Author Archive
Wednesday, May 30th, 2007
Still have a skeptical opinion about using Flash for making games? Read and rethink … at least for earning money it seems to pay off if done right! Check out this interview with Desktop Tower Defense creator Paul Preece! Obviously it is possible to create a monthly 8000$ revenue just by putting together a simple but addictive Flash Game and make it freely available to people.
Even though personally I’m not too impressed with the game (prefer better graphics/sounds) I found myself getting lost by its addictive gameplay for at least 30 minutes today. Why the heck do I sit here designing an overly complex roleplaying game??! To answer that question by myself: Because it’s what I love doing and its fun for me. But maybe I’m better off devoting some time to create a simple blockbuster first!
So what makes this game so addictive that people are coming back en masse? First and foremost it’s simple and straightforward. No long introduction, no necessity to read instructions, you get into the game quickly. Then there is the addiction factor … Maybe its just me but the reason why it is fun to play is because you try to make your defense perfect to stop the intruding enemies. Another factor is that you can shoot and destroy something. Sounds dumb? I know, but I can imagine that many people’s ‘hunting’ instinct is triggered by that. After all many popular games follow the same scheme. In fact you don’t even need to do the shooting as that is what your towers are doing for you. You just have to place them in a strategically good position and watch how well it works out. The author sure made a good choice by picking a Tower Defense game for this!
Now there are hundreds of other well proven addictive games out there. Make your choice and don’t forget to improve it by adding something that makes it even more fun to play! Meanwhile excuse me … I have to dig through my old games collection and do some searching … 
(via Tales of the Rampant Coyote)
Filed under Dev | 4 Comments »
Monday, May 28th, 2007
Here’s a small demo that I threw together yesterday which shows how the effects in the Hexagon Framework effects package can be used. The effects package contains classes that are used on display objects to apply an animated effect on them. That is not all however. The effects send a signal back to the calling class when they are finished and there are two more classes with that effects can be arranged, namely the EffectChainer class and the EffectCombiner class.
(more…)
Filed under Dev, Random Picks | 6 Comments »
Saturday, May 26th, 2007
A valuable resource for everyone who is thinking/planning to write a roleplaying game … Indie developer Planewalker Games who are currently making their debut RPG The Broken Hourglass are publishing precious bits of insider information about their game engine called WeiNGINE. The Broken Hourglass is a computer roleplaying game with a strong visual relation to late nineties RPG pearls like Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale or Planescape: Torment (who all were based on the Infinity Engine).
Some examples of their articles: Inside the Engine - Introduction to Items, Inside the Engine - Introduction to Sprites, Rules and Mechanics - Group Skills … and there’s a whole lot more when navigating through the links at the bottom of the pages. I kind of soak up such detailed information on game/RPG design as such things are sparsely seeded on the web (you will not see such information leaking from commercial developers!)
Filed under Dev, Random Picks | 1 Comment »
Saturday, May 26th, 2007
In case you missed it Michael of Polygonal Labs has released a package of ActionScript 3.0 data structures that are especially dedicated for game development. He’s also writing examples on how some of the classes are used, for example Queue and Tree.
The hexagon framework will contain similar data structure classes but they will adhere more to interfaces and patterns. Nevertheless I will optimize them for speed as best as I can. In case you are wondering … no, the hexagon framework hasn’t been released yet but I can say now that it won’t take too long anymore until initial release.
Filed under Dev, Random Picks | No Comments »
Friday, May 25th, 2007
As you can see hidden.resource has been moved to it’s own domain, namely www.hiddenresource.net. At that opportunity I also gave the site a Wordpress update and a new look (including those slick 16-bit style pictures at the top). Besides that HDRS is going to focus more on Game Development with ActionScript 3.0 in the future as that is what I’m (and probably the readers of this blog are) most interested in.
Filed under Misc | Comments Off
Wednesday, May 2nd, 2007
Ok, I’ve searched with Google, I’ve asked on FlashCoders but nowhere got an answer. As far as I can understand it we still have to deal with the old problem in Flash of exporting library assets into frame 1 and using a Preloader. If we simply export the library stuff (and classes) into frame 1 we render our Preloader pretty much useless. But creating a Preloader like in ActionScript 2 obviously doesn’t work anymore.
(more…)
Filed under Dev | 45 Comments »
Sunday, April 29th, 2007
I’m happy to announce that Alcon 2.0 has finally been made public. The new version was completely rewritten using ActionScript 3 and Flex 2 and contains several new features that I missed in version 1. The most significant additions are the following:
- Output of up to four log files. You can define which log files to output by changing the settings in the AlconConfig.xml file. Like this it is easily possible to watch the flashlog.txt file that can be created with the Flash Debug Player (more info on this here and here).
- Alcon now features an Inspect panel for inspecting objects.
- A hexadecimal dump of an object can be made. Don’t ask me what this might be useful for now but you never know. - Alcon now features a stopwatch that can be used to measure passed time more easily.
- You are now able to monitor the current host application’s stage framerate and memory usage.
For more info and download check out the Alcon page over at osflash.org.
Please note that this is a beta version! It still has bugs and the Debug class for ActionScript 2.0 is not yet included.
Filed under Dev | 6 Comments »
Sunday, March 25th, 2007
Been quiet here recently! One who writes code much, writes blog post few! ++ STOP ++ Flash Game Programming Wiki is down! Had my web server package changed which required a physical server transfer. Looks as if something on MediaWiki got broken by that. All stuff is still there but the site doesn’t open on any URL. ++ STOP ++ Alcon 2.0 is in development and will soon be released. ++ STOP ++ Apollo Alpha is out but I still haven’t touched it, no time, too busy! Does Photoshop CS3 is being released on tuesday?!? Who knows? Head explodes ++ STOP ++ …
Filed under Misc | 2 Comments »
Friday, March 9th, 2007
Check out The Great Game Experiment, a community site especially for gamers and game developers. Members can introduce their favorite games, add new games, meet other gamers/developers etc. The site also focuses on Independent Game Developers, after all it was Jeff Tunnel of Garage Games who breathed life into it (The same Jeff Tunnel of Dynamix fame btw! Games like Project Firestart and Rise of the Dragon come to my mind).
Developers can introduce their creations and find other developers - both professional and hobbyist - to get working together on a project. Games made in Flash are welcome and there’s even a category for it.
Filed under Gaming | No Comments »
Wednesday, February 28th, 2007
Check out this 3D isometric game engine called renderhjs made in Flash! It took me three days to get my jaw back up from the floor!! (Ok, I’m lying there, I just found this link about ten minutes ago). Not only is it real-time calculated and fully textured 3D but it is written in ActionScript 2 for Flash Player 8 as a minimum. There are some glitches (watch the water basins in the toilet while rotating around) but still this is most impressive! In fact it looks even better than the graphics in Resident Evil. All I’m missing is a control to move the camera around freely but nevertheless it would be awesome to see a full game of this. (via UnitZeroOne).
Filed under Dev | 2 Comments »
So what makes this game so addictive that people are coming back en masse? First and foremost it’s simple and straightforward. No long introduction, no necessity to read instructions, you get into the game quickly. Then there is the addiction factor … Maybe its just me but the reason why it is fun to play is because you try to make your defense perfect to stop the intruding enemies. Another factor is that you can shoot and destroy something. Sounds dumb? I know, but I can imagine that many people’s ‘hunting’ instinct is triggered by that. After all many popular games follow the same scheme. In fact you don’t even need to do the shooting as that is what your towers are doing for you. You just have to place them in a strategically good position and watch how well it works out. The author sure made a good choice by picking a Tower Defense game for this!
