Category: Uncategorized

  • Atari Movie: War Room Debate On The Upcoming Atari movie

    Not much on the proposed Atari movie front for the past couple weeks, but I did stumble on this episode of  an online  “show” named The War Room in which these four guys, (most which know very little about Atari), debate the idea of the Atari movie,  It’s pretty entertaining.…

  • Fresh Kill Five: July 9, 2008. A Biased pick of cool Flash games

    This week we take a look at 4 games by MyGame.com and a great new pinball title by gamingyourway.com. I only call this a biased pick because I choose mostly retro style games to showcase. Plus, we all bring our own biases to the table when we critique anything, so…

  • Dispatches From A Transient Programmer #2: Free Beer

    As a transient programmer (with a family) we are living in a “suite” hotel.  I never realized the the true purpose of these establishments until a few weeks ago when I went looking for a place for us to stay during our “gap”. At a regular hotel, you get a room,…

  • 8bitocket Diatribe July 8, 2008

    iWoz never an Apple Fanboy Back in the 80’s I was an Atari fan boy. The 2600 was the first video game system that Steve and I would kill for, and to this day I still play my Atari ST and 800 favorites via emulation. That being said, I always…

  • Dispatches From A Transient Programmer #1: The Move

    I believe that crime stories in the local newspaper are written in way to make the reader feel more comfortable about their surroundings, no matter how awful the story, so that people will stay put and continue to buy newspapers. A good example of this is the use of the…

  • Free Flash 4th Of July Interactive Fireworks Show

    This is just a quick reminder to say that you can enjoy our Free Fireworks Flash interactive Fireworks show on the 4th Of July (or any other day).  I originally built this Flash “interactive toy” to entertain my 4 year old daughter (now 10)  in 2002 when we could not get…

  • Flash Game Development Inter-web Mash-up: July 3, 2008

    This one is more MASHY than usual. Along with the regular Flash only focused material, this week I decided to concentrate on the world of game creation as a whole, and especially retro game programming. I have mostly chosen only those sources that I feel will aid Flash game developers…

  • 8bitrocket Diatribe June 20, 2008

    The World of 8bitrocket Things have been busy here at 8bitrocket towers. Steve is moving to a new house and I am preparing for a new baby to arrive into my old one. These little life experiences have left little time for brand new games and tutorials, but we do…

  • Management Sucks Finally Finds A Suitable Game!!

    Finally, a game about work. I’ve been looking for a good Flash game to launch the Management Sucks game repository for some time. Idea Killer from Othmar Wicke (http://www.otwic.com/) is just the type of game I have been looking for. In this one you play a jaded customer of an…

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

    The latest in Blog entries and articles that might interest Flash game developers. This week we take a look at new Flashgamelicense features, Mochiland articles, GameJacket opportunities, optimization, source control, Color Fill (again), Law Of The West Pinball, as3gaming.com, and PixelWelder’s custom event broadcaster class. What’s new in Monetization?: Flashgamelicense…

  • 8bitrocket Diatribe June 23, 2008

    Another Two Gone It seems that corporate America and creative talent just don’t seem to mix very well these days. Steve and I work at a rather large American company and we have been fighting all powers that be for 12 years now to ensure that we keep a cutting…

  • Flash Retro Game Showcase #6: June 19, 2008

    A depressing week as far as “new” retro inspired games go. It is getting more and more difficult each week to sift through the wealth of “new” “super click”, “dress-up” and other “copy-and-paste-grammer ” (coined by Chris Cutler) developed game engine re-skins to find legitimate contenders for this list. I…

  • Atari Nerd Chronicles: Kenny Brown and The Atari 400

    When Kenny Brown moved to Manhattan Beach in 1980 from Philadelphia PA and started 5th grade in my class with Ms. Nash, I did not like him at all. The Dodgers were playing to win the National League West that year, and Kenny could do nothing but root for the…

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

    The latest in Blog entries and articles that might interest Flash game developers. This week we take a look at the latest Mochiads Friday winner; generating friendly URLS and AS3 platform games; Interdisciplinary tensions (teaching programmers some needed design skills), cool games from Sokay and GamingYourWay; flashperfection.com collection of game…

  • Fresh Kill Five: June 16, 2008. A biased pick of fun new Flash Games

    This week we once again  visit Agame.com and Mochiads to find games that we love to play. Our choices: Captain Zorro, Uchuforce 2, Speed X, Diamond Frog and Midnight Race. Finding good games to play is not as easy as it sounds. There are so many stinkers out there now,…

  • John Harris Asks: Where Are The Atari Fan boys?

