Category: 8bitrocket

  • .+.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…

  • 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,…

  • 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! #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…