Category: 8bitrocket

  • Flex Game Development: When a blank screen equals success

    Flex Game Development: When a blank screen equals success The is part 2 of my series on designing a generalized game control in Flex. The control is actually in AS3, and will have no MXML, so it can easily be modified to work in the Flash IDE as well as…

  • 8bitrocket Micro Chip Maze Game Engine released

    8bitrocket Micro Chip Maze Game Engine released The Micro Chip Maze engine is an xml and tile sheet based pacman style game engine that can easily be re-configured and re-skinned for any site, brand or other use.  It has been built in AS3 using the latest bitmapdata techniques, so the…

  • Happy New Year From 8bitrocket!

    We hope you and yours had a great 2008, New Years Eve, and will have a fantastic 2009. Make and keep those resolutions if you can.  2009 will bring a lot of new stuff to 8bitrocket.com as we look to expand our footprint by creating more games and tutorials across…

  • 8bitrocket.com 2 Year Anniversary:Stats Plus 2.0 Beta Version Preview

    This week marks the 2 year anniversary of 8bitrocket.com. Last year at this time we reported the following stats: From December 14 2006 until Dec 14 2007: 1. Page Views: 129,911 2.Visits: 64,702 3. Alexa Ranking: 512,183 At that time, Jeff and I set a personal goal to get an…

  • Development Diary – Micro Robot Maze #1

    Development Diary – Micro Robot Maze #1 In my last game development post I wrote a little bit about the generalized game engine that I am fashioning in Flex AS3.  I was stuck as to exactly how to proceed after posting that entry. I spent a few days going over…

  • Work in progress: A Generalized Game Engine with AS3 in Flex

    Work in progress: A Generalized Game Engine with AS3 in Flex So, I made the move to Flex about a month back, and have spent most of my time experimenting with how to create a generalized Game Engine. I started with the idea that I would combine the use of…

  • Flex Files: Sound Exploration – Loop an Mp3 with a ByteArray?

    Flex Files: Sound Exploration – Loop an Mp3 with a ByteArray? After reading through all of the documentation on loading and embedding sounds in Flex Framework swf file, I have come to the conclusion that Adobe has been and continues to have its collective head in the sand when it…

  • Google Analytics Adds Flash Tracking

    Today on the Google Analytics blog they announced a full suite of new features that can help track viral Flash content.  These features go far beyond their previous offering, which was simply a JavaScript pass-through.  You can check out the new features for yourself over here: http://analytics.blogspot.com/2008/11/want-to-track-adobe-flash-now-you-can.html

  • Free Flash Game Development Tool Kit

    Free Flash Game Development Tool Kit My latest quest has been to create both a Windows and Mac Free Flash Game development tool kit. I have heard some rumors and horror stories about some of the popular free tools available, so I decided to take a look for myself and…

  • Retro Blaster – A look back (and forward), plus a new high score.

    Retro Blaster – A look back, plus a new high score. The first independent Flash game I ever released on the harsh Flash gaming public was my Asteroids/Blasteroids loving tribute called Retro Blaster. It was finished after many false starts, and well before Mochi or GameJacket allowed us to derive…

  • 8bitrocket Fresh Kill Flash: A Biased selection of new (to us) Mochi Games.

    8bitrocket Fresh Kill Flash: A Biased selection of new (to us) Mochi Games. Games get on this list in one of two ways: 1. They are in the 25 newest Mochi games feed when I start writing this entry, or I find them else where on Mochi (on the days…

  • Making Games: Pumpkin Man Beach Blitz Part 1

    Making Games: Pumpkin Man Beach Blitz Part 1 Last weekend (not two days ago, but 8 days ago), we decided it would be a good idea to make a second version of Pumpkin Man for Halloween. It started off as quick re-skin with the hero negotiating a beach setting to…

  • Tutorial: N-way tile-based blit fine scrolling in AS3 (part 3)

