Category: 8bitrocket

  • Using the Essential Flash Games Framework Hint #2: Mochi Ads and the IDE

    In Chapter 12 we explore adding Mochi ads to the Essential Flash Games framework.  In the IDE I have found a slight problem that has been fixed in the new code download, but it is an easy fix for you to make yourself. The Tunnel Panic game fla in chapter…

  • Iterating Essential Guide To Flash Games Ch. 1 Games For A Weekend Easter Project

    So I decided to take the two games from Ch. 1 of the Essential Guide to Flash Games, and iterate them into a couple new games. The idea here was to let my three daughters (ages  4-11) design some graphics, and then use them in games.  They all made some…

  • Essential Guide To Flash Games Code Supplement #3: New Source For Chapters 11 and 12

    Essential Guide To Flash Games Code Supplement #3: New Source For Chapters 11 and 12 There were many changes made to the book chapter code and the framework package as we progressed through our revisions. It seems that the current code package downloads for chapters 11 and 12 contain import…

  • The iPad Is Here and Guess What?: A Lot Of People Think It Sucks : Updated

    You might have already read a bunch of balanced or semi-positive stories about the iPad on the internet. This is not one of those. I have chosen to find people who hate it, or at the very least, have had negative things to say, and have written about it. Sure,…

  • Essential Guide To Flash Games Code Supplement #2: Chapter 10 Driving and Turning Supplement

    Essential Guide To Flash Games Code Supplement #2: Chapter 10 Driving and Turning Supplement In chapter 10 we build an engine to handle an unlimited sized scrolling world with 32×32 sized tiles. On top of this scrolling engine we build a driving game. I had never completed a 360 degree…

  • Essential Guide To Flash Games Code Supplement #1: Ch. 1 Games With The Flex SDK

    In the book Essential Guide To Flash Games we make every attempt to give developers code that will work in both the Flex SDK and the Flash IDE. However, the three games in Chapter 1 are an exception. Because there were too many essential topics that we would need cover…

  • Essential Flash Games Book Shilling Continues: Some Illustrations/Images/Figures

    We wanted to show some sample pages and chapters from our book, but we don’t have approval yet.  so, instead, I will continue our shameless shilling by showing you some random images and illustrations that we included with the text.  This is only a small sample of all the images…

  • Mochi Game Development Fund #4: First Contact, And Some Initial Advice

    So, any illusions that we had about Mochi indiscriminately and freely distributing cash from the Mochi Game Developers Fund were crushed yesterday when Justin Wong responded to our ideas with a audible “thud”.   It was not an outright rejection mind-you, but a request for more information and some more expanded…

  • Mochi Game Development Fund #3: Extrinsic Awards: Are They What Social Games Are About?

    (This is part #3 in our continuing series on topics related to the Mochi Game Development Fund). Almost every game portal, MMO, online console platform, and viral game service offers some kind of “award/reward” systems for game players.  The idea is to give players a reason to play the game…

  • Updated: Do You Want A Free Copy Of Our Book? Review It On Your Web Site (closed).

    Updated: Do You Want A Free Copy Of Our Book? Review It On Your Web Site (closed) Ok, the response was overwhelming and we have enough offers to review the book now. We are in talks with the pubisher about the number and type (PDF v. Paperback) of review copies…

  • New 8bitrocket Game Release: BlasterMines

    New 8bitrocket Game Release: BlasterMines BlasterMines is the second game released as a demonstration of the Essential Flash Games Book.  Unlike Tunnel Panic (from 2 weeks ago) very little was changed or added to this game from the book version. BlasterMines is an update of the game Mine-X 4K that…

  • Haiku: The Genesis Of The Mochi Game Development Fund

    Haiku: The The Genesis Of The Mochi Game Development Fund Mochi Media Their API seeds sprouted A new business Game Developers Flocked to their code empire Looking for freedom In-Flash ads promised Monetized free-to-play games Indie devs saw green They soon discovered The slavery of Flash games Was e. C.…

  • Our book has already been pirated over 25,000 times in 2 days. Yea for the internet. (Update: Steve’s a noob)

    So our book is out, which is cool.  You can even “buy” it now.   However, one look at the the “download” sites shows me how fruitless it is to write anything these days.   Here is an image from one of those “download” aggregation sites: This was not any “secret”…

  • Essential Flash Games Book Released!

