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No More Printed Game Manuals For “The Environment”, or “Pay Twice For What You Used To Get For Free”
The Gamer’s Blog has a very interesting story about Ubi Soft jettisoning printed game manuals as a “green initiative”. thsoundman writes: “No more man’u’als? Ubisoft announced this week that they will be ditch’ing the trend of print’ing instruc’tion man’u’als for new games under the ‘green’ ini’tia’tive. While no other pub’lish’ers…
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The Myth Making Of Nolan Bushnell: The Malcolm McLaren Of Video Games? Updated:
For many years, I naively believed that Nolan Bushnell invented the modern video game. I be lived he created the first video game company (Atari in 1972), I believed he created the first home video game (Atari Pong), and the first cartridge based game system (The Atari 2600). I believed…
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No Flash On The iPad Problem: Current Popular Social Games
No Flash On The iPad Problem: Current Popular Social Games One large potential problem (or opportunity) Apple might face in the near future, because of the lack of a Flash player on the iPod/iPad platform, is compatibility with the current set of popular social games. It is no secret that…
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Game Engine Re-Use: Jeff Vogel Is My Hero
Here at 8bitrocket.com we love game engines and engine reuse. Damn, we even wrote a book about it! It seems that we are not alone. In a post published today, Spiderweb Software’s Jeff Vogel does a fantastic job defending his use of a game engine he has re-sued and nursed…
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8-bit YouTube Retro Video Interweb-Mashup
8-bit YouTube Retro Video Interweb-Mashup A few people have sent over video links in the past couple weeks. I decided to take a look through YouTube for other various 8-bit, game/pop-culture and other 8bitrocket style videos for today’s mash-up. First up is a Lego / 8-bit mashup (sent by Alan…
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For Flash Games Developers, Working With the HTML 5 Canvas Is A Lot Of “Roll Your Own”
I’ve been working with the HTML 5 Canvas for the past couple weeks (in my spare moments) trying to implement one of the simplest games from CH.1 of our book, The Essential Guide To Flash Games with it. The game is a very simple shooter (Pixel Shooter). It’s maybe, the…
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“Gaming After 40” Blog Hits The 8bitrocket.com Sweet Spot
Hey, for all you guys (and gals too I suppose) who are interested in blogs about the history and current state of video games, I just discovered a very well-written and insightful one named “Gaming After 40” Here’s a note from the About page: “I’m in my early 40’s and…
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Nolan Bushnell once again is part of Atari!
Nolan Bushnell once again is part of Atari! It seems that Atari co-founder and all-round 70’s icon of arcade amusement and fun (think Pong, Atari 2600, Asteroids AND Chuck E. Cheese) has been re-added to the present day Atari’s board of directors. Gamesutra has a nice article about this interesting…
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Spectacularly Nerdy 8bitrocket Computer Desk Circa 1992
My sister just found this photo. It’s Spectacularly nerdy. It’s a photo of me (Steve) sitting at the “8bitrocket.com” computer desk (the desk Jeff and I shared in the bedroom we shared until we graduated from college). I think the photo speaks for itself: Above you will notice the following:…
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Jeff at DRUPALCON Monday
I will be attending Drupalcon tomorrow for one day to give a short presentation. My day-job used Drupal to create a new site that has been very successful and I am going to lock-step with my Open Source brethren for a day and let the LAMP/DAMP soak into my bones.…
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Ace The Super Villain’s Alloy Tengu 2 DX Featured on the Yo Yo Games Site
Ace The Super Villain’s Alloy Tengu 2 DX Featured on the Yo Yo Games Site No, it’s not a Flash game, and it isn’t even playable in a web browser (yet), but The Yo Yo Games site (the makers of Game Maker Software) have featured the fun cool, scrolling blaster…
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Ning Is No More, Please join Us On Disqus, Integrated Into The site
So we had to shut-down our Ning.com site today. We did not want anyone to use it any longer, as Ning.con is having problems, and need to have something solid to support our books and tutorials. Please join us using Disqus. Right now it is solely for blog comments, but…
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Disqus Testing : Please Help By Posting A comment
So now we are testing the Disqus comments engine. Please help by posting a comment. (I know it’s ugly, we have not played with the CSS yet)
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Js-Kit Echo Testing New Comments System Please Help: Update: Buggy As All Hell
Update: It seems like Js-Kit is buggy as all hell. I’ll be moving on to Disqus later today. It will allow me to import old comments too. We are testing our new JS-Kit comments system below. Please help us by adding something. The old comments have been removed (for now)
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Tutorial: Exploring the AS3 Bitmap Class Lesson 2 – Rotation with and without a Matrix
Tutorial: Exploring the AS3 Bitmap Class Lesson 2 – Rotation and with and without a Matrix. In this second lesson we will explore a couple different methods for rotating the Bitmap object from Lesson 1. We will first try simply using Bitmap.rotation property. Next we will do the same operation…
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Awesome Content Aware Fill Function in Photoshop CS5
Awesome Content Aware Fill Function in Photoshop CS5 This is such a cool function. This will certainly make the jigsaw puzzle and dress-up game makers excited at the possibilities! All kidding aside, this is why Photoshop costs $799!
