Out of all the articles and tutorials I've written, by far the most popular have been the Flash and Kinect pieces. Since the February 1st release of the version 1 Kinect SDK, I've gotten quite a few questions about how to get Flash working with Kinect again. Many readers were having trouble with the old tutorials which no longer work as they were based on the beta release of the SDK. I decided to take a break from my current project this weekend and throw together a quick Kinect to Flash demonstration with the new SDK. This isn't a tutorial, but you can download the source files and see how it was made! (more...)

Just a quick update here; I've been working tirelessly on a new Flash project that I'm hoping to wrap up in the next couple weeks. Working on this project has given me an idea for a great tutorial that I think some game developers will appreciate!

I also have started thinking about doing an overhaul on the blog and making it a more general development-type blog as I've been dipping my hands into a variety of technologies as of late. It would probably still be very heavily Flash-focused, but it never hurts to expand one's horizons. In addition to this, a new design couldn't hurt. I'm not sure when I'll get around to this though as I've got a lot of cool stuff going on at the moment!

One thing I'm looking forward to is the upcoming Flash Gaming Summit in San Francisco. The event is scheduled to take place on March 4, and while I've never been to one of these events before, it is looking likely that I will attend this year. If you're interested check out the summit site for all the details! Be sure to hunt around for discount promo codes before purchasing your ticket. They're all over the place!

Welcome to part 3 of the HTML 5 Space Shooter tutorial series. If you haven't already, I'd recommend checking out parts 1 and 2 before jumping in here. We're going to pick up where we left at the end of the last tutorial and implement enemies and collision detection. Let's get right to it! (more...)

In part 2 of this series we're going to be adding a player ship and the ability to control that ship. If you're just joining us, you'll first want to check out part 1 where we set up a scrolling starfield which serves as the background for the game. (more...)

Happy new year! 2011 was a fantastic year for me and I hope it was for you as well; hard to believe 2012 is here already! I figured a new tutorial would be a great way to start off the year so here you go: part 1 in a series on creating an HTML 5 shooter using EaselJS! (more...)

After following Lee Brimelow's introductory tutorial to Grant Skinner's EaselJS, I decided to look into it further and create a simple space shooter. No, this isn't directly Flash related, but the EaselJS framework is based on ActionScript and the Flash display list. Anyway, you can check out the game here. Look for a tutorial in the coming weeks!

This isn't a tutorial, but I figured it may still be of interest to some. Below is a sample image manipulation application I created a couple years ago while trying to get a handle on bitwise operators. The bitmap data is manipulated in various ways depending on which button you select. Here's a quick breakdown of what each button does: (more...)

One of the most common tasks in Flash game development is calculating angles. This becomes important in even simple 2D games such as shooters where the player can fire bullets in all directions. If you're anything like me, you're probably not very good with math. I typically will find other ways to get the job done, and indeed I had my own way for figuring bullet paths, but eventually I decided to use real angles and I'm pleased to say it really isn't that bad. (more...)

Well, I'm a bit late with this one, but my newest mobile app: Jury Duty, is now available as a free download from Apple's App Store. I know I had posted about it when it was released on the Android Marketplace, but I also wanted to let iOS users know they can grab it now too!

Jury Duty is a mobile poll app where you can answer political-based questions about the United States and high profile court cases. You can also see how your votes compare to others as the application tracks all votes and shows you the percentage of users that choose the same answer as you do! Check it out!

Jury Duty for iOS

In yesterday's post, I showed a simple example of how to do some very basic facial tracking using the Marilena code from the Spark Project. I had initially planned to look more into it later down the road, but Luis Rodriguez kindly posted a link to some work that he had done previously and turned me on to another face tracking sdk: Beyond Reality Face. (more...)