http://blog.hexagonstar.com The life of a wannabe Games Programmer Tue, 29 Jul 2008 02:35:29 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en http://blog.hexagonstar.com/feed-logo.png http://blog.hexagonstar.com 144 36 H1DD3N.R350URC3 - http://blog.hexagonstar.com Alcon 3 is in the works! The new version is being written for Adobe AIR and that means no more hackish OS integration! Thanks to AIR the debugging tool will run nice and smooth on any supported OS and it will restore your windows size and position where you last ... http://blog.hexagonstar.com/announcing-alcon3/ In case you're wondering what happened on this site besides that it has been visually overhauled ... two of my older blogs have now been merged with Hidden Resource. One, Dataleak, was my very first blog that I used for mainly writing about computer games, especially old ones. However Dataleak ... http://blog.hexagonstar.com/dude-where-is-my-blog/ In this tutorial I will explain how to create a relatively realistic looking galaxy with Photoshop. I was searching the web up- and downwards to find any tutorials that could tell me how to get a similar fantastic result. There are like 100.000 planet tutorials out there and the few ... http://blog.hexagonstar.com/galaxy-tutorial/ Kore 2 from Native Instruments is probably every sound organizer's wet dream with sugar on top. Not only  can it control a multitude of Softsynths but it's database makes it easy to organize sounds and find them quickly when needed. I've purchased this nice tool last December and what's better ... http://blog.hexagonstar.com/kore2-part1/ Download: dark & modern looking UI skin for Ableton Live 6/7. A while back I've created a custom skin for Ableton Live with this handy freeware skin editor. The editor dates back to Live 6 but it seems that skins made with it work just fine in Live 7. Live's approach ... http://blog.hexagonstar.com/ableton-live-skin/ Fontstruct is an online font creator whose editor has been obviously developed with Flex. Users can register and design their own fonts which are made available for download. Looks slick! http://blog.hexagonstar.com/font-creation-with-flex/ While Jagged Alliance is without discussion one of the finest squat squad-based strategy games ever made that has seen the daylight, I especially enjoy the 'personal' characteristics that the mercenaries bring with them and the frivolous Butt Groping demonstrated in this clip shows this side of JADG nicely. The map ... http://blog.hexagonstar.com/jagged-alliance-deadly-groping/ Not from myself but I'd like to second his words ... A Love Letter to Flash http://blog.hexagonstar.com/a-love-letter-to-flash/ In game development randomness is often necessary for certain tasks, be it the random distribution of graphic tiles, a random factor in NPC AI or random stats in a roleplaying game. Especially for the latter purpose the static Dice class provides a set of methods to roll dice as it ... http://blog.hexagonstar.com/diceclass/ [ad#ad_content]Update: This bug has long been fixed by Adobe. Please ignore this post, Flex 3 is wonderful! Makes me wonder why nobody else has yet written anything about this bug ... when using any container component like for example a Panel or TitleWindow with a different borderStyle than the default, e.g. ... http://blog.hexagonstar.com/container-bug-in-flex3-beta2/ The guys at Powerflasher done a great job! Check out their new FDT 3 at fdt.powerflasher.com. Personally this has become once again my favorite coding tool (after an over one year break with FlexBuilder's editor). FDT has many features that one would otherwise only find in superior tools like Eclipse's ... http://blog.hexagonstar.com/fdt3_is_final/ I've updated the AnimatedBitmap class so that it now uses an external timer object to trigger the animation. The advantage of this is that one timer can be used for many animated objects that use the same framerate. For this purpose a custom FrameRateTimer class has been added. This saves ... http://blog.hexagonstar.com/animatedbitmapclassupdate/ The AnimatedBitmap class provides functionality for Bitmap objects that are animated by using a series of still images. When creating a new AnimatedBitmap you provide a BitmapData object that contains an image that consists of the 'single-frame' images for the animation. What are the advantages over using a generic MovieClip? When ... http://blog.hexagonstar.com/animatedbitmapclass/ I've joined the closed beta of FDT 3.0 a couple of weeks ago and saw that there was steady progress in bug fixing with around 3-4 updates every week. Now the guys at Powerflasher started the Open Beta which everybody can join by visiting the FDT Forum. FDT 3.0 is pure ... http://blog.hexagonstar.com/fdt3_open_beta/ Alcon (ActionScript Logging Console) is a lightweight debugging tool for ActionScript 2.0/3.0 developers that provide a way to output debugging information (traces) from the debugged application to an external output panel. It uses ActionScript's LocalConnection to send the debugging information from the included Debug class to the ... http://blog.hexagonstar.com/alcon/ FEAT (abbreviation for Freelancer's Estimation Assistance Tool) is a tool to help freelancers calculate hourly rates and project pricing estimates. It is inspired by a very similar calculation PDF sheet which was created by Lauren of creativecurio.com and by some other useful freelancer pricing resources on the net. The tool uses ... http://blog.hexagonstar.com/feat/ I finally came to play a bit more with AIR and it's specific features and wrote a small tool that is helpful for freelancers like you and me to make pricing estimation calculations. With FEAT you can calculate your hourly rate based on your expenses and some other factors and ... http://blog.hexagonstar.com/first_air_app_feat/ Normally when Vista's User Account Control (UAC) asks the user for a consent when launching an application that is deemed insecure, the desktop will fade dark while the consent window is shown. While I recommend to always leave UAC turned on, this desktop dimming can get annoying very quickly. Fortunately ... http://blog.hexagonstar.com/vistatweak7/ By default Vista adds installed games to the Vista Games Folder when they are started for the first time. However there are many games that are not added automatically. It is possible to drag and drop a shortcut icon of a game onto the Game Window but only the icon ... http://blog.hexagonstar.com/vistatweak6/ Despite there seems to be no visible option to turn Autologin on in Vista it is still possible to activate it. The feature is a bit hidden and not directly accessible through the Control Panel. If you ever are the only person using your computer there is no purpose in ... http://blog.hexagonstar.com/vistatweak5/