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Flash Game DevelopmentFlash, flex, etc., Game Development Blog
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Silverlight Games DevSilverlight Gsmes Development
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Game Design And TheoryGeneral Game Design Topics
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World Famous Flash Retro ShowcaseGreat Retro Games Made In Flash
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Atari NerdEverything Atari And Retro Games
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They Used Our Kung FuPeople, Sites, Games, Companies, etc that have used our code/music/tutorials.etc. to make something cool.
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AppleMac, iPhone, iPod Games And Development
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Music with No TalentTracking, Loooping, and Sequencing Music
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Podcasts8bitrocket.com GameStorm! Is podcast dedicated to game design for indie viral web games, Flash game development, game programming,and general gaming topics. Each episode tackles one or more "game design" problems taken either from real world projects or from our game design idea generator (also named 8bitrocket.com GameStorm!). We also cover news relevant to indie game developers, plus other game development and gaming topics.
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Mid-Core GamerBetween Hard And Casual Gamers
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56k Connection56k Connection: A Gamer That Still Lives On a 56k Lifeline
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Mid-Core Game ReviewsReviews Of Midcore Games
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Forgotten Heroes: 80's Guitar Rock80's Music
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Lost South BaySouth Bay In Southern California
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Web Site DevelopmentGeneral Web Site Development
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8bitrocket HistoryThe History Of This Web Site
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Management SucksYes, it does suck
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diatribeEverything Else...
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S3 Tutorial: Controlling the Main Timeline of a SWF Embedded at Compile-Time
Today I was working a a new piece of the Essential Flash Games framework that allows sponsor swf files to be embedded at compile time and displayed before a game reaches the title screen. I am using Flash Develop and the Flex SDK, but the embed compiler directive is also available in the latest versions of the Flash IDE. I wanted to embed rather than load to ensure that the final swf file is a single self-contained unit that can be easily spread to game portals. I tried this a number of different ways to no avail. Most of the standard swf embed code works fine with assets inside the library of embedded swf, but not when trying to control the main time line of the swf itself. So, this is what we are going to cover: If you have been trying to embed swf files at compile time but cannot get your code to recognize the embedded swf, or the totalFrames attribute of the embedded swf returns 0, or if the swf only shows the final frame of your animation then read on. I had all of those problems today and more, but finally figured out a method to make this work properly.
Controlling the Main Time Line of a swf file embedded at run time.
1. Here is the asset that we are going to embed. I Embed all of my assets in a separate Library class as Static Const variables. This could just as easily be in the main document class for your game or application. I will do it the later way here to keep it uncomplicated. This assumes that the 8bitrocketlogo2.swf is in the same folder as the document class. This logo swf is a multi frame animation with 85 frames on the main time line(its just important that there is more than a single frame because you will want to see if you can play and jump to frames to ensure you have control over the time line)... [more]
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Questions? Comments? Email us here: info@8bitrocket.com |
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amesChart's Barry White Responds (redux)
Last week I did a some coverage of
GamesChart and it sparked a
little controversy. It seems that one of the principals behind the new venture
is none other than Barry White from the now defunct GameJacket. You can't forget Barry as
he has the single best name in the games business. Anyway, while Steve and I had nothing
but good fortune working with Game Jacket, there are quite a few who were owed
money when the company finally went south. It seems that some people have
also been receiving emails directly from Barry about GamesChart and he was being accused of "spamming"
people who do not want to receive this email. It is fair for people to be
upset about supposed spam, especially when the terms of the Game Jacket user
agreement stated that they would not sell or use the email list for anything
other than GameJacket related correspondence.
So, my first question for Barry was where he was getting the email addresses
he was sending to because 8bitrocket had been a long time member of GameJacket
and we did not receive any spam email from him. Here is his response:
8bitrocket: Barry, we did not receive any email(s) from you
about GamesChart. Where did the list come from that you are sending to?...[more]
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Questions? Comments? Email us here: info@8bitrocket.com |
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 've been spending the last year or so looking and/or forced to develop in other technologies thatare not Flash. I've seen Python, Google App Engine, Silverlight, HTML 5, PHP, Drupal, Joomla, C#, Coco, Android Java, and even Unity. While all of these technologies have their, there is one thing they are not: Flash. There is a reason why Flash saved the internet in 2001. It's ubiquitous, cross-browser compatible, and 99% of the time, just works. It allows designers to be designers, and with AS3/Flex, allows programmers to be programmers. I played with HTML for many years before I discovered Flash. Programmed in C/C++ for many years before I found Flash. Flash is the best of those worlds and more. I read a lot of technosnobs who do not like Flash. To bad. Flash saved the web by making it accessible to marketing (where the money is), designers, and by making it interactive and enjoyable to everyone who uses it. Anyway, I love Flash. That's all I have to say.
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Questions? Comments? Email us here: info@8bitrocket.com |
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Matt Barton, author of Dungeons And Desktops and co-author of Vintage Games has posted a very cool interview with one of my heroes, R.A. Montgomery, the creator of the classic 80's "Choose Your Own Adventure" book series.
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Questions? Comments? Email us here: info@8bitrocket.com |
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 ew 8 Bit Weapon Sony Loop Library  We make a lot of loop-based music here at 8bitrocket. One of our favorite tools is Acid by Sonic Foundry (and now Sony). Sony always has new sets of loop libraries to fill the need for unique and new game music construction. For the first time ever they have a library by the great 8 Bit Weapon. This library can be used with any loop-based music software and all full studios suites that import and use wav formatted files. The cost is $39.99, but is you are into making music (especially retro music) or games, it is a invaluable library to build with.
