Archive for July, 2006
Thursday, July 27th, 2006
… Ok, a bit of exaggeration here but it comes pretty close! In case you missed it, Andre Michelle has written a RealTime Synth with ActionScript 3.0 that immitates an analogue synth not unlike the famous 303. The Userinterface is slick and the knobs are turning linear when dragged with the mouse. The sound is very good for that it is calculated! Try playing around with the Filter, Cutoff and ADSR curves and you will see (hear) that it sounds pretty much like a real synth. Heads up to Andre for being such an Innovator!
Filed under Dev | No Comments »
Wednesday, July 26th, 2006
So after about six months of absence I’ve decided to subscribe for a month back into SWG to see if things changed for the better (and to see if my stuff still exists). I spawned inside my house where I left the game last November and decided to bring my char to level 90 so I did many of the quests that I still had open. After all quests are almost the only way currently to gain XP quickly.
The game is basically still the same since I left it! Many of the same old bugs and a gameplay that has only distantly something to do with RPG. Examples: Tried to continue the ‘Secret of the Syrens’ quest but the Black Sun Bunker at the waypoint never spawns,I want to call my mount pet inside the Kashyyk Hunting Grounds but it doesn’t spawn, I want to attack that imperial trooper that permanently shoots at me but I can’t because he’s stuck inside a wall … the list could go on for a while.
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Filed under Dataleak, Gaming | 38 Comments »
Monday, July 24th, 2006
The “Crappiest Corporate Site of the Week” Award goes to Dell Japan for not being able to have a Shop website that runs on current Browsers! When I try to get onto their XPS 700 Customization page I get a simple Access Denied, telling me that I need to use Internet Explorer 4.0 or Netscape 4.6! The site doesn’t work on FireFox and not on MSIE 6 and neither on Netscape 8! Congratulations Dell! You suck immensely!
I’m actually wondering how do you sell your PCs in Japan!
Filed under Misc | 2 Comments »
Monday, July 24th, 2006
In my book “How to become a Flash Game Developer of World Class” I surely will not forget to mention this useful tool … FreeMind, a Mind Mapping tool that is not only free but also very intuitive! It is written in Java and therefore available for all common Platforms. Where other Mind Mapping tools or even MS Visio fails with being intuitive, FreeMind comes to the rescue!
You can lay out all imaginal hierarchical structures, be it your shopping list, you time plan or the story concept for your next game. After creating a new document with FreeMind, it has one root node. From now on you can add child nodes with the Insert Key, add sibling nodes below with the Enter key or above with Shift+Enter. This way it becomes a breeze to create a large tree structure of your project.
You can assign different color and font styles to your nodes. Another useful feature is the ability to link two nodes together with a bezier line. The tool has a MinMap and a Browse Mode and you can even browse your harddisks file structure with it if you want. You can also link files to nodes.
This is the number one tool I would recommend for brainstorming but it is very useful to lay out projects in more detail as well. There is also a FreeMind Document Reader that has been written with Flash, though I’m not sure if it can be downloaded and used offline.
Filed under Misc | 2 Comments »
Friday, July 21st, 2006
Found these today on my daily dose of Stumble Upon random links … Proggy Programming Fonts! Still coding with Courier? Maybe it’s time for a change?!
Filed under Misc | 2 Comments »
Monday, July 17th, 2006
Centered Selection is a simple but neat little JavaScript for Photoshop CS+ that can be used to create a rectangular or elliptical centered selection while maintaining the aspect ratio (i.e. width and height of the selection stay the same). Several options can be changed like the feather amount and the padding around the selection, whether using Antialias or not, creating an inverse selection and if an alpha channel should be created from the selection. This script can save a lot of hassle when trying to create a centered selection (imagine all that shift-, control- and space-holding and pressing to resize and drag around the selection)! As always a screenshot says more than thousand words.
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Filed under Design, Random Picks | 4 Comments »
Wednesday, July 12th, 2006
I’ve updated Alcon (ActionScript Logging Console) to v1.0.8! The only thing that has been added in this version is a Debug Class for use with ActionScript 3.0, everything else hasn’t been changed. The AS3.0 Debug Class can be found in the com.hexagonstar.util.debug package.
Note that you must use Debug.trace() since I’m not even sure if it’s somehow possible with the MXMLC to redirect to a custom trace method (like it is possible with MTASC). If you got any hints on this, please let me know! The new version can be found as always on it’s page at the Flash Game Programming Wiki! Enjoy!
Filed under Dev | 4 Comments »
Sunday, July 9th, 2006
The creator over at e-phonic.com seemingly has created the first realtime synth in Flash with AS3.0. Realtime in the meaning that it creates the produced sound completely by itself and not relying on predefined samples. He used the ByteArray and the Loader class (Loader.loadBytes) based on an idea and first experiment from David at Robots /w Lasers.
The synth consists of a simple, white emptyness in where you have to click with the mouse and it plays generated sounds depending on the coordinates. The sounds might be still a bit awkward but hey, it’s a milestone in Flash history, isn’t it?! 
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Friday, July 7th, 2006
A Developer’s Guide to Surviving Meetings … an invaluable guide for those long and boring meetings! Be sure to also read the comments as there are some nice tips as well! 
Filed under Misc | No Comments »
Wednesday, July 5th, 2006
ActionScript 3.0 and Flash Player 9.0 brought a big leap of speed and all kinds of changes and optimizations with it. But these mainly happen under the hood only. While Flash 8 came up with the bitmap level manipulation stuff, Flash 9 doesn’t come with any groundbreaking new features that are visible to the surface (except for the speed improvement).
Yesterday on a meeting I was asked if I could use a rotatable 3D mesh in Flash for the clients presentation project and I could only tell them that the lack of native 3D support is the big weakness of Flash. Eventually we will end up with a single frame animation to fake the rotation. However this was one example that there must be quite a demand for 3D support in Flash, not only for experimentation but even more for commercial use. In fact native 3D is already overdue since a while but I accept that implementing such a thing is not an easy challange.
So native graphics acceleration for Flash has to come one way or the other, not only because everybody wants it but also for Flash to stay competitive (think about WinFX). There is still Director one could argue. But somehow I get the feeling that Director will either continue it’s shadow existence or it will disappear sooner or later. 3D for Flash has to come, there is no way or excuse around it! Maybe the next version? Too early! Maybe Flash 10? Who knows! We might however see some sweet audio improvements in a near future!
Filed under Dev | 9 Comments »