    John Harris over at Gamasutra.com has a fantastic new artical named “Game Design Essentials: 20 Atari Games” in which he spends a massive amount of time (23 pages!) discussing the brillant game designs that came out of Atari’s coin-op division from 1972-1998. At the beginning of the article, John asks…

  • Flash Retro Game Showcase #5: June 12, 2008

    OK, we are back. Sorry we missed you last week, but we were having trouble with our main source of games. Mochi Publishers. It seems that their service is so popular now that it has become very difficult just to get to their site to find games!! Since I have…

  • J2Games.com And The Return Of Bill Kunkel, The Game Doctor

    Bill Kunkel, the pioneering video game journalist who’s alter ego “The Game Doctor” appeared in the original Electronic Games magazine from the 80’s as well as the 90’s version, has finally returned for the 21st century as “The Game Doctor” with a regular column on the retro game site J2Games.com.…

  • Flash Game Development Inter-web mash up: June 9, 2008

    The latest in Blog entries and articles that might interest Flash game developers. This week we take a look at some new Mochiads additions; A look a free dev tools from GamePoetry; Emanuele Feronato’s latest (and best), and a fresh kill 3 selection of games from both Triqui, and Kongregate.…

  • 8bitrocket Diatribe: June 5, 2008

    Some New Game Development Steve and I have both started some new personal games. Mine is going to be a Galaga / Demon Attack / Spider Fighter tribute, while Steve is going a completely different route with an Arakanoid / Tetris / Ceiling Zero style game. I started my a…

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

    The latest in Blog entries and articles that might interest Flash game developers. In Adopt Some Coding Conventions for Projects: Sloppy Code SUCKS!, Colby Williams tackles the thorny issue of using coding conventions and give you some examples of his application od standards. Also available are his Actionscript 3 Math…

  • Scotty Dawg Flash Blog Launches

    One of the best Flash developers in the world,  Scott Delamater  has finally launched his own Flash related development blog, Le Maitre d’Something .  Scott is a Flash savant.  Anything he has to say on the subject should be read by anyone with even a remote interest in the topic. …

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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: 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

  • 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.

  • 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…

  • Flash Retro Remake Round Up : March 27, 2008

    This is by no means an exhaustive survey of the universe of retro Flash games available on the infobaun, but here are some fun, unique takes on some of my favorite old games. Most of these aren’t even recent, but we have to start somewhere. We’ve all seen the games…

  • Midcoregamer.com Midcore RSS Aggregation Features

    Midcoregamer.com has been scouring the web for the past few weeks to locate blogs that are relevant to the Midcore audience.  We found an increasing number of homegrown bloggers that have taken the concept of  the “midcore gamer” (as well has other like designations) to heart and have decided to collect their respective…

  • Tutorial: Using Flash CS3 and Actionscript 3 to create Atari 7800 Asteroids Part 4

    Tutorial: Using Flash CS3 and Actionscript 3 to create Atari 7800 Asteroids Part 4 In this 4th and final part we will cover 2 main topics. First, we will use pixel perfect BitmapData collision detection to detect missile and ship collisions with the rocks. And second, we will create a…

  • Flash Game Development Inter-web mash up : Mar. 20, 2008

    The latest in Blog entries and articles that might interest Flash game developers. Mochiland and James Robinson bring you an absolutely essential article on Marketing Flash Games: The Other Half of the Battle. Please read the entire article, but in summary, Mark suggests that vigorous marketing of your game is…

  • Flash Game Design Kitchen Nightmares

    Flash Game Design Kitchen Nightmares I’ve been watching a lot of the BBC America (plus the sub-par USA Fox version) of Chef Gordon Ramsey’s reality show Kitchen Nightmares. You might know Chef Ramsey from the “foul-mouthed chef” reality contest series Hell’s Kitchen. While that series is the standard by-the-numbers “Survivor…

  • The Mission Leprechaun Chronicles II

    I did get one pretty good exclusive offer, but I have re-thought my need to sell off my IP and have looked for more places to post the game. Because the game has some tie-in to a holiday that is actually tomorrow, I figured that I should put it up…

  • The Mission Leprechaun Chronicles

    After I completed my last game, Pumpkin Man, I decided I would not put it up for Exclusive License, but use Mochi Ads and non exclusive licensing to see how well it would do. Also, my sister Mari and I had created our own IP and story for the game…