    Tutorial: N-way tile-based blit fine scrolling in AS3 (part 3) This is a long tutorial, so it has been split into 3 parts: In this tutorial we will discuss the theory and practice behind 360 degree n-way blit fine scrolling in AS3. What does that mean? N-way scrolling is a…

  • Tutorial: N-way tile-based blit fine scrolling in AS3 (part 2)

    Tutorial: N-way tile-based blit fine scrolling in AS3 (part 2) In this tutorial we will discuss the theory and practice behind 360 degree n-way blit fine scrolling in AS3. What does that mean? N-way scrolling is a means by which you can scroll the screen in any direction based on…

  • Tutorial: N-way tile-based blit fine scrolling in AS3 (part 1)

    Tutorial: N-way tile-based blit fine scrolling in AS3 (part 1) In this tutorial we will discuss the theory and practice behind 360 degree n-way blit fine scrolling in AS3. What does that mean? N-way scrolling is a means by which you can scroll the screen in any direction based on…

  • The Best Portals For Residual Game Plays

    The Best Portals for Residual Game Plays We make retro inspired games, and so far none of them have been a HUGE hit on the home page of any major portal. Although I would love to have a big hit game, I also understand what the kids want to play,…

  • New RSS Feeds And Updates + RSS Validator!

    I’ve been working for the past week to upgrade our RSS Feeds to be compatible more modern technologies.  The main feed (http://www.8bitrocket.com/8bitnewsrssfb.aspx) is now more compatible with RSS 2.0 and Atom, and now displays a proper description for each blog entry. Also, I have added new “Category” specific feeds.  These…

  • 8bitrocket Diatribe: Tile-based BitmapData Fine Scrolling

    8bitrocket Diatribe: Tile-based BitmapData Fine Scrolling I’m currently working on a 4 way scrolling car driving game, somewhat like Atari 800/C64 Rally Speedway or Mattel Intellivision’s Auto Racing. I have “borrowed” (for testing purposes only” the graphics from a very early Atari/Kee Games coin-op called Super Bug, which in itself…

  • 8bitrocket Diatribe: Drawing Vector Primitives into a BitmapData Object in AS2 and AS3.

    8bitrocket Diatribe: Drawing Vector Primitives into a BitmapData Object in AS2 and AS3. That doesn’t sound too difficult, and it really isn’t. I received an email question this weekend from a game developer who was stumped at how to accomplish this in AS2. I knew it was pretty easy to…

  • 8bitrocket Diatribe – Dynamic Sprite Sheets and What’s on Jeff’s DVR

    I have been working on a few new projects that require speed and blit operations. This has given me the opportunity t to research and re-fine my methods. At one time I used arrays of bitmapData objects, pre-cached from movieClips. Those were especially needed when I was working with designers…

  • 8bitrocket Diatribe: Quad Tree Collision Research.

    Along with many other little projects, I have begun research into creating a AS3 Quad Tree implementation to extend the optimized code in my series on creating an optimized Asteroids Game. A couple other blogs have also started their own implementations, including Fatal Exception and Polygonal Labs. Neither have any…

  • …and some of our games have made it to YouTube

    I’m not really sure why, but it looks like a few people (ok, at least one) one YouTube have filmed themselves playing some of the games we have created in the past.   There seem to be lots of game videos on YouTube.com these days, but why someone would video tape themselves playing…

  • 8bitrocket Diatribe August 4, 2008

    New Indie / Punk-Pop Music Clips! I have had a little time weekend to go back through my collection of Acid and Magix loop libraries and create some new clips that you can use in your games. There are 14 new clips, and they have all been extracted from much…

  • New Little 8bitter doing much better

    Thanks to everyone who wrote to, prayed for and kept Jeanne, little Justin Rhys, and I in your thoughts. He is starting to do much better, and if everything continues to improve hopefully will be home in a couple days.  -Jeff

