Animated Particles, Books, and Code – It’s a New Year
2014 It doesn’t even sound real. Like an unreachable year in an 80’s sci-fi b movie. And yet, for better or worse, here we are. Seems my last post was quite some time ago (I think WordPress has had 16 releases since then) and a bit negative (bug report), so it’s time to start the […]
Logical Or Assignment Bug in ASC2
So, here’s something to keep an eye on if switching to AIR 3.8 (or 3.7 with the ASC2 compiler). Last week at work we decided to finally make the jump from AIR 3.5 to AIR 3.8; something I was pretty excited about and had been looking forward to for awhile. After applying the update, though, […]
Warp Filter for Starling
So, perusing teh internets once again, looking for something interesting to play around with, I came across this blog post of Pavan Podila (from 2008!). In the post, Pavan presents a WPF pixel shader which warps an image using bezier curves. I thought I’d have a go and reproduce the effect in AGAL and plunk […]
Playing With a Couple Game Ideas
Just a couple game fragments, really – prototypes, if you will; but some fun nonetheless, and it’s always good to tinker with new ideas… After working on some various filters for Starling (cf. the last two posts here), I was itching to make something that actually used one. So, that in mind, here’s a little […]
One More Filter For Starling
As an addendum to the post I made yesterday, here is one other filter which can be used in the Starling framework that could probably come in quite handy for a few. In essence, it’s sort of a spotlight effect that illuminates a specified oval area of a Starling DisplayObject. Though I mainly see it […]
Filters in Starling
Just in case you happened to miss it, the most recent version of the Starling Framework (the one which you can pull from Github, that is) now supports custom filters. You can check out the official announcement here. Using filters in Starling couldn’t be easier – you just assign a filter to the filter property […]
Towards a Better Scratch
Not sure what got me started on this project. Perhaps it was listening to too much Meat Beat Manifesto in the late 80’s. Or maybe it was my wife who got me to sit down and watch the Scratch documentary. Whatever the hell it was, I’ve been wanting to make a decent vinyl scratch app […]
Learning AGAL with AGALMacroAssembler and OpenGL Examples
So the other day I sat down and thought to myself: self, it’s high time you learn you some of this new fancy pants AGAL that’s all the rage these days. Now, after a few days of playing around I am by no means a master at the art of shader programming, but due to […]
UV Scrolling in Starling
One of the things that really appealed to me about ND2D over the Starling Framework was the ability to scroll textures by manipulating their UV coordinates like this. Obviously this could come in pretty darned handy for space games, side scrollers, etc, etc. Well, as it turns out, doing the same thing is also pretty easy in […]
Drawing on Stuff in Away3D 4.0
So, Easter Day, I thought I’d sit down and make a little ‘Paint on an Egg and Send it to Your Friend’ app. Unfortunately, I ran into two main technical difficulties. 1. I couldn’t get the UV seams of the texture to align properly to make a nice seamless painting; and 2. the idea is […]
It’s a Starling Halloween
So after making my Starling Particle Editor, I thought I’d take the time to actually build a little something in the framework. And what better thing than a Zombie Shooting Gallery made with the help of my wonderful wife. It’s a 3 meg download with a boring preloader, but it’s fairly well worth the wait. To […]
Particle Editor for Starling Framework
So I finally had time to sit down and have a bit of a play with the Starling 2D framework for Flash’s GPU accelerated Stage3D the other day (as well as read through the extensive and thorough documentation). It looks to me quite promising and certainly fun to play with (although this tweet from Iain […]
So Long and Thanks for all the Flash on the Beach
So, another Flash on the Beach has just has just drawn to a close and, as was announced by John Davey, the head Ringmaster of the fantastic circus that is Flash on the Beach, 2011’s is most likely the last FOTB ever. Not to worry though, Mr. Davey is looking at replacing it with something […]
Game Development Tips from the Trenches of PopCap
Well, this is a post that’s a bit overdue, but, thanks to a well timed bank holiday, I finally had the opportunity to sit down and type up what I’ve been meaning to for some time now… Before digging straight into the game a team and I have been assigned to build at my new […]
Old Skool Demoscene FX as 3D Textures
Many moons ago, I got the idea to create some demoscene plane deformation effects in Flash based on the formulas found here: http://www.iquilezles.org/www/articles/deform/deform.htm. I posted my less than desired results up on wonderfl. Thankfully, fellow wonderfl user, Hasufel, forked my attempt and optimized the hell out of it coming up with this. Well, today, for
Making The Gaming Scene (A Change in Careers)
And for my second blog post of the day, a much more personal note. After about three years of working with, what I would consider as objectively as possible, the best digital agency in Ireland, vStream Digital Media, I have made the immense career decision to leave the agency world and enter the arena of […]
Kinect Application Running in Dublin
So, on Friday I just wrapped up our latest project at vStream Digital Media, a Kinect powered flipbook that lets users flip through the hand written notebooks of Philip Lynott of Thin Lizzy. The app uses OpenNI, runs in Adobe AIR and is currently on display at a pretty bitchin’ Phil Lynott exhibition running in […]
Beach Ball Kinect Party
So we finally got a Kinect camera hooked up to a pc at work and, while it doesn’t seem to be legal to use it for commercial projects (but, hey, I’m no lawyer), the boss asked me to get it figured out and come up with some ideas just in case it would be feasible […]
Facebook and Flash – A Book Review
Now, I should begin by saying I absolutely hate building Facebook applications. And I build a lot of them at work. Every time I get the word from above that we’re doing another FB app, I just groan – both inwardly and out. It’s become a running joke of the office. Why do I dislike […]
On the Rebound
I am rather pleased and excited to say that I have just completed my first AIR for Android game. Now, I will be the first to admit, it may not be the most exciting game in the world, but it is exactly the type of game I would enjoy (and have enjoyed) playing on the […]