  • Flash Game Development Inter-web mash up : Mar. 14, 2008

    The latest in Blog entries and articles that might interest Flash game developers. Michael Baczynski, on his blog at http://lab.polygonal.de/ds/, has great new set of AS3 Data Structures for game Developers. The structures include: Multi-Dimensional Arrays, Queue, Stack, Tree, Binary Tree, Binary Search, Linked List, Heap and Priority Queue, Graph,…

  • Adding MochiAds, MochiBot and MochiAds Leaderboards To A Flash AS2 Game

    My Newest Flash game lesson is up over at Mochiland .   This lesson details how to add Mochibot, Mochiads, and Mochi Leaderboards to an AS2 Game.  View the preview below and then go resd the whole thing here: http://mochiland.com/articles/lesson-3-mochiads-mochibot-and-mochiads-leaderboards   Anatomy of a Flash Game: Lesson 3 – MochiAds, MochiBot and…

  • Where the @#$! Is Pinball Hall Of Fame, Williams Collection?

    I’m a pinball fan. there, I’ve said. I love playing actual pinball tables, and I love playing simulated pinball on computers and consoles. My wife and I spent the first two years dating in the early 90s playing a Williams machine named Machine Bride Of Pinbot at the local Pizza…

  • Flash Game Development Inter-web mash up : Mar. 3, 2008

    The latest in Blog entries and articles that might interest Flash game developers. Mochiland, always a great place for the Flash Game Developer, has a very good new article on designing thumbnails for games on portals. It discusses using faces, contrasting colors, embellishment (like Atari 2600 cart graphic art) and…

  • Destructoid: The Myth Of Casual Gaming = Midcore?

    Jim Sterling over at Destructoid has written a very insightful blog about The Myth Of Casual Gaming .  Jim writes: The truth of the matter is that the hardcore/casual divide is little more than a myth, and the companies that are so desperate to secure themselves a casual demographic are doing…

  • Flash Game Inter-web Mash-Up: Feb. 21, 2008

    Blogs and other cool stuff that might interest the Flash game developer. Funface Games has an absolutely outstanding article on how to promote your Flash games. This is a must read for anyone serious about making games for a living. Ira Wiley at One More Blog has recently published an…

  • Mid-Core Gamer Spreads Across The Web

    As the usage of the term “Mid-core Gamer” continues to spread across the web, we will periodically update you on its impact. Here is a list of interesting stories and links to internet chatter about “Mid-core Gamers” The most interesting find this week was at the 2PStart Comic Strip Podcast.…

  • What is that annoying AS3 Hiccup? Part 2

    Well, I initiated my buddy Chris Cutler to help me out today and discovered a couple things about optimizing AS3 apps, but also opened up some questions. Fist, we installed the AWESOME Active Graph Application. It gives you a graph of memory usage and I can now see the clean…

  • What is that annoying AS3 Hiccup?

    I’m feverishly putting the finishing touches on a game I have been building off and on, in my spare time, for about 4 months (how many prepositional phrases can he cram into one sentence?). The engine is tile-based, and I am using blitting to a single display object. I have…

  • King of American Kong

    I have been feverishly trying to put the final touches on my latest game, Pumpkin Man, but have been stalled by the movie King Of Kong. Steve and my sister were discussing it today, and even though I have been itching to see it, I haven’t had time. I was…

  • Flash Game Development Inter-web mash up : Feb. 14, 2008

    The latest in Blog entries and articles that might interest Flash game developers. On GamingYourWay.com, Squize has finished his latest commercial game – a Rainbow Islands (at least to me) inspired platformer with a Valentines Day theme. Leading up to the release, he has a series of blog entries detailing…

  • Tutorial: Using Flash CS3 and Actionscript 3 to create Atari 7800 Asteroids Part 3

    In Part 1 we covered creating an array of pre-calculated vector values for animating our player ship. We also covered caching the rotated frames of the ship in an array of BitmapData objects. We then added the ship to the screen and move it with the keyboard. In Part 2 we…

  • Mid-CoreGamer.com Update, Mid-Core Manifesto 1.3, Mid-Core Gamer Review Format

    We have been working feverishly to get our support for the Mid-Core community launched.  We have received tons of feedback, and we have been altering our udeas and plans accordingly.  First off, the initial version of http://www.midcoregamer.com is up.  It is still very basic, but the shell is there, and…

  • Flash Game Development Inter-web mash up : Feb 7, 2008

    The latest in Blog entries and articles that might interest to Flash game developers. Scott Jeppesen, a friend, and recent new hire at Electrotank, has created an awesome logging tool for Flash CS3 and Flex in AIR. In his blog entry, he describes some of the cool features such as…