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Questions? Comments? Email us here: info@8bitrocket.com |
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ad information can be annoying, but bad information in the hands of decision makers can be downright dangerous. An article that was posted today by CIO magazine is just such a thing. The article is entitled "Is it Time for the Web to Abandon Flash?", and it gives current I.T. decision makers some very very bad advice about Flash and HTML 5.
(much more after the jump, including vitrol, graphs and funny stories involving coyotes: read on!)
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Questions? Comments? Email us here: info@8bitrocket.com |
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pdated! - Barry White Responds. GamesChart (Game Jacket Guys Get Back Into The System?) Barry White left a message below with some very detailed information on GamesChart. "I do just want to point out that we are in very
early Developer Beta, so there''s lots of things that haven''t been
added yet and we''ve still got to include more category charts on the
API and also launch the Publisher Beta. That''s the main reason why all
the games are being directed back to GamesChart.com ..not because it''s
a pyramid scheme. In fact, if all goes to plan - I would be over the
moon if none of the games ever linked back to the main site :P" - Every game that has the GamesChart API embedded in it is tracked by GamesChart
- The API also loads in a series of dynamic charts that actually display within the Flash game itself
- The most popular games each week make their way to the top of the charts
- Any gamers who click on a game listed in these charts is taken to play that game on another portal
- Publishers
use an advanced pay per click bidding system to purchase this traffic
and drive users back to their own sites to play the games they have bid
on
- Games need to be uploaded to the Publishers portal before they can receive traffic (big upside)
- Developers
receive up to a 50% revenue share of any outbound clicks generated from
within their game should they choose to display it (also full
blacklisting available)
- Publishers also receive 10% of total revenues generated from any GamesChart enabled games featured on their site
...[more]
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Questions? Comments? Email us here: info@8bitrocket.com |
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Purple Floyd just contacted us to tell us that he has created an iPod Touch/iPhone compatible version of his platform game. You can see it running in the video above. What does this mean? Well, it means that very soon developers can make games that are formatted to the iPod Touch/iPhone screen that run in Safari. They can monetize them with advertising instead of selling them in the app store. They can use them as running demos of games that run in the app store. They could simply make a game that gets people to their web site. It also means that any argument that Apple does not allowing Flash apps on the iPhone or iPad because they bypass the app store does not hold water. You can make them RIGHT NOW, with touch controls, and people can play them immediately.
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Questions? Comments? Email us here: info@8bitrocket.com |
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Here is a short video of the "Plus" version of "Flak Cannon" from the "Essential Guide To Flash Games Book". I have taken the game beyond the scope of the book. A free tutorial will be available later this year that describes how to take the game described in the book and enhance to it make this game. In the meantime it will go out "virally" self-sponsored by the book.
The book now has a release date of March 12, 2010. since we are in final final minor text revisions, it seems like this date is firm.
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Questions? Comments? Email us here: info@8bitrocket.com |
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pple/Adobe/HTML 5 Saga: Who Is Big Brother Now?
Well, I never expected to be writing about HTML5 years before it will be finished, but the whole iPad/No Flash support saga has me up at night wondering if we need to move sooner than later.
First off, far from Apple relenting on Flash, Steve Jobs called Adobe "lazy" yesterday because they won't fix some (alleged) bugs in Flash.
At the same time, these guys over at Freeciv has done some rendering tests between different browsers and the HTML 5. The FPS seems pretty low, which is what we saw when we looked at the HTML 5 NES emulator a few days ago. Still, the HTML 5 Canvas seems to be gaining steam as Flash has taken a beating in the press in the past few days.
In our view, the iPad appears to be a (new) feature-free, broken system without support for multiple plug-ins. It's a closed, totalitarian universe. Wow, have things changed at Apple in the past 25 years. Remember this commercial?
Who is big brother now?
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Questions? Comments? Email us here: info@8bitrocket.com |
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RSS/XML

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2/9/2010 |
AS3 Games |
AS3 Tutorial: Controlling the Main Timeline of a SWF Embedded at Compile-Time |
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12/2/2009 |
AS2 -> AS3 |
AS2->AS3: Making A Click And Stick Christmas Tree Designer In AS2 and AS3 |
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12/1/2009 |
AS2 -> AS3 |
AS2->AS3: A Simple Drag And Drop Game plus Hiding/Showing/Changing The Mouse Pointer |
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11/6/2009 |
Game Development: Flash |
Tutorial: Using The Open Source CamStudio to Record Flash Game Play Animations |
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8/3/2009 |
AS3 Bitmaps |
Clayton Grey's Blit Layer Erase Speed Test |
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5/3/2009 |
AS3 Bitmaps |
Tutorial: Clearing a blit canvas by erasing only the portions that have changed (using damage maps or a dirty rect). |
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4/28/2009 |
Game Design |
Tutorial: Using Bit Wise Operations To Create A Repeatable Sequence Of Multiple Level Designs In Code |
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1/27/2009 |
Flex Games |
Building A Generalized Flex Game Control Part 4 - TileSheet class |
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12/4/2008 |
Flex Sound |
Tutorial: Using MP3 Files In Flex 3 with Flash Player 9.x |
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11/11/2008 |
Flex Games |
Flex Files: Tutorial - Flex 3 HelloWorld in FlashDevlop |
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9/27/2008 |
AS3 Bitmaps |
Tutorial: N-way tile-based blit fine scrolling in AS3 (part 1) |
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9/27/2008 |
AS3 Bitmaps |
Tutorial: N-way tile-based blit fine scrolling in AS3 (part 2) |
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