    Essential Flash Games Book Launched! So, the book is finally out. It contains 12 chapters and 13 games to create (some very small, some quite large). We developed our own moderate OOP framework that all of the games use as an outline. Each game can be compiled in both the…

  • Mochi Game Developer fund Chronicles #1: Signing Up!

    The Mochi Game Developer Fund (A $10,000,000 fund to help game developers implement Mochi services and make games that will conquer the world) went live this week.   We are going to start Chronicling our experiences with this new opportunity for indie game developers.  The story might be short-lived (if we…

  • Steve Woita: An Original Atari 2600 Game Developer Tackles Flash Games, Speaks-Up About Flash And CGE 2010

    “ I feel like I’ve got more ideas for new types of games to build now then I did back then because there are so many great games to get inspired from now” – Steve Woita, March 9, 2010 If you know 8bitrocket.com then you know we love Flash games.…

  • Flash Gaming Summit Report #1: The Longest Day

    (edit:  I was so tired I smiised that the title for this story was “Flah Gaming Summit:” for the past 7 hours.  Duh!) We just returned from our day in at the UCSF Mission Bay conference Center attending The Flash Gaming Summit 2010. I left my house at 4:00 A.M.…

  • Yes Steve Job, SWF *IS* An open standard: Click Team’s Products Now Export Games in .SWf Format

    Click Team, the company that has it’s roots in STOS, AMOS and Klik And Play, has recently released a new product that will export applications made in their popular development tools (Multimedia Fusion and The Games Factory) in a .SWF format.  The Games Factory is a basic version of their…

  • Flash Gaming Summit: Role Call?

    The Flash Gaming Summit is now sold-out.   Jeff and I were both going to go this year, but Jeff got called back home, so I have to hoof-it alone.  Still, it looks to be a fun day.  Most people going are also going to the GDC, but that is not…

  • Some Troubling Tidbits On Flash And HTML 5…But Maybe Not For Flash Game Developers

    Today a couple stories arose that, on the surface seem to point to some troubles for Flash, but maybe not yet for flash game developers. The first comes via PC World: Virgin America Ditches Flash on Its Site. It looks like the Virgin Airline site has decided to remove Flash…

  • Tutorial: AS3: How to Blit an animation from a tile sheet embedded at compile time

    Tutorial: AS3: How to Blit an animation from a tile sheet embedded at compile time

    Tutorial: AS3: How to Blit an animation from a tile sheet embedded at compile time Today we are going to look at how to use a tile sheet embedded into an AS3 project at compile time.We will cover the embedding, instantiation, and actual usage of the tile sheet to do…

  • Still don’t Think Using someone Elses I.P., Even For a “Fan” Project, Is Not A Problem?

    So, do you still think that using the intellectual property that belongs to someone else is not a problem?  Do you think that if you are creating a “tribute” or “fan project” that you will be left alone? Think again. The guys over at The Silver Lining had been working…

  • New 8bitrocket Game Release: Tunnel Panic

    New 8bitrocket Game Release: Tunnel Panic Tunnel Panic is the first game from the Essential Flash Games book to be released into the wild in a viral fashion. It’s self sponsored (by the book of all things). The original version of this game is featured in chapter 12 of the…

  • HTML 5 Canvas For Flash Developers #1: What The #@*! Is The HTML 5 Canvas?