  • Midcore Gamer: Update, Web site, Wiki, Creative Commons

    We’ve had a flood of interest and feedback over our Midcore Manifesto posted last week. and much of it has been very positive. The idea of Midcore has filtered out to places like Kotaku, Joystiq, RockPaperShotGun, NerdNYC, Destructoid, GamePad, Expertologist (who I think misunderstood #2 on the list, but Gold…

  • Anatomy of a Flash Game: Lesson 2 – Creating Enemies And The Game Environment

    The good people over at Mochiland have posted part two of my four part tutorial on making a game in Flash AS2 using object oriented methodologies while incorportaing Mochibot, Mochiads, and Mochi Leaderboards.  This lesson covers creating enemies, creating a score board, and various other topics in the quest to…

  • SFXR: Completely awesome Sound FX Generator For Games

    **** Note, if you cannot find SFXR at the ludumdare blog any more, you can find it http://www.woolyss.free.fr/chipmusic.php#generators . This site is a great source for all kinds of free music and sound generators.***** I stumbled upon this tonight and I can’t say enough good things about it. The ludumdare…

  • Flash Game Development Blog World : January 31, 2008

    The latest in Blog entries that might interest Flash game developers. Gaming Your Way has a new entry on Wii Game Development in Flash. It is basically a link to another site that has compiled 73 tips and tutorials for making home-brew Wii games. I’ve been itching to pimp Squize…

  • Tutorial: Using Flash CS3 and Actionscript 3 to create Atari 7800 Asteroids Part 2

    In Part 1 we covered creating an array of pre-calculated vector values for 36 angles. These 36 angles were used to move the player ship on the screen in one of the 36 rotated directions. We also covered a basic animation cache from a library object by rotating its container…

  • Flash Game Development Blog Finds : January 23, 2008

    The latest in Blog entries that might interest Flash game developers. Jobe Makar’s Blog has a very interesting entry on enemy AI and predictive shooting. He is creating a Tower Defense like game and needed to figure out at what angle to fire off a projectile at a moving target.…

  • Moving From Flash AS2 To Flash AS3: GetURL()

    (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)   Flash AS2 One of…

  • Moving From Flash AS2 To Flash AS3: MovieClip Buttons In MovieClip Classes

    (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) OK, this one drove me…

  • Moving From Flash AS2 To Flash AS3: Update

    This is just a quick update to say that the Moving From Flash AS2 To Flash AS3 series will continue this week. I had to spend some time implementing the things I learned last week, and work on a few more changes. I’ve now tackled adding movie clips to the…

  • Flash Game Programming Inter-Web Round up

    I like to search the inter-web for juicy nuggets of Flash Game programming wisdom in my free time (what a boring date I must be). Here are some essential new and recent blog entries for Flash Game Programmers and Developers. Interactive Crap has a pretty recent entry called Common Problems…

  • Trading Games The Easy Way : Goozex + Scotch Size 0, + APC

    If you are like me (and Lord help you if you are) you have been buying and playing video games for the past 25 years and have amassed quite a collection of , PC, PS1, PS2, GBA, DS, Wii, etc titles that you no longer play. In your personal phantasie…

  • Planet Source Code For Flash Game Development

    Recently, I needed to find possible methods to create accurate movement for a maze-chase Pacman variant that I am working on (Pumpkin Man). I have been working on perfecting the method of animating my main character while he turns to an adjacent tile. It may sound simple at first thought,…

  • Moving From Flash AS2 To Flash AS3: Numerical Types Rules Of Use

    (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) This seems like a very…

  • Moving From Flash AS2 To Flash AS3: Static vs. Const

    (Note: I’m converting my Flash game “Spin City” from AS2 to AS3 so it can be reskinned 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) Constant Variables In Flash AS1…

  • Moving From Flash AS2 To Flash AS3: Packages

    (Note: I’m converting my Flash game “Spin City” from AS2 to AS3 so it can be reskinned 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) I’ve never been a huge…

  • To Coin A Phrase?

    It looks like Jeff’s blog yesterday about being a “Mid-Core” gamer has struck a chord with a few people.  We had one of our best days ever yesterday (traffic-wise) and we got some good placements on sites like Gamesetwatch.com, Destrucoid.com and GoNintendo.com.  Some people even seem to like the new…

  • Good Game Code v. Optimized Game Code

    I have to admit it, I like good code. By good code, I mean event models, design patterns, Hungarian Notation and all that assorted zarjazz (a Jeff Minterism for all you old schoolers). I like it especially as it applies to game programming. I wasn’t always like this, and I…