Psyked*

it’s easy once you know how.

All these physics games…

Posted by James - 25/08/08 at 09:08:55 am

It seems like fun physics games are on the rise - there’s Launchball, which I’ve mentioned before - but there also seems to be a rise in the numbers of other simple physics games created in Flash. Maybe its because of as3 libraries like APE making development easier, maybe commerical games like Little Big Planet are what drive innovation (imitation?), maybe its even just down to the arrival of Actionscript 3 and its enhanced processing abilities.
Whatever the reason, games like Fantasic Contraption and Magic Pen have appeared on the scene, and are well worth a play.  (Just don’t start playing when you should be working, otherwise you’ll be in trouble.)

If you like those games, you can use classes like APE to start building your own… Continue reading All these physics games……

Exempli Gratia : Using Tweener

Posted by James - 18/07/08 at 07:07:31 pm

Tweener (caurina.transitions.Tweener) is a Class used to create tweenings and other transitions via ActionScript code for projects built on the Flash platform.

To use Tweener in your projects, the first step is to download the class files that will work with your project from the Google Code page for Tweener, and then we’ll get started.

Download Tweener

Continue reading Exempli Gratia : Using Tweener…

Stop using mx.transitions.Tween;

Posted by James - 12/07/08 at 05:07:16 pm

If you’re still using Flash’s inbuilt Tween classes for you scripted animations, I suggest you stop - and start making things easier for yourself by using Tweener instead. Tweener is a class that replaces Tween, works for Actionscript 2 and Actionscript 3, offers a simpler interface for creating tweens, and has a larger range of easing options to work with.

What’s wrong with Tween?

The Tween class is ok - up to a point. It does what it’s supposed to, but once you start trying to integrate it with serious full-on Actionscripting you’ll notice a few snags. If you’re dynamically creating and removing objects, and then want to dynamically modify the tweens, your tweens will likely go crazy. Start a new Tween and there’s very little way you can stop it - even by removing its subject. Stacking Tweens doesn’t go down well either - if you create one to move an object left to right, and then mid-animation another to move it back to the left, things go ok until the point that the first animation should finish - whereupon your object will flick back to the finishing position of the first, and then resume the second animation. Continue reading Stop using mx.transitions.Tween;…

Links for integrating Flash and Facebook

Posted by James - 17/06/08 at 05:06:23 pm

Ok, so I’ve been muttering a lot recently about Facebook and Flash. It’s something I’m interested in - because I believe it’s one great way to expose your Flash games to lots of users - but just not something I’ve had time to bring to fruition.

It turns out your basic requirements for integrating Flash and Facebook boil down to this - a server-side solution (asp, .Net, PHP, Ruby etc.) for building webservices, or some form of data service for Flash to work with. Most of the integration actually, will be done with server-side stuff. And then you just need to build a pretty standard Flash application that uses these webservices.

Beyond that fantastically helpful statement, here’s a couple of links to help you on your way;

• How To Build A Facebook Application (Digital Web Magazine)
• Integrate your Flash game on Facebook (Emanuele Feronato)

Launchball - an awesome Flash game

Posted by James - 16/06/08 at 10:06:43 pm

I’m very impressed with Launchball, a Flash game from the Science Museum.

I love the design, I love the interface - its unique, simple and very swish. Once I started playing the game I was staggered by how fully realised it is - no skimping on the programming here, we’re talking realistic physics and complete freedom, thanks to the Flade Actionscript dynamics / physics engine. (Launchball is AS2 - but incidently Flade is now called the APE and is available in AS3 format).

Continue reading Launchball - an awesome Flash game…

What’s up with Flash gaming?

Posted by James - 11/06/08 at 11:06:16 pm

I’ve been pondering Flash games for a while now, and it occurred to me that I don’t quite see so many as I thought I used too. I don’t know - maybe its because I just move in different circles now I’m in the ‘professional’ world, but it seems like there’s more emphasis on the practical things like applications or tools and everyones’ forgotten about the fun things like games.

So, where have all the Flash games gone - and has anything changed in the last 4 or 5 years?

Well, Newgrounds is the old one I remember - and except for a ‘Web 2.0′ facelift, it seems like the same old content is there - Stickman animations (StickDude Killing Arena 4), various impressive console-game-style conversions and a variety of time sucking Minigames (The Zombie Wars). Ok, you have to give credit to the guys who made this stuff, but it doesn’t seem like things have progressed at all on the ‘wow factor’.

Continue reading What’s up with Flash gaming?…

(Flash/Javascript) problems in a .Net Content-Managed Website

Posted by James - 08/06/08 at 01:06:13 pm

I have been trying to figure out how to set get a session cookie from Flash via Javascript. Yes, Flash does have a limited ability to set its own ‘cookies’ with something called LocalStorage, but there are a few advantages to actually creating ‘real’ cookies and working with those - not least because people understand browser cookies a little more than LocalStorage areas.

The solution itself is pretty simple - you create a Javascript function to manipulate the cookie data, and then Flash uses the ExternalInteface.call function to access these javascript functions. If you want to go even more advanced, you can leverage getURL to create your Javascript functions in the first place - my favorate because it doesn’t need any external javascript.

( Sometime I’ll clean out the code and post an example, but for now we’re going to concentrate more on the problems encountered when using this solution. )

As I said, the solution is great and works in most situations however, this doesn’t work in the CMS we’re using and I couldn’t figure out why. It turns that our problem was;

DOM Access

.Net pages put all the html inside a form and apparently this means that objects like embedded swfs become hidden from the Document Object Model in Internet Explorer.

The solution to this is to “elevate” the object to be part of the window rather that the document. It seems that by creating a reference and using a different element in the heirarchy fixes DOM visibility issues. i.e.

window.objectID = document.getElementById(objectID);

A strange solution, huh? Ben Waldron has more information on this solution here.