    In this set of tutorials, we will explore how the HTML Canvas relates to Flash developers. So, the first question to answer about the HTML 5 Canvas appears to be this: “What The #@*! Is The HTML 5 Canvas?“ The short answer is this: It is an area on a…

  • Announcing: Ultimate Unscramble: HTML color Words

    Have you ever wanted to learn some arcane HTML trivia while playing a mediocre word game?  Well, do we have the answer for you! Ultimate Unscramble: HTML Color Words is the next game in our “reuse everything possible” series following the “World’s Worst Jigsaw Puzzles”.  This game is based on…

  • World’s Worst Jigsaw Puzzle Collection Launches

    Today we announce the launch of a set of 20 games that took us less than 40 hours to complete: The World’s Worst Jigsaw Puzzle Collection We have noticed that many developers create very simple jigsaw puzzles and launch them with Mochi ads. While this is a legitimate way to…

  • Tutorial (AS3): Using Fonts Embedded At Compile-Time

    Tutorial (AS3): Using Fonts Embedded At Compile-Time I am continuing to explore the use of external assets embedded at compile time in AS3. Today we will look at how to embed and use a font in this manner. The Embed compile-time directive is available to users of the Flex SDK,…

  • AS3 Tutorial: Controlling the Main Timeline of a SWF Embedded at Compile-Time

    AS3 Tutorial: Controlling the Main Timeline of a SWF Embedded at Compile-Time Today I was working a a new piece of the Essential Flash Games framework that allows sponsor swf files to be embedded at compile time and displayed before a game reaches the title screen. I am using Flash…

  • I Just Want To Say This: I Love Flash!

    I’ve been spending the last year or so looking and/or forced to develop in other technologies thatare not Flash.  I’ve seen Python, Google App Engine, Silverlight, HTML 5, PHP, Drupal, Joomla, C#, Coco, Android Java, and even Unity.  While all of these technologies have their, there is one thing they…

  • GamesChart’s Barry White Responds (redux)

    GamesChart’s Barry White Responds (redux) Last week I did a some coverage of GamesChart and it sparked a little controversy. It seems that one of the principals behind the new venture is none other than Barry White from the now defunct GameJacket. You can’t forget Barry as he has the…

  • Updated! GamesChart (Game Jacket Guys Get Back Into The System?) – Barry White Responds

    Updated! – Barry White Responds. GamesChart (Game Jacket Guys Get Back Into The System?)  Barry White left a message below with some very detailed information on GamesChart. “I do just want to point out that we are in very early Developer Beta, so there”s lots of things that haven”t been…

  • Ill Advised CIO Magazine Article Asks: “Is it Time for the Web to Abandon Flash?”

    Ill Advised CIO Magazine Article Asks: “Is it Time for the Web to Abandon Flash?” Bad information can be annoying, but bad information in the hands of decision makers can be downright dangerous. An article that was posted today by CIO magazine is just such a thing. The article is…

  • Essential Flash Games Book: Flak Cannon Plus Game Play

      Here is a short video of the “Plus” version of “Flak Cannon” from the “Essential Guide To Flah Games Book”.  I have taken the game beyond the scope of the book.  A free tutorial will be available later this year that describes how to take the game described in…

  • Why Does Apple Hate Flash: The HTML 5 Canvas Might Be The Answer

    Why Does Apple Hate Flash: The HTML 5 Canvas Might Be The Answer Many people on the web have been questioning why Apple “really” hates Flash and why it has not been included in the iPod Touch, iPhone, or new iPad. Everything from “Flash runs slow” to “Flash is not…

  • Video: Mochi Media’s Jameson Hsu Answers Our Question About Shanda And Developer I.P.

    <object name=movie width=425 height=344 > Millionaire Tycoon Jameson Hsu From Mochi Media removes his monacle for a bit to talk about the Shanda Buyout And Mochi game intellectual property. We asked Jameson a question about how Shanda will treat developer intellectual property in the Mochi system. This was his response.…

  • iPad Flash Support For Web Sites? Apples Fumbles This One Badly

    So it looks like the new iPad, the one that apple claims is  the “Best Way To Surf The Web”, does not support Flash.    That  means that any full-form web site that uses Flash for ANYTHING will not work correctly.  This is not just games or animations, but all sorts…

  • Mochi Media Bought By (Alleged) Ex-Chinese Gold Farmers? (updated)

    Update: Jameson Hsu of Mochi Media confirmed yesterday (1/27/2010) that Shanda does not intend to do anything with developer I.P. that would jeopardize Mochi’s standing in the development community.  This is great news.  We will continue to follow this story and report anything that might be of note. Original story: How did…

  • Ever Wondered What Some “Reviewed” Book Pages Look Like? No? Too Bad.

