaperVision / Plug-in Media fame has very kindly invited me to talk at the FlashBrighton user group, so I will be pontificating on multi-player games (like Zwok, above, the game I developed for Bloc/Sony) on Tuesday. Here's the details:

Iain will tell you everything you need know to start creating multi-user Flash games: from a humble high-scores screen to real-time game-play and persistent worlds. He'll show you design and development lessons learned from real-world projects. Specific topics will include:


  • Choosing a server platform;

  • Sign-up and log-in;

  • Community and chat;

  • Game lobbies and match making;

  • Turn-based vs. realtime gameplay; and;

  • A look at which kinds of games are most suitable for multi-user play.
Tuesday January 13, 2009 at 7:00pm
The Werks
45 Church Road
Hove, England BN3 2BE

Check out the upcoming page for more info.