  • 8bit Jeff Out For A Bit: Baby Son Born, But He Needs Positive Thoughts

    Jeff will be out for a few days as his baby son was born today.  However, the boy has a few “complications”, and it would be really cool if any of you out there who have enjoyed and made use of his tutorials, ideas, games, etc. could  think positive thoughts,…

  • Terry Paton Code Library and Retro games

    Terry Paton, who’s great retro inspired games have been featured on these pages, has a incredible set of code and templates free for all to use. Some of my favorite include: The Flame Particle Class The Map Scroller The Viewable range The Shuffle Grid The follow the mouse rotation Nodes…

  • Tutorial Update: Basic Blit with Transparency

    Tutorial Update: Basic Blit with Transparency Super cool 8bitrocket.com reader, MR. K, asked a very interesting question today. He asked if this tutorial included transparency because both the screen background and the helicopter background are black. Some how I completely missed that point when I created the original tutorial. The…

  • The Transient Programmer #5: The Last Day, FREE BEER Revisited

    OK, so this happens to be the last day I will spend as a transient” programmer. By 7:30 tomorrow I will finally have another house to move-into. However, tonight has been pretty difficult. It’s 4:00 AM, and sleep is not coming easily. The hotel got old about 2 weeks ago.…

  • 8bitrocket Royalty Free Music And Sound Loops Beta!

    We just put live a new section here at 8bitrocket.com. The Music Section has been transformed into a place to listen to and download looping music files and sound effects for use in your Flash Games. The beta currently has only about 45 of the 100’s we will have for…

  • 8bitrocket Diatribe July 24, 2008: Mini Retro Challenge: Design Doc

    After examining the concept I have so far, I have decided that this game may not be very fun to play. So, I have merged my ideas for the Air Sea Battle game with my idea for a casual game based on a collection of smaller retro games.This will allow…

  • Forums Are Down…Maybe For good

    I noticed that the forums were filled with spam today, so I took them down for repair.  However, I’m considering taking them down for good.  They get little use, and since we added “comments” in the blog back in February. Should we instead enhance the “comments” for the blog and just…

  • 8bitrocket Diatribe July 20, 2008: A game in a day…

    Or there abouts. I have been thinking a lot lately about how I am going to have time to create viral, ad supported games when my second child is born in a couple weeks. I have been through this before and the time schedules for the entire house will be…

  • 8bitrocket Diatribe July 21, 2008: Air-Sea Battle Hour 1: Research and Plan

    So, I have decided to make a game like the Atari 2600 (and Arcade classic) Air-Sea battle. I don’t know if we ever owned this cart, but I am sure I played it many times. By the time Steve and I had a 2600, the games had improved well beyond…

  • Tutorial: AS3. The basics of tile sheet animation (or blitting).

    In this article we will discuss the anatomy of a basic AS3 Flash blit operation, which is useful for rendering game graphics at high speeds. The information in this tutorial can be applied to almost any 2d development language that allows the use of bitmaps and transparency to render a…

  • Doublestuff! 8bitrocket.com Mid-Year Stats Report

    Back in December we looked at our 2007 stats. We had just reached our first milestone by getting an Alexa.com ranking and we were so excited we posted our final traffic for the year. Here is a summary of that post: From December 14 2006 until Dec 14 2007: 1.…

  • Home Computer Wars Alpha Mission: Post Mortem for a Failed Viral Flash Game

    For many years I’ve wanted to make a game set in the 80’s that literally had Atari fighting against it’s competitors for world domination. Ever since I tried to program my first game in STOS on the Atari ST, the idea of a shooter of this type was firmly embedded…

  • 8bitrocket Diatribe June 9, 2008

    Wii Fit Kicks My Ass! No Joke, I’ve been an avid runner and workout nut for years now, and I have never had a better workout than an hour of Wii Fit running, strength and yoga training! It’s fun, and the balance board trains you perfectly in core strength. I…

  • JoytoKey: A Joy to Use With Flash Games

    We here at 8bitrocket.com try to give our support to anything that makes the Flash Game experience better: From optimized bitmap rendering engine tutorials, to using Mochi Ads to help pay developers to keep on making innovative games, we appreciate all things that make the games and the developers better.…

  • 8bitrocket.com Finally Gets An Alexa.com Ranking!