    Have you ever wondered what the pages of a book look like when they are in the middle of being reviewed by multiple people?  No?  Too bad. Here are some examples anyway.  See all those different colored balloons to the right?  Those are are the digital voices of people who know much…

  • Flash Game Developer Jens Winterstein Digs Into Our Music Loops For “Running Blue”

    We just recieved this nice email from Flash Game Developer Jens Winterstein. He recently dug into our library of free music loops to use in one of his games:   Hello 8-bit rocket, my name is Jens Winterstein, I’m an independent flashgame developer from Germany.I was searching the net for…

  • Tunnel Panic

    Tunnel Panic is very simple game. As your ship flies through the retro, 8-bit tunnel, simply press the space bar to move it up. Dodge everything and stay alive for as long as you can. You get more points the longer you make it through the tunnel.

  • .+.palindromes.+. plus

    .+.palindromes.+. plus

    Unscramble The Palindromes…Plus! Now with more palindromes, including palindrome phrases and better re-play features.

  • AS2->AS3: Making A Click And Stick Christmas Tree Designer In AS2 and AS3

    In my last tutorial I focused on the differences in managing the mouse in AS2 and AS3 and how to create a click and drag effect in AS2 and AS3. This tutorial will take the code in those tutorials further to make a simple Christmas Tree designer in AS2 and…

  • AS2->AS3: A Simple Drag And Drop Game plus Hiding/Showing/Changing The Mouse Pointer

    One of the things designers love to do in the Flash IDE is change the mouse pointer. This was a pretty simple task in AS2, but in AS3 there are few complications. The following short tutorial describes how to hide/show/change the mouse pointer in both AS2 and AS3. It then…

  • Essential Flash Games Book Chapter 12: A Viral Game In A Day

    Essential Flash Games Book Chapter 12: A Viral Game In A Day I know a lot of people do it, but I have never really been a “game in a day” kind of guy. With my day job, kids to play with, books to write, games to review, etc, I…

  • Essential Flash Games Book, Chapter 11 – An Optimized Scrolling Blaster

    Essential Flash Games Book, Chapter 11 – An Optimized Scrolling Blaster Chapter 11 is by far the longest chapter in the book so far and will probably remain so. There is only one more chapter and Steve and I want to keep that one under 40 pages. It was due…

  • Optimized Game Timer Loop Update #2

    Optimized Game Timer Loop Update #2 Ok, so I spent the weekend (well the free-time part anyway), looking at the timer and found that in its current form it works best at 30FPS across all platforms. With updateAfterEvent turned on, you might still run the risk of an older computer…

  • 8bitrocket.com Video Podcast-Essential Flash Game Book Games Preview

    8bitrocket.com Video Podcast-Halloween Edition. In this edition we preview the games from our forth coming Flash game development book, Essential Flash Games. You actually see them in action. We also learned to use a screen capture utility and the results are…mediocre as always. Hey, but it’s getting better. Also, check…

  • Essential Guite To Flash Games Book: Pre-Order

    This has been up for a couple weeks but were waiting some confirmations to post it.  You can now pre-order  the Essential guide to Flash Games book from Amazon.  Also, we learned yesterday that that great Iain Lobb will be the technical reviewer for the book,so if we lead you…

  • Essential Flash Games Book Ch.9: Dice Battle! A.I.Battle Puzzle Game.

