Category: Uncategorized

  • Our Latest Goes Live

    A new game of ours, sponsored by Addicting Games, has gone live this morning. It is called Bratney Escape the Madness. It is based on an AS3 tech-demo engine that I put together to demonstrate blitting, tile based movement, and message/sound management in an entity base framework. It turned into…

  • Ultimate Checkers Launches, Uses Our Free Fireworks Engine

    Ultimate Checkers, a free online, single and multi-player Checkers game with great A.I, leaderboards, bonuses,  etc. has launched using our Free Fireworks engine.  Free Fireworks  is an engine we created that allows a user to create interative fireworks shows that can be reskinned with music and graphics to fit whatever…

  • Flash Retro Game Showcase #4: May 29, 2008

    This week we cover 4 different retro-style Flash games in four completely different styles. All four styles happen to be some of my absolute favorites of the genre. We have a great bolt-on shooter, an arcade racer, an Breakout/Arkanoid contest, and finally, a platfomer in the style of classic games…

  • 8bitrocket Diatribe May 28, 2008

    USA v. EnglandI watch all of these USA players every chance I get: in MLS, foreign league games, friendlies, etc and I am always sticking up for them when they get put down by soccer snobs for being no good. The fact is, we have some great players, and on…

  • Fresh Kill Five: May 26, 2008 An 8bitrocket Biased Selection of Fun New Flash Games

    This week we visit Agame.com, and Ugoplayer.com to find 5 new releases that we love to play: Alien Slayer 3D, Galaktoid, Go Go Plant, James The Pirate Zebra, and Boxes. First we visit Agame.com (a portal that has never accepted any of our games …humph) and find out exactly what…

  • Flash Game Development Inter-web mash up : May. 26, 2008

    news.as3gaming.com is doing an excellent job of culling together blogs and resources on Flash gaming, AS3, etc every day. Add it to your book marks or your Bloglines, put it in your RSS reader, add it to your face book or Myspace page… or whatever the kids are using now.…

  • Retro Gaming in Mac OS X 10.5 #1 : Atari Games

    I have recently switched from Windows XP to MAC OS X 10.5 and one of the things I feared upon switching was losing the capability to play all of my old Emulated games. I own a copy of EVERY retro game compilation for the PC and Playstation 2, and use…

  • Tutorial: AS3 Basics – How to use library sounds in AS3

    Now this one sounds like a no-brainer, but for some reason almost every book written on AS3 and even the built-in help fail to give adequate information on how to effectively use sounds embedded in the library in AS3. I scoured the included help file and eventually found how to…

  • Has the age of free, hosted, multi-player Flash game servers arrived?

    There are two services on the horizon for Flash game developers that could be complete game-changers for the viral Flash game industry.  Both Come2Play and Nonoba will soon open up their multi-player game APIs to developers so they can create and host multiplayer games for free.  This is great news for anyone…

  • Flash Retro Game Showcase #3: May 22, 2008

    This week we micro-review 5 more retro inspired games for your playing pleasure. We are starting to see some distinct genres emerge in these lists, and this week starts with one that we previewed with last week’s Asteroids’ Revenge: The “deconstructive, ironic, turn-the-table genre”. We follow that up with several modern…

  • 8bitrocket Diatribe: May 21, 2008

    I am just now putting the finishing touches on a custom game for a portal. I’m very happy with the results. The AS3 engine that powers it is getting a little long in the tooth and I am excited to start the next batch of 8bitrocket games that will use…

  • ‘Game Over’ For All-Encompassing Video Game History Books?

    A few years back, when Steven L. Kent published the bible of video game related history books, The First Quarter, bedroom video game historians and classic game fans like myself were in heaven. Kent’s book spurred a much heftier second volume, The Ultimate History Of Video Games , plus the…

  • Flash Player Beta 10…looks like it will kick some ASTRO!