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Try Out The 10 Games From Our book
Here are links to the 10 Games we Create in Our Book. Some are rudimentary, some are very complex.
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Tutorial: Exploring the AS3 Bitmap Class Lesson 1 – Creating a basic dynamic tile sheet.
Tutorial: Exploring the AS3 Bitmap Class Lesson 1 – Creating a basic dynamic tile sheet. We talk a lot about Blitting and BitmapData on this site, but we rarely take a step back and look at the container class for BitmapData, the Bitmap. In this series we will explore using…
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Exploring The HTML 5 Canvas For Flash Developers #2: Tracking The Mouse To Draw On The Screen
After a week where confusion about the future of the Flash platform has been piled on to developers by moves outside their control, we present the second in our series of HTML 5 Canvas for Flash Developers. We call these tutorials, but really they are more like explorations. We are…
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Top 10 Positive Things (for me) About The Apple iPhone Developer Clampdown
We have had a lot of debate about the how evil (or not) Apple has become, and how they have closed their platform to developers, etc. etc. etc. All that very well may be true, but it’s time to look on the bright side of the situation. Here are the…
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10 Things Developers Can Do To Help Fight Apple’s Grip On the Future Of Software Development
10 Things Developers Can Do To Help Fight Apple’s Grip On the Future Of Software Development Developers can get mad and call names (we are VERY guilty of this) at Apple for their Orwellian moves with the iPhone OS 4.0, but the best way to to “fight” them is to…
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Apple Hates Developers, And We Feel Hated
While we are trying to digest the news today that Apple has decided to reject any iXxx apps developed with tools other than their own, we have been using Twitter a lot. Our favorite Twitter “channel” is #fuckapple, but others we now enjoy are #teamandroid and our very own #fuckappleincode…
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Apple Announces iAd, Game Center For iPhone/iTouch/iPad Apps: Flash Game Developers Should Take Notice
Today Apple announced a bunch of new features for their mobile OS4, but the most intriguing ones fall very close to the Flash developer tree: iAd and Game Center. Here are Apple’s own words about these two features: iAd: “Apple’s new mobile advertising platform, combines the emotion of TV ads…
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8bitrocket Interviews with Jameson Hsu from Mochi Media
“Many people ask why we put GAME in all caps (in the name Mochi GAME Development fund -ed)and it’s because the fund is ajoint effort between our parent company Shanda Games (stock tickerNASDAQ:GAME) and Mochi Media.” -Jameson Hsu We’ve heard back from a lot of developers about their experiences…
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Don’t Trash Flash Just Yet: iPad Backlash Includes Realization That Flash Web Games Won’t Work (well duh!)
While, admittedly , it was difficult to find bad news about the iPad last Friday (for the first story in this series) , it is much easier today. Now lots of people have them (but not nearly as many as Apple wanted) and the buyers (plus the media, thank the…
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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…
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Using the Essential Flash Games Framework Hint #1: The mochi package
We have a had a few emails from people who are having some trouble publishing the games from the framework. One of these was an actual problem and it was fixed with a new code update yesterday. While the text in the book is correct, the files on the download…
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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…
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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…
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Easter 2010 Bunny Catch (2010)
Catch all the stuff with your bunny. Watch out, it get harder and harder!
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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,…
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8bitrocket Aprils Fools Interweb Mashup: April 1, 2010
8bitrocket Aprils Fools Interweb Mashup: April 1, 2010 – Slashdot adds chat roulette features to it’s discussions! – Where does Topeka end and Google begin? – Giant sea creatures invade Yahoo news – The absolute best use for an iPad – as the screen in an arcade cabinet – An…
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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…
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Review: Kill Screen Magazine Issue 0
Review: Kill Screen Magazine Issue 0 I’ve written had many stories through the years at 8bitrocket.com about video game magazines. I’ve covered personal stories about magazines like Electronic Games that influenced me while growing-up. I’ve interviewed some of my heroes of the first era of video game journalism like Bill…
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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…
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A closer look: The Games Of Ace The Super Villain #1: Aceroids
A closer look: The Games Of Ace The Super Villain #1: Aceroids Ace is a relatively new Flash game developer. Having cut his teeth making games with Game Maker, he has started to port some of his ideas to to the Flash platform. Steve and I have gotten to know…
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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…
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Mochi Game Development Fund Poll
Are you going to take advantage of the Mochi Game Development Fund? Voice your opinion in our poll.
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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…
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