    Here is an alpha sample screen of the game “Dice Battle” from the “Essential Flash Games” book.  This game builds upon the material in Chapter 8 (Color Drop), adding ramping machine-based A.I., a soundtrack manager, multiple enemies in battle-style puzzle game like Book Worm Adventures or Puzzle Quest, plus a bunch…

  • Essential Guide To Flash Games Book: Chapter 10: A tile-based scrolling driving game

    Essential Guide To Flash Games Book: Chapter 10: A tile-based scrolling driving game I put the finishing touches on the game for chapter 10 this weekend and started writing up the chapter text. It is supposed to be done by now, but the game took me a little longer than…

  • Adobe Max Report #2: Adobe Takes On Mochi With their Own Game Distribution, Ad Serving, and Monetization (updated)

    Ok, Adobe Max day #1 was even better than Day #1. Here is a run-down. Adobe Distribution First off, we were shown Adobe’s answer to Mochi ads and Monetization, Adobe Distribition Services . Here are some of the features of the service: Sharing : Easily distribute your app and game…

  • Adobe Max Report Day #1

    OK, so here are my notes from Adobe Max Day #1: 1. Biggest News: Flash On The iPhone.  This does not mean it can run Flash apps in the browser, but it does mean that you can compile to native iPhone apps kind of like you make Projectors for Windows. …

  • Essential Guide To Flash Games Book: Recursive Function Puzzle Game.

    I just finished this last night, so I’m a bit excited about it (or is that exhausted)?  Anyway, I wanted to show that this book is not just about the types of things you have read previously on this blog.  This game, “Color Drop” uses recursive functions, a simplified mini-State…

  • Essential Guide To Flash Games Book: Chapters 4 , 5: Flack Cannon

    Here is another short preview of our book The Essential Guide To Flash Games from Friends Of Ed.  The first real game discussed in the book (taking up over 70+ pages) is named Flack Cannon.  The game is a take on Missile Command in which you try to defend your…

  • Essential Flash Games Book #2 (chapters 6 and 7)

    Essential Flash Games Book #2 (chapters 6 and 7) I have just completed (finally) chapters 6 and 7 of our upcoming Essential Flash Games Book. These two chapters go into exhaustive detail on creating a maze-based, over-head 2D shooter in the Armor Attack genre. The game is not one that…

  • Email Of The Month

    We get all sorts of email requests here.  Most of them are from reasonable people who need help or ask questions.  We like those.  However, sometimes we get emails that are simply mind-bogglingly awesome in the boldness of their requests.  Here is the best one we have received in a…

  • Essential Flash Games: The Book #1

    Essential Flash Games: The Book #1 One reason that there have been fewer tutorials, mash-ups, reviews, etc on the last few weeks is that Steve and I are deep into our first book on Flash game programming. Friends Of Ed is the publisher and we have a deadline to finish…

  • JayIsGames.com Gives .+.palindromes.+. plus A Nice Review

    Sometimes I wonder how to get games promoted on well-known web sites.  Sometimes I wonder why some of our more high profile games seem to get lost in the shuffle.   Days like today do not make this puzzle any easier to solve.  Today, JayIsGames.com decided to post a positive review…

  • Indie Game I.P. Issues Start To Heat-Up

    We here at 8bitrocket.com spend a lot of time trying to educate small developers on the issues of Intellectual Property” (I.P. or IP). Why? Well, one because we love you. Two, because we both have vast experience working for major corporations that really take the issue of “Intellectual Property” seriously.…

  • 2008 Prediction Results, Plus 10 New 2009 Predictions!

    Last year we made 10 predictions for the next 12 months It’s time to evaluate our progress and make 10 more predictions for 2009-1010 . First, the results from last year. Not too shabby. Some of the more “out there” ones(Atari and Bushnell, Sierra and the Williams) actually proved to…

  • Micropayments In Flash Games: What Would You Pay For?