    I’ve been digging through the release notes and other various sources on the new Flash Player 10 Beta (code name Astro), and here are some of my initial thoughts. 1. Using the Adobe Pixel Blender to create custom filters has some great possibilities. 2. 3D effects and transitions sound very…

  • Fresh Kill Five: May 18, 2008 8bitrocket’s Biased Pick of New Flash Games

    This week we visit Addicting Games, and find 5 new releases that we love to play. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel on AddictingGames.com. They choose great games and you can see why they are one of the most popular portals on the planet. Here are five new, addictive,…

  • Flash Game Development Inter-web mash up : May. 17, 2008

    The latest in Blog entries and articles that might interest Flash game developers. Game Poetry comes through yet again with an awe inspiring take on creating an Entity Framework for games. news.as3gaming.com is a brand new blog that looks promising. It is built around a wiki and there is a…

  • Bratney Escape the Madness

    You are Bratney, a spoiled party-girl ex-star, with 2 babies, an annoying ex-husband, and a gang of paparazzi chasing you down at every corner. You are tasked with keeping Bratney’s bank account full by collecting the hearts of her fans and any cash left laying around. You are chased by…

  • Flash Retro Game Showcase #2: May 15, 2008

    Here are our Flash retro game finds for the week. We have settled down to five games per episode, and that is what we are going with for the time being. I think we have picked some great games for you retro fans this time! Azul Baronis Andrew Martin has…

  • 8bitrocket diatribe 5/13/2008

    There haven’t been any tutorials, retro articles, mash-ups or the like for a fews days because we are busy working on some projects. We have some cool stuff in the wings. Steve is working on a very long retro gaming history article for a popular site and I am working…

  • Flash Game Development Inter-web mash up : May. 10, 2008

    The latest in Blog entries and articles that might interest Flash game developers. I missed this one a couple weeks ago, but for all of us BitmapData heads, Colby from CheezeWorld.com has created a BitmapClip class that he is giving away for free. Here is his list of features: Import…

  • Retro Flash Game Highlights: May 9th 2008

    Retro Flash Game Highlights: May 9th 2008 Here are 8bitrocket.com we have decided to start posting a weekly set of the best Retro and Retro inspired Flash games the world of viral gaming has to offer. This week we will start with 8 games that caught our interest from 100’s…

  • Fresh Kill Five: May 2, 2008. An 8bitrocket Biased Selection of Fun New Flash Games

    This week we visit Kongregate, and find 5 new releases that we love to play. I don’t just look at the ratings that users give, but there are so many games, I do take them into account. If a game looks retro or fun, but has a bad rating, I…

  • Flash Game Development Inter-web mash up : May 2, 2008

    The latest in Blog entries and articles that might interest Flash game developers. Panyoti at Game Poetry comes through with a very insightful entry on where and when it is best to comment your code in Commenting Your Code is a Waste of Time. Mochiland also comes also comes out…

  • Chris Crawford Re-Making Balance Of Power For Storytron

    The Chris Crawford spearheaded “Interactive Storytelling” authoring/publishing/playing toolset, Storytron is nearing completion. The new Storytron.com web site launched a few days ago, and the new blog contained a tantalizing bit of information. Chris Crawford is re-making his classic PC/Mac geo-political pot-boiler, Balance Of Power using the toolset. Here is a…

  • Did Atari Make A Version Of “Missile Command” For The Military?

    I’ve been furiously working on the follow-up to my History Of Atari :Part 1 for Gamasutra (it’s been so long since the first one that they’ve probably given-up on it), and I dug up a couple quotes for something that struck me as quite interesting.  It seems that Atari might…

  • Flash Game Development Inter-web mash up : April. 24, 2008

    The latest in Blog entries and articles that might interest Flash game developers. This week we cover game loops, a cool new retro game (by Squize), a dictionary object framework for game objects, Andre Michelle’s new project, lessons in promoting your game, an AS3 CS3 (not Flex) pre-loader, brainstorming games,…

  • Something Missing In Wisconsin (Update)

    OK, so I actually found a place that has “Health Guards” (Protectos, ass gaskets) in Wisconsin.  However, I’m pretty sure they are new to the region. There was a was a sign above the toilet that read. “Please keep our bathroom clean, use seat protectors“ Now, this might not seem odd at…

  • Something Missing In Wisconsin

    I’m out of town this week in Wisconsin at a web conferenceand I’ve noticied one glaring omission from every rest room I’ve visited:  Protectos. Yes.  There are no Ass Gaskets in Wisconsin.  I suppose everyone is so healthy and germ free out here that they are not required (are they…

  • Tutorial: Preloading Actionscript 3 (AS3) Games in Flash CS3

    This sounds like a rather simple topic. If you have a game application where you can load all of you assets externally at run time, then you will probably have no need for a special preloader and can follow any of the current online tutorials (Google AS3 Preloader and you…

  • Need the missing AS3 UI Components?

