Last week I decided to look into building a native extension for AIR and was very surprised by the lack of quality resources and tutorials for doing so. I was able to find examples for Android using Java and for iOS using Objective-C, but pretty much nothing for a standard Windows C++ project. I was eventually able to get things up and running by piecing together bits of information from various sources, but I thought I'd take the time to write a step-by-step tutorial on how to do this so that perhaps others will have an easier time. In this tutorial you will create a native extension that simply adds two numbers together and returns the sum. (more...)

I've been seeing a lot of posts around the web the last few days about a new ActionScript 3 library, AS3MUL. The MUL stands for multiuser library. Of course this captured my interest and today I decided to play around with it. I'm pleased to say this library is really good! I was able to get a simple multiplayer scene up and running in just a couple of hours!

You can check out my simple demo here, head to the AS3MUL website to learn more about it and download the library from google code.

To see actual multiplayer with the demo either have a buddy sign on with you or just open the demo page in a second browser window/tab.

I've been talking recently about working a shorter, more efficient work week and wanted to share some of the things that I've learned over the years that help make it possible. Below are seven tips that will boost your productivity at work and help you avoid headaches at home. (more...)

I had a great time today at Barcamp Orlando! I saw quite a few interesting and funny talks and was able to grab a speaking slot for my presentation on working a more efficient 4 day, 32 hour work week. It seemed to go over really well; there were some great questions and feedback from the audience.

I've put the presentation online if you want to look over the slides. However, I'm not sure you'll get much out of them without the talk to give some context. They were more or less just shorthand notes so I could remember what to talk about next.

This saturday, April 14, is Barcamp Orlando; a non-conference conference. What the heck does that mean? It's an all day event running 9:30 AM to 6:00 PM in downtown Orlando. There will be four rooms for speakers; the kicker is that all the speakers sign up to talk the day of the conference! I've prepared a presentation, an HTML5 slideshow no less, and will arrive early in an attempt to snag a speaking slot (no guarantees).

The presentation is tentatively titled A Better Work Week and goes into the details about the benefits of working a 4 day, 32 hour week instead of the standard 5 day, 40 hour week.

This is something that I feel strongly about and I hope the idea can gain some momentum in the US. If you're in the area please drop by and check it out!

I spent the day adding leaderboards to one of the first Flash games I ever created, Aquwar. It's an underwater combat game where the objective is simply to survive for as long as possible, shoot enemies and rack up a high score. It's not the best game in the world, but it was a great learning experience for me at the time and I had a lot of fun making it.

You can play the game now on Newgrounds.

I just pushed a new version of my Jury Duty application to the Android marketplace. The new version, 1.23, includes a fix for a bug that was causing text to get cut off from longer content pieces in the history portion of the app. If you're an Android user, grab the new version from the play store now!

As for iOS, I will also be making an update there in the next couple of weeks. It takes a lot longer to get stuff published with Apple.

Today was a pretty hectic day in the industry. After Adobe announced a new premium license for Flash Player; the internet, in typical internet fashion, went ballistic over pretty much nothing. If you want to see what all the ruckus is about, you can read the official announcement here. I'm really going to hope that when you're done reading that, you realize there's nothing to get riled up about.

The 9% fee from the premium license applies only to Flash Player-based games that utilize both Stage3D and Alchemy. Furthermore, it only comes into effect if said game manages to pull in $50,000 or more in revenue. Anything packaged with AIR is exempt. This means anything you do for mobile does not require a fee.

I've been developing with Flash for quite a while now and nothing I've ever built has met the requirements for paying the 9% fee. And perhaps more to the point, nothing I plan on building in the future would incur a fee either.

Unless you're a major game developer (think EA) it's pretty safe to assume this announcement does not apply to you or any Flash projects you're planning on building.

As Richard Davey said on Twitter: "All everyone will take-away is the '9%' headline and ignore the fact it applies to not one single game yet"

HTML5 and Apple zealots will likely continue to make a big scene about this, but hopefully now you understand that this is really not a big deal and perhaps cooler heads will prevail. For another voice on the matter, check out Lee Brimelow's recent post in which he explains the situation.

I'm pleased to announce the release of my first Flash game of the year: Night of the Loving Dead.

I've spent the last couple months creating this game and am overall pretty happy with it. It also represents my first Flixel-based project and I was really impressed with the Flixel engine. Give it a shot and let me know what you think!

WebRTC is a new technology that brings real-time communication capabilities to your browser without the need for plugins. In this tutorial you'll learn how to set up a webcam stream and copy images from it to an HTML5 canvas element. (more...)