    There has been a lot of discussion lately about Micropayments in Flash games. New service offerings such as Mochicoins and Gamersafe promise untold riches for Flash developers beyond sporadic licenses and advertising pennies. Both the aforementioned services have plans to limit the amount of games in the system by vetting…

  • Mochi First Impressions Game Review Mash-Up: Wednesday, Aug 05, 2009

    Mochi First Impressions Game Review Mash-Up: Wednesday, Aug 05, 2009 Wow, what a great day full of wonderful Mochi games. Oh, we have a few mediocre games, but really, this is the most A grades I have given out. Maybe Wednesday will be the new golden day of gaming (like…

  • Absolutely Brilliant Lost Garden Article On Flash Game Monetization

    Absolutely Brilliant Lost Garden Article On Flash Game Monetization If you have even a passing interest in making games full time, you have to read Flash Love Letter Part One by Danc on the Lost Garden blog. He ever so eloquently describes in detail the current revenue streams for Flash…

  • …palindromes… re-revisited or I love mindjolt.com

    So, just as I have given-up on …palidromes…, mindjolt.com put it up a couple days ago, and the game plays have gone through the roof.  It has averaged 45,000 each of the past few days.  I knew the old girl had some life in her yet!  I know 45,000 plays…

  • .+.palindromes.+. launches on Mochi, first entry in Dictionary.com word game contest

    Last week I noticed that Mochi is running a new contest in partnership with dictionary.com for “word games”.  Since I just released “…palindromes…” two months ago, I thought hat maybe I could get it into the contest.  I emailed Andrew Shen at Mochimedia, and he told me that to enter the contest I would have…

  • Game Jacket Goes Under

    Game Jacket Goes Under I am sad to report that Game Jacket has gone under and all games will cease being hosted today. It seems they were not able to get a new round of funding and had to close their doors. Gone are the $1000 up fronts and .50…

  • About US: Mission Update : Inform-Instruct-Inspire

    Inform. Instruct. Inspire. Yesterday Jeff and I decided we wanted to clarify why we have this web site.    Sometimes I think of  it as a Frankenstein’s monster of a concept.  It’s a blog, but not one.  It’s a community, but not really.  It has games, but it’s not game portal. …

  • Solar Fortress Chronicles: Hours 18 – 20

    Solar Fortress Chronicles: Hours 18 – 20 Note – I am rapid (wishful thinking) prototyping a retro game in my spare time and keeping a diary of what I do each hour of the project. In the last couple weeks I have had some major distractions and have not been able…

  • Wiiware Support For Flash Met With Fear, Derision:Analysis

    Reports came out this week that Nintendo would start supporting Flash as a development platform for Wiiware. While there was some positive support, for the most part, this news was met with derision, fear and hand-wringing from the Wii gaming communities.   At Cubed3: “Nintendo does have strong policies and…

  • Solar Fortress Chronicles: Hours 16 – 17

    Solar Fortress Chronicles: Hours 16 – 17 Note – I am rapid (wishful thinking) prototyping a retro game in my spare time and keeping a diary of what I do each hour of the project. I have only found a few hours to work on Solar Fortress (pronounced Star Castle)…

  • Hey, They Used Our Kung Fu!: Free Jigsaw , hezekiah.hu

    Almost 2 years ago, we published our very first game on Mochiads. It was a Jigsaw puzzle engine I had been toying with since Flash 5. The concept of the program was very simple: Allow users to configure the Jigsaw puzzle engine with a .xml file. They could swap colors,…

  • Hey They Used Our Kung Fu! #1: Clint Herron And “Falling With Style”

    Hey there 8-bit Rocketeers.  This is the first ever installment of “Hey, They Used Our Kung Fu! Where we highlight developers who have made use of our web site to make cool stuff.  This first email came from Clint Herron a couple weeks back: I used your minimalistic Asteroids tutorial…

  • 8bitrocket.com Will Be Reporting From E3 This Year As An Official Media Outlet

    We have been to E3 in Los Angeles many times, but always as “industry professionals”.    This means that, while you can attend, you are seen as a kind of pariah to the exhibitors.  You can look at most everything on the show floor, but the people manning the booths would…

  • Solar Fortress Chronicles: Hours 14 – 15

    Solar Fortress Chronicles: Hours 14 – 15 Note – I am rapid prototyping a retro game in my spare time and keeping a diary of what I do each hour of the project. Hours 14 and 15 were all I have been able to muster on Solar Fortress (pronounced Star…

  • Tutorial: Clearing a blit canvas by erasing only the portions that have changed (using damage maps or a dirty rect).

