Psyked*

it’s easy once you know how.

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.

Augmented Reality with Flash

Posted by James - 05/06/08 at 06:06:13 pm

Here’s another “wow” project - FLARToolKit (FLash Augmented Reality ToolKit)

Your webcam, little bit of Papervision, the FLARToolKit, and you’re off.

It’s similar technology to that which powers “Eye of Judgement”, and is pretty cool.  If you’ve got a webcam go and scribble a large black box onto a bit of paper and test it out.

Kudos to Make me pulse and Games Alfresco for finding the link in the first place!

Immersive Media : 360° Flash Video

Posted by James - 27/05/08 at 03:05:30 pm

Immersive Media, who I gather are also responsible for a lot of the Google Streetview images, have taken the ‘interactive panorama’ idea a little further than most, and introduced ‘Immersive Video’. Sound interesting? Indeed it is.

Continue reading Immersive Media : 360° Flash Video…

Flash Player 10 (Astro) Prereleased!

Posted by James - 15/05/08 at 09:05:21 am

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/

Flash Player 10 is out on prerelease. Why not go and give it a whirl?

Edit: Serge Jespers says it better than I.

FIVe3D - A different approach to 3D Flash

Posted by James - 15/05/08 at 08:05:20 am

FIVe3D is unlike other 3D engines ( such as Papervision or Alternitva3D ) in it’s approach.  We’re not talking shape primatives here, we’re talking extending the basic flash elements ( Sprites, Text, MovieClips ) to include Z-properties.  Looking at the demos, it’s not what you’d expect from ‘Flash 3D’, because we’re expecting another Papervision clone.  But no, the approach that Mathieu has taken when developing this is much different - and actually makes much more sense for a lot of situations.

Plus, it’s fun.  I’m a sucker for fun demos.

Continue reading FIVe3D - A different approach to 3D Flash…

Alternativa3D - More 3D goodness from the Flash Player

Posted by James - 03/05/08 at 09:05:42 am

3D Flash engines seem to be popping up everywhere at the moment.  [Although I wouldn't call that a bad thing] - Each one tends to take a different approach, do a different demo to distinguish themselves.  Take this for example, a very impressive looking offering from Alternativa3D;

Continue reading Alternativa3D - More 3D goodness from the Flash Player…

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