bunnyhero dev

Flixel is a free, open source 2D game engine built in ActionScript 3, from Adam Atomic, creator of Canabalt and other games. I became especially curious about Flixel ever since the iOS version of Canabalt went open source at the end of 2010. Both the Flash and iOS versions of Canabalt use Flixel. I understand that the iOS port of Flixel is still early, and from what I can tell, documentation for the iOS port is essentially nonexistent as of yet.

Regardless, here is my plan:

1. Learn Flixel and create a game
2. Port it to iOS [EDIT: that is, port my game to iOS, using the Flixel iOS port that is in the Canabalt source]
3. ???
4. PROFIT!!!

…all while blogging about the experience, of course. At least, that’s the idea — no promises that I’ll actually get very far! If I get really ambitious I might even write a tutorial at some point.

First experiences

Getting started with Flixel was pretty easy, thanks to the “Hello, World” tutorials available on the Flash Game Dojo wiki (which appears to be the main documentation hub for Flixel). After that I wasn’t sure where to go next, since the documentation is a bit scattered and disorganized. I did find some great info on the Github project page and wiki, which oddly is not linked to from the Flixel home page (as I said, a bit scattered). Perhaps Flash Game Dojo is where all the action is supposed to be now? I’m not really sure.

What I’m finding most helpful right now are the very simple example games, complete with source code, provided by Adam Atomic, which are a great help to see how the framework expects things to be set up. The FlxTeroids source code is instructive, as well as EZPlatformer (which has a nice tutorial with it).

Despite the disorganization, there is a lot of good information out there, including the very active forums (which I’ve not yet explored).

A question of units

One bit of info I couldn’t find was what units the FlxObject class uses for velocity and acceleration. I did a quick experiment, and it turns out that velocity is in pixels per second, and acceleration is in pixels per second per second — all very sensible, but it wasn’t explicitly stated anywhere I could find. Similarly, the angle and angularVelocity members are in degrees (not radians) and degrees per second.

What’s next?

This has been a bit of a rambling blog post (I, too, am a bit scattered!). Next I decide on what kind of game to make (something very simple) and start making it! Along the way I will share what I’ve learned.

Stay tuned…!

So after almost 3 weeks I’m finally feeling close to normal. Whiskey tango foxtrot! Plague from hell.

That means there’s no way I could get anything approved for the app store before October ends. I suppose, in theory, I could get something ready to at least submit by then, but that means completing a whole game in a week’s time. It’s possible, but to be honest I’m not sure if I’m up to it.

I’m off to a terrible start, unfortunately :( This month started off very busy, with little time for me to work on the challenge, and now I’ve been struck down with some kind of plague that makes it very difficult to concentrate on anything for any length of time.

All I’ve got so far are two rectangles on the screen. In theory, this will become a gameplay prototype. In practice… it’s two rectangles on the screen.

I sure hope I get better quick. Not going to give up just yet. In the meantime, I think I’ll just go and have a little lie down somewhere.

I have decided to try my hand at the October Challenge, AKA PoV’s Challenge. It’s a personal challenge to create and sell at least one copy of a game before the end of October.

I’ve been meaning to participate in one of these game-making challenges for a while (like Ludum Dare, or Toronto Game Jam), but never have, partly because those 2- or 3-day sprints are a little too easy to procrastinate about (blink and they’re over! and I am a master procrastinator), and partly because they seem a little too intensive for me in my advancing age (I like sleep!).

This one seems like something I could actually do and yet still be a kick-in-the-pants challenge. I like that PoV references NaNoWriMo in his post :)

Since I plan to make an iOS game, fulfilling the last part of the challenge (sell a copy) is partly at the mercy of Apple’s app review process, but I’m going to give it my best shot anyway. And of course I plan to blog about it all here.

Wish me [good] luck! And let me know if you’ll be participating too.

Verizon’s hard-hitting “Droid Does” anti-iPhone ad (via TechCrunch):

I love my iPhone (and developing for it) but I definitely would like to see more competition in this space. I think this ad hits home for those of us who are frustrated with the iPhone’s shortcomings. On the other hand, the style of the end of the video makes me think of trailers for horror movies. I’m not sure that’s such a good association to make!

This ad campaign also reminds me of the old Sega Genesis commercials back in the day:

The “About Flash” page reports that the PS3 is running Flash Player 7.0.70.0.

The User-Agent is reported as “Mozilla/5.0 (PLAYSTATION 3; 1.00)”.

For what it’s worth :)

I have not run any Javascript or rendering tests or anything like that. I should see if anyone else has already.

EDIT: Aha! Someone has, and seems to have done quite an exhaustive job of it. Very handy, bookmarking now :)

Yesterday, at Sony’s Gamers Day in San Francisco, Sony demonstrated the PlayStation 3’s web browser (which will be included free with the PS3), including the viewing of movie clips on YouTube. I am assuming that this means the PS3 browser has full Flash player capabilities.

I’ve done some quick googling but haven’t been able to find any details about the PS3 web browser (unlike the Wii’s browser, which is based on Opera). If it’s based on Mozilla (or some other existing, known browser source), it would make our jobs as web developers much easier. If not, it will be another platform to target, especially if the PS3 browser becomes a major player. I’m also curious about what version of Flash is running on it.