    Tutorial: Clearing a blit canvas by erasing only the portions that have changed. This is commonly called damage mapping or  dirty rect processing. (Squize called this a Damage Map. I have heard that before but didn’t know that it was basically what I was doing here). That’s a mouthful, but…

  • Solar Fortress Chronicles: Hours 10 – 13

    Solar Fortress Chronicles: Hours 10 – 13 Note – I am rapid prototyping a retro game in my spare time and keeping a diary of what I do each hour of the project. This another update on my latest mini retro remake, Solar Fortress (pronounced Star Castle). I got off…

  • Tutorial: Using Bit Wise Operations To Create A Repeatable Sequence Of Multiple Level Designs In Code

    When creating my game for the Urban Squall 4K Competition a couple months back, I decided to go back and try to remake an old game that was written in ActionScript 1, and bring it into the modern era. Since Breakout is one of my favorite games of all time,…

  • Solar Fortress Chronicles 2: Hours 5 – 9

    Solar Fortress Chronicles 2: Hours 5 – 9 This is a short update on my latest mini retro remake, Solar Fortress (pronounced Star Castle). I wasted a lot of time today working on collision detection for Solar Fortress today. I think I finally have a decent path toward my final…

  • A Toy Never Played With Is Not A Toy At All : …palindromes…

    Above is one of my favorite songs by one of my favorites 80’s/90’s bands, Drivin N Cryin is named "A Toy Never Played With Is Not a Toy At All". I found myself humming this song to myself a couple days ago, and I had no idea why I was…

  • Solar Fortress Chronicles: Hours 1 – 4

    Solar Fortress Chronicles: Hours 1 – 4 I am in the midst of creating a game of ever expanding scope called Blaster Mines. It started out as a relatively simple extension of Mine-X 4K. The initial idea was to make a game similar to Bosconian and get it done quickly…

  • …palindromes… goes live

    Our new game, …palindromes… has been released today for distribution.  You can play it below:  http://games.mochiads.com/c/g/___palindromes___/palindromes.swf …palindromes is a word game.  the object is to unscramble the palindromes as fast as possible.  click any two letters to swap them. This game was created as a test to see if this…

  • Silverarcade Goes Live: A Couple Of Our Games Featured

    The guys over at SilverArcade have launched their portal dedicated to games made in Silverlight.  They are offering a $.50 eCPM, which is quite good. Since they have acceptsed a couple of our games, and since I think it is a cool idea, I’d like to see them build some…

  • 8bitrocket On Twitter: 4/20/2009

    OK, we have finally entered 2008!  8bitrocket now has a Twitter account. You can follow our useless updates here: http://twitter.com/8bitrocket Here are updates in a Twitter Widget: http://static.twitter.com/flash/widgets/profile/TwitterWidget.swf

  • Slowdown Revisited

    So our close colleague mentioned earlier this week that we were “slowing down”.  However, that is not entirely the case. We here at 8bitrocket.com are simply “focusing” our content on what is important: our games.   We are going to write about our games, post our games, podcast about our own…

  • 4K Game: 96% Useless Fluff

    So I just finished added our pre-loader, title screen, mochi ads and mochi leaderboard, and some support code for those those things to my 4K games and it is now 100K! In reality, 100K is not that much, but think about 100K in terms of a percentage of actual gaming…

  • Wired On “Design Under Constraint” = 4K Game competition

    Wired has a nice article  about “designing under contraint”, and how it can boost both productivity and creativity. Here is a quote: “The idea of operating within constraints’of making more with less’is especially relevant these days. From Wall Street to Detroit to Washington, the lack of limits has proven to…

  • 4K Game Competition Game #2 (game spoiler)

