Github

I recently created a new repository on Github to hold my Flash prototypes.

For now, you can download and play with a simple StarField 3D animation I created recently. A demo is also available.

Adobe AIR apps

"With the Adobe Labs AIR Showcase and samples page — and sites such as ApolloHunter, Mashable, and AIRapps.net — we quickly found some cool and creative Adobe AIR applications, most of which are in the public alpha stage."

Programmers adopt Flex and migrate to ActionScript 3.0

"The JavaScript components of an Ajax application are typically generated dynamically at runtime, making it harder to debug and requiring developers to be proficient in C#, JavaScript, and HTML. One of the touted benefits of .NET programming was that with one language (such as C#) you could program both tier 1 and tier 2. Sadly, however, Ajax throws a wrench in the works and, in my personal opinion — stemming from years of object-oriented C, C++, and C# application development — is a hack."

50 Reasons Actionscript 3 Kicks Ass

Nice flash slideshow on some of the great new features in Actionscript 3.

Flash Player 9 Update 3 Beta 1, Papervision benefits.

"Now, coming back all jet lagged and such, Adobe had a surprise waiting; they released the Flash Player 9U3B1 (and Flex 3, but that is out of scope of this little post). What does this mean ?"

Digg Watcher

A handy Flash application to track the current Diggs for a given story.

Examining the Puzzle Game sample application

"Originally part of the samples that shipped with Flash Professional 8 under the Bitmap data feature, the Puzzle Game sample application has been updated from ActionScript 2.0 to use the latest features in ActionScript 3.0. This article details the code used in both versions so you can understand how the sample application was migrated from ActionScript 2.0 to ActionScript 3.0."

Plugins for Macromedia Flash character animation

Great collection of plugins for Flash animation.

Luminara

Great take on the Asteroids concept. Notice the chunky particle effects.

Game Game (Strange Flash Game)

"It's called game, game, game and again game and it's either a genius piece of self-reflective work on the validity of design as art superimposed on top of none-too-subtle messages concerning the materialism of the 21st century, or it's what happens when a Flash programmer has one too many beers.

You play a squiggle, and your objective in each of the 13 levels is simply to reach a door. While one out of every five levels actually makes this goal sort-of-kind-of difficult to reach, for the most part the game just revolves around artistic interpretation of the landscape. Every time you hit an "item," it disappears and is replaced with random words/philosophy. Every once in a while, you can watch a video by the creator."

NewsBreaker

Interesting mashup on the latest news and breakout.

Jeu Chiant (aka Irritating Game)

"Your objective is to not let any of the 2 balls fall for as long as possible. Sounds simple but its extremely challenging and addictive. Hint: If you do not want to play in French ("Jouer" means "play" in French, by the way), you should first click on the Union Jack flag in the lower left hand side to switch to English."

Pummel Ragdoll Clowns (Right in Your Web Browser!)

"I Hate Clowns: Operation Pie Gones is now 100% playable right in your web browser. The game weighs in at a mere 960kb via the Unity web player (a 3D technology set to usurp Director as the plugin for 3D web content)."

Alternate Pseudo-Random Number Generator

"When developing games you often need a PRNG that, once initialized with a seed value, produces always the same sequence of random numbers after it. The Math.rand() function in Flash is a PRNG, but it doesn't let you define a seed value (I think it's picked randomly when the swf starts, but there isn't much information about it) so another solution has to be found."

An interesting alternate way to generate pseudo-random numbers using ActionScript.

Motor Physics: Collision Demo

"Collisions are resolved using a very simple but fast method which doesn't support rotational effects - basically the collision model just applies an impulse based on the velocities and masses of both bodies along the normal of collision to separate them, and computes some sort of dynamic friction along the normals tangential component. A restitution factor is used to simulate energy loss (blend between perfect elastic and inelastic collisions)."

Neat demo of an alternate way to detect collisions.

Desuade - Partigen

Real-time particle effects using Flash with Fuse-Kit.

Boxhead: More Rooms

"Jon Bambo is back and a new beast is out to get him. Equipped with even more weapons and equipment, the Zombie has become cannon fodder and the new Beast will take you down unless you get all the 90 upgrades and perfect your skill!"

What About Flash? Can We Really Make Games With It?

"We’ve heard this story before: big-game developer gets tired of big-game team size, pressure, and politics, and switches to making small games. New companies filled with people escaping the retail AAA industry, developing these “casual” games, are popping up all the time. These aren’t the silly little things that get forwarded to us in email and hold our attention for 30 seconds. These are games that make money, and hearken back to the days of yore when a couple geeks in a garage could put together a hot shareware title in a few months and get rich quick. The big difference today is in the tools. We can build bigger, better, prettier, more advanced games with fewer people in less time and for less money than ever before!"

Great article discussing what Flash can and can't possibly do with respect to game design.

diggflashdevkit - Google Code

"The Digg Flash Kit is a collection of ActionScript 2.0 classes that can be used to build visualizations of Digg data like those featured on Digg Labs."

Acrobots

Neat flash game that involves gravity and wacky-wall-walker inspired characters.