    Our good friends at Yahoo have a treasure trove of great AS3 UI components (most of them not found in the CS3 release) in their Developer Network. It’s what they call ASTRA or the Actionscript Toolkit for Rich Applications. For AS3, inside CS3, it includes tTee, Menu, Tab Bar, AutoComplete,…

  • Sometimes You Can’t Take Full Credit.

    Sometimes you just don’t get to make the game yourself, but you are significantly involved with it enough to get some kind of credit. Below are a list of games I’ve been involved with that I cannot credit as solely my own work, but my contribution was significant enough that…

  • Best Of Mochi Retro Games: Fluxion

    Best Of Mochi Retro Games: Fluxion http://games.mochiads.com/c/g/fluxion/Fluxion.swf A Great Retro Inspired Game Sponsored By Mochi Ads Instructions: Use the mouse to fly around and left mouse button to fire.

  • Best of Mochi retro Games: Space Invaders Defence

    Best of Mochi Retro Games: Space Invaders Defense http://games.mochiads.com/c/g/space-invaders-defence/space%20invaders%20defence.swf A Great Retro Inspired Game Sponsored By Mochi Ads Instructions: A & D or left & right to move click to shoot last as long as you can

  • 80’s Guitar Rock: What Makes A Cultural “Decade”?

    I’ve had this conversation periodically with friends and other nerds of all types (rock, video game, etc) and it always ends inconclusively. The conversation starts this way: “When do decades start and end?” The question seems fairly simple at first. A decade lasts from the “01” to the “00” of…

  • Flash Game Development Inter-web mash up : April 11, 2008

    Interactive Crap, Nate (fellow Flash game head, and 8bitrocket friend) has a new series of posts on different rendering tests in AS3. Vector Quality vs. Bitmap Data Quality, Converting Vector to Bitmap Data, and Flash Vector Animation Benchmarks. Game Poetry has a very good entry on time based v. frame…

  • Forgotten Heroes From The Teflon Decade: 80’s Guitar Rock:

    Welcome to our newest blog on our ever-expanding uber media-empire known as 8bitrocket.com. Since much of our “game” sensibility comes from the stuff we played in the 80’s, Jeff and I have decided to start writing about some of the music that we listened to in our formative years. To…

  • www.devmaster.net – A great game development resource.

    I don’t know the people who run this site, they aren’t paying me anything to pimp them, but if you have not checked it out, you really should. The name is www.devmaster.net. Felixters from “the kit” (www.flashkit.com) sent me a link to a wonderful article on OOP game design, and…

  • Tutorial : Creating an Optimized AS3 Game Timer Loop

    Tutorial : Creating an Optimized AS3 Game Timer Loop It this tutorial we create what I consider to be my most optimized game timer loop. I will start with the game loop created in my last tutorial and optimize it further. We will add three different optimizations to the game…

  • Moving From Flash AS2 To Flash AS3: flashvars

    Note: I’m converting my Flash game “Spin City” from AS2 to AS3 so it can be re-skinned for another project. I’ve decided to document this activity in a series of tutorials so they might benefit anyone else who is going through the same development process) Sorry, I’ve been away from…

  • Mission Zeno Fighter Chronicles #1

    I have started to make a new game, currently called Mission Zeno Fighter. It is going to be a combination of Gravitar, Thrust, Asteroids, and Choplifter (all to various degrees). I started with the code I produced for part 4 of the Atari 7800 Asteroids Tutorial and began making modifications.…

  • Flash Game Development Inter-web mash up : Mar. 30, 2008

    The latest in Blog entries and articles that might interest Flash game developers. Forrest’s AS3 / Flash Blog has an entry that is right up my alley. It is entitled What is the fastest way to draw pixels in AS3? He found that the fastest method was to call setPixel…