    4K Game Competition Game #2 (game spoiler) I have decided to post my contest entry also. This is NOT the exact same game as I added one line of instruction text and the Mochi Services (which bloated it to 16K). Also, I am having some problems with the Mochi High…

  • 4K Game Competition Game #1 (4K Spolier)

    OK, here is my entry into the 4K game competition.  It’s actually 8K now with the Mochi services added. http://games.mochiads.com/c/g/neon-bricks-4k/4kbreakout_mochi.swf Neon Bricks 4K is take on the classic game of Breakout.  The basic rules are no different than Breakout: destroy all the bricks to advance to the next level.  The…

  • K. Thor Jensen’s Tidal added to the 8bitrocket Retro Arcade

    K. Thor Jensen’s Tidal added to the 8bitrocket Retro Arcade. This is final arcade game addition for the week (unless I find a great one for the weekend, or someone sends me a gem) as I am going to concentrate on adding to a couple other blog series I have…

  • Mine-X 4K

    Mine-X 4K is an Asteroids like game played in a 360 degree scrolling world. It was my entry into the Game Poetry / Gaming Your Way 4K game contest. This version is 16K with the addition of Mochi Ads and Leader Boards only.

  • Is There Anything Better Than 800 Found Bytes (4K Spoiler)

    When I was starting a new project to take my 4K game and turn it into a 32K monster yesterday, I noticed something odd.  My code would not  compile.  On further inspection, I had forgotten to include a custom class in my new project.  A custom class, that is, that was…

  • 4094 Bytes!!! (4K spoiler)

    OK, so now I’m down to 4094 bytes!! Whoo hoo.  The game is finished too.  I’m, very happy with the results, as it is the exact type of game that I’d like to play.  Some things I learned from people who commented here and from other message boards that I…

  • K-razy A** Line of Code (4K Spoiler)

    If it wasn’t for the spirit refreshing 4K game contest, I never would have thought of the need to write a line of code like this: tempPart.bitmapData = new BitmapData(2, 2, false,((type ==1)?((explodeCtr % 2 ==0) ? aCR[1]: aCR[2]):aCR[3]) ); The good thing is that comments do not count against…

  • …and I’m at 4.8K…damn

    I’m not usually associated with high performance Flash programming around here, as Jeff does most of that kind of writing.  I usually settle into puzzle games, kids games, and games that never see the light of day. However, this 4K thing has me energized.  It reminds me of the the…

  • I’m at 3.9K!!!

    I have been focused in my limited free time this week on getting my 8K game down to 4K. I still have at least one more optimization to do and then a couple things to add, but I am at 3.9K! Here are a couple of the things I needed…

  • 7.3K and counting

    7.3K and counting Just a quick update from the house of the 4 deathly ill. Between trips to the doctor, drug store, and even a complete (although partially disastrous) appearance at my day job, I was able to get an almost code complete version of my 4K game going.  The…

  • Where’s the cash for Flash (updated)

    This would normally go into the Weekly Mash-Up, but Chris Hughes sent it over this morning and it was too late for this week, too early for next week, so here it is: A very well researched and put together Gamasutra article on making money from casual Flash games. Squize…

  • Development Diary – Micro Robot Maze #2

    Development Diary – Micro Robot Maze #2 A few weeks back I started to make my Generalized Flex Game engine built around blitting and a modified Model View Controller / State Machine structure. I needed a reference application to build on top of the engine, so I chose to make…

  • Flashgamedistribution.com in Beta

    I just wanted to give a shout out to our friends over at Flashgamelicense.com, who have created yet another arm of their casual Flash game empire with Flashgamedistribution.com. Currently you can sign up for the beta, and your account will be linked to your Flashgamelicense account (if you have one).…

  • Building A Generalized Flex Game Control Part 3

    Building A Generalized Flex Game Control Part 3 In part 1, I discussed and mused over what parts of the MVC pattern (if any) to implement in my Flex game control. In part 2, I dug down into my thoughts on the rendering engine and how I was unable to…