    I know that Alexa.com is not the best source for traffic rankings (hey, neither is Neilson, so there!), but I just wanted to share a bit of info about 8bitrocket.com’s traffic ranking.    Obviously we are not a “destination” site, and our appeal is limited to web game devs and old…

  • Commercial Gaming Sites Start Adding Wii Browser Game Support

    Most internet savvy Wii owners know that the instant start-up, Wiicade.com has been around as long as the Wii has been around, offering simple to semi-complex games designed to work well with the Wii opera browser. However, Wiicade.com is not the only site that has games targeted for the Wii…

  • Midnight Flash Game Design #3: Calculating Distance And Handling Keyboard Input

    As I continue this project of creating a game in 27 days (hours), I have realized that my “one hour a night” estimate is almost perfectly on target. The first night of programming all about trying to fix the obvious problems with the original “Fireworks Blast” demo. My first task…

  • Opera Guide To The Wii Web Browser: Highlights

    The Opera Web Site has posted an in-depth article on formatting web sites to work with the Wii.   A few months back I was a bit disappointed in the Wii web broweser and wondered aloud how many people actually connect their Wii to the internet.   Well, I read a few days…

  • Flash Game Programming: Game Programming Blogs

    One of the best things about game development is the plethora of great resources on the web at your disposal. From free sound and sprite libraries to tutorials on almost every subject, the internet is a great place to start your search when you need a new idea, are stuck…

  • Final Wii Browser: Thoughts Redux

    Last week I complained that the final version of the Wii Opera Browser did not support anything greater than Flash 7.0    Now it, it turns out, that this was neither Nintendo or Opera’s fault.  This information was brought to my attention earlier this week by fellow deveoper Chris Cutler (the…

  • Final Wii Browser: Thoughts

    The “final” Opera browser was released for the Wii yesterday, and after using it I have mixed feelings. They added and fixed a few things that must be noted: better interface more responsive button clicks better performance However, one glaring omission is support for Flash 8.   With tons of Flash…

  • Retro Blaster High Score King, Contra, Super Mario, and Burnout 3, etc

    A very cool dude named Jason has submitted the current high score (other than mine) for Retro Blaster. It stands at 99,734,135. Send me your scores as a PNG,/JPG/ BMP/GIF screen cap and I’ll post them too. I have been searching the local stores for a copy of Konami Arcade…

  • Retro Blaster Update, Buffalo Love machine, Pixel War II

    I have Have been busy fixing bugs and tweaking settings in retro Blaster. The most significant change I have made was suggested by my old pal, Ian Legler. He suggested that I add a user selectable setting to adjust the quality of the graphics. I have added this option now…

  • Retro Blaster High Scores

    I have finally had a chance to play my own game all the way through and beat IRATA without cheating. My top score is 973,441,870. I have also found that even though I have put optimization upon optimization into the animation sprite map caching, it still cannot compensate for the…

  • Retro Gone Berserk Day Two – When you can’t draw, you improvise

    Today I had time to work on the very very basic Flash version of the demo game. I have decided to make it as close to Bersek as possible for this first tech demo.  I currently have a room generated and a player running around the room, controlled with the…

  • Retro Gone Berserk Day One

    I was able to squeeze in a little work on the new game between trips to various shopping centers for Christmas presents. One thing I wanted to research is how collision detection is done in these overhead perspective retro games. I fired up the Atari 800 KRAZY Shootout first to…

  • Retro Blaster is coming

    Right now, Steve is putting the final touches on the technical design for our 8bitrocket.com site. It won’t be spectacular looking, but that is because we want a pretty basic site.  While he is doing that, I am finishing up my latest game called Retro Blaster. It is basically Asteroids,…