It's been a while since I've posted anything regarding the game I'm currently working on, Crash Planet. A lot of work has gone into it since the last screenshot was posted and there's still much more to be done, but here's a more recent shot featuring aliens, bullets and our protagonist.
A couple weeks before the Flash Gaming Summit I found an interesting blog post from Colin Northway about managing texture memory in Starling applications. In this post he describes how he forces an error in ActionScript to receive an object's memory address which he then uses as a unique id. I thought this was a pretty cool trick and was discussing it with our engine developer at the office when we suddenly had a thought: if you can get the memory address of an object in ActionScript, what's to stop you from passing that address into native code and doing whatever you want with it? (more...)
I've written before about how to create your own native extensions for Adobe AIR, but what if you need to debug your extension? If you're doing anything but the simplest of projects, you're going to want to be able to debug the code on the native side, in addition to your AS3 code. The ActionScript side is (hopefully!) already taken care of by your IDE so this tutorial will focus on the native code. It's a pretty short tutorial, but also incredibly useful! (more...)
I know FGS5 has been behind us for a while now and I've been slow with any updates since. The summit was a blast as usual. It's so great to be among inspiring individuals and people who are passionate about making great Flash games. I especially enjoyed John Cooney's presentation, as well as the panel at the end of the day. If you weren't able to attend the event or watch the live stream, don't worry! All the presentation recordings are available from the FGS5 website! I have noticed some audio issues on a few that make them hard to hear, but overall its pretty good.
You can view my presentation here.
My slides can be downloaded here.
The program schedule for the upcoming Flash Gaming Summit 5 was posted recently. My session begins at 2:15 Pacific time, but the entire day looks like it will be filled with some great talks! I've had nothing but good things to say about this event after attending last year and highly recommend you go if you're able. It's a great place to learn about the industry, meet fellow developers and get inspired to create new projects.
Check out the schedule and then register for the event if you haven't already! I hope to see you there!
It's been a while since my last post so I just figured I'd let everyone know what's been going on lately. Of course, I've been very busy over the past month and have really been focusing on my presentation for FGS! I've gotten it to a point that I'm happy with and am excited to share it with the Flash gaming community! I really can't wait for the big day!
In addition to the FGS presentation; I've been spending a lot of time working on a new game. I'm excited about this because since Night of the Loving Dead, I really haven't done a serious game project. There was Snow Day, but that was basically a weekend project for a contest. For the new game, I've drawn a lot of inspiration from the NES classic The Guardian Legend. Easily one of my favorite games of all time. So far I've got a good amount of artwork done and the basic code structure in place for moving about the world, but there is much more to do!
As for the site, I have several tutorials in mind that could be released relatively soon. However, I'm trying out video capture software because I'd like to perhaps do some video tutorials now and then. I feel that they are easier to follow along with than written ones. Below are the tutorial topics currently being looked into:
1) Introduction to Away3D
2) Data packing using bit-wise operations
3) C++ Native Extension video tutorial (may or may not do this one as the FGS presentation may cover it well enough)
Last year I had a great time at the Flash Gaming Summit in San Francisco and I am pleased to announce that this year I'll be speaking at the event! FGS 5 will take place in San Francisco on March 24th this year and, if its anything like it was last year, it is definitely worth making the trip out! My talk will focus on the benefits of native extensions and creating a simple, C-based native extension to help attendees get started developing their own extensions. You can visit the FGS site to see all the presenters and check back often for updates and the official program list!
I hope to see you there!
Here we are: 2013. Happy new year, everyone! It's hard to believe another year has come and gone, but time marches on and so must we all. If you've got some time, join me as I take a look back at the year that was and ahead at the year that will be! (more...)
Another Airxbc update has arrived and this time I've decided to give it its own home here on the site. Notice the top navigation menu now has a tab exclusively for Airxbc. That will be the place to go for all the information on the latest Airxbc updates. The page includes a link to the latest version, an example project and also full documentation so that you can look up all the functionality that the extension offers.
The biggest new addition to the 1.0 release is support for multiple controllers. You can have up to 4 players in your game, though be warned, I've only tested it with 2 as I don't have 4 controllers. After some feedback, I've also added support for checking if a button has just been pressed (thanks DeVNull). In addition to this, the left and right thumbstick buttons are now supported.
For more information please visit the new page! As always, feedback is appreciated; thanks!
This class was officially added to the Citrus Engine on November 26, 2012.
After seeing Lee Brimelow's tutorial on the Citrus Engine, I was intrigued and decided to play around with it. The engine's platformer package is already great and has some very useful objects for game developers. I took a look at the code for the box2d Platform and MovingPlatform classes and extended the functionality to create a RevolvingPlatform class. (more...)
