This was an idea that sounded ok in my head, looked alright in paper, but ends up just a bit wierd. Take the old classic columns, make it possible to shoot in columns for each of the four sides and then... um... when search for a way to make it interesting ...

Try it here.

EDIT: Fixed the link.

Meggy, my little girl, was two years old on Saturday! Go Meggy! If you've been following the blog since she was a scan picture on a blog then thanks :)

She had a very good birthday - 3 parties, one at nursery, one with little friends (read 7 kids running round my house :)) and one for family in which she was very confused and tired :). Loads of nice presents from nice people and a whole lot of ice cream and jelly and she's done for this year.

It's been a great two years with lots of up and downs. So very interesting what happens to your mind the older they get. Anywhere, here's a Daddy photo of his adorable little girl:

One of the projects I'm still interested in is the 2D game library, Slick. It's been going a few years now and I think has started to become a really useful and quick way of getting moving with 2D games. Distribution issues aside the use of GL stops you worrying so much about performance and the API is pretty powerful making it fun to work with.

That said, when I read reviews and comments on the library, one of the most common things said is a lack of documentation. Now, I'm confused, what exactly are people looking for? Slick's documentation is pretty much together though sometimes runs behind the development curve a little. First theres the JavaDoc it's complete and rich with information. Next there's the Wiki which serves as the user guide to Slick. It's under constant update by the wonderful community members and while it's never going to be convering the features that were added yeseterday it's for the most part written really well.

Then we move on to code examples. First there's a wealth of test cases covering each feature in a very simple manner. As you can imagine these server a double purpose in that a run a subset before releasing a version. Next, theres examples that get posted to the forums every few months. There's the "scroller" and more recently the platformer. These get posted to the forums, to the Slick Blog and often here on C&C too.

Finally, the forums provide a great resource of information about different approaches and their results.

It seems to me there's a fair bit of documentation/help to go with Slick - much more than Phys2D or Thingle etc. It seems like people want tutorials on how to use Webstart, or how to use Java, or how to use Eclipse to be part of the documentation of Slick. That seems totally out of context to me?

So.. if you've commented before that theres not enough documentation and it's slowed you down, or worse made you give up - what exactly was it you were looking for and where have you seen examples of that type of documentation before. It'd really help because I'm totally at a loss how to make the situtation (if there is one) better?

I've spent the last few weeks experimenting with Flash, or rather Flex and AS3 for 2D game development. I've done quite a bit of 2D development in C, C++ and Java in the past and so it's interesting to see how AS3 stacked up for me.

In the other languages I've never had to pay for tools, so in this case I stuck to the free tools for Flex and AS3. This means I used FlashDevelop and the free Flex SDK.

I've knocked out two games so far, Star Dodger and BubblePop. Productivity wise it's taken me 2 weeks evenings and weekends to get comfortable and up to speed with the tools. There's alot of tutorial help out there, unfortunately unlike my previous experience, quite a lot of the tutorial code available shows either things that don't work or really bad coding practice - which is shame because the noise hides the really good ones.

Anyway, to the quick run down.

Pros

• Quick to pick up and get productive in
• Free tools available
• Massive community
• Easy Distribution
• Large SDK (see below though)

• Counter intutive rendering approach if you've used other langauges
• AS3 is butt ugly - seems to be trying to be Java but failing
• It's slow, very slow, not for rendering (if you're using it the right way) but for data manipulation
• Lots of details that you just have to know
• The SDK contains alot of duplication and misdirections. The API isn't well thought out in most cases and leaves you hanging for that last critical feature.

I quite like Flash in the same way that you find a lame puppy more cute that fully grown Alsation. However, the SDK and performance make it hard to work with - almost like fighting with Java 1.1 to squeeze that last little bit out of it.

Still, it's wonderful to have another tool to utilize in the varied world of software development :)

I've ported my old bubble popping game over to flash. It's got a luke warm response from the flash communities, 50/50 - some love some hate. Maybe thats a good thing, but it's still fantastic to recieve feedback from so many random people so quickly. You can try the flash version here:

Play it in Flash

There are some issues with scaling images in the approach to bitmap rendering I'm using in AS3 at the moment. Scaling is pretty slow and poor quality. A bit of research provided me with a bunch of workarounds, none of which actually worked.

Next one is a new game idea, should be demoable in the next couple of days. The idea doesn't seem to be panning out though, 4 way columns should work right? :)

Noah and the Whale, kinda indie folky sound - very nice. Reminds me in places of Firefly theme music. I've been listening to it for 3 weeks on and off now and it still make me smile.

Go Buy it!

I've been back at work two days and I'm already wishing on I was back on holiday, even though I was glad to come home when I did. Wierd huh?

I worried alot about the travelling, mostly about going on a flight (which I hate) but also taking Meg on a 5 hour flight each way. Shouldn't have worried, she was great, slept a lot, hardly cried at all - even coped with the wonderful (sic) Pafos airport. Both ways was easy and we almost enjoyed the flight. Travelling late at night wasn't the best, we got there at midnight and got home at 5am.

Still, it was a wonderful resort, looked a bit like this (though we stayed on the other nicer side of the resort ;)):

Good fun was had by all, especially Meg. She was dancing every night and really enjoyed the pirate ship, the splash pool and more than anything the free ice cream. The day times were spent sleeping or splashing about in the pool. The afternoons and evenings exploring, eating and being entertained - all nice.

While the resort was great, Pafos isn't up to much as a toursit hot spot. My advice would be not to bother.

Everyone we met was great, including all the staff. Many thanks in particular to the creche staff who did such a good job of making Meg feel at home she really didn't want to leave them behind.

Back to work now tho...

Holiday, yes it's finally here. I'm off work for a week and traveling around a bit. Get some sun and some culture. Taking Meg on a plane is a daunting thought though. I'll post photos when I'm back this time honest.

The most important thing is I'm not at work :)

I've been wanting to learn some new skills in game development, kinda feel like I've been stagnating for the last year or so. A few years ago I had a go at flash games development, mostly because it was there. I couldn't get anywhere, the free and open tools were just hard work. For last week I've been experimenting with AS3, FlashDevelop and the Flex SDK. These tools, while not as nice or as powerful as the Java tool set (Eclipse+JDK), are actually adequate and I've found myself able to be pretty productive. It's also nice to not have the distribution head ache running round in the back of your mind while coding.

Anyway, I'm going to be remaking some of old games (mine and others) in an effort to learn a bit more about Flex and AS3, the first of which is what this blog post is about. My first remake of pretty much the simplest game I could remember:

Click Here to Play Star Dodger

This was more an experiment into how to build a simple game in flash, how to integrate the wonderful Mochiads and hopefully how the flash playing communities respond to games - thats where I'll go next I guess, search around and find out where to submit this sort of thing.

Anyway, so far, not so bad. I'll be feeding the cool bits about as3 back into Slick development and probably whining on about the bad bits here :)

It's a wierd thing when someone announces a new project, especially someone of note. In this case one of the key developers of JME (who recently announced their departure) Josh had announced the creation of a new 3D engine (along with another of the developers of JME, Rikard). They're calling it Ardor3D and it sounds like they're focussing on top end game development.

It's exciting, it's new and I wish them the best of luck. I think everyone has known for a while that what we currently have in Java 3D space is starting to look a little behind the times - though plenty good enough for most of the projects out there. Josh describes in detail each of the reasons for this which make good sense. Can't wait to get my hands on whatever they come up with! :)

However, it's also a sad day, when JME can be called dead or dieing. I don't really think thats the case. I think it's a technology thats powerful and useful but has reached breaking point in terms of code base. The tools are there, we can use them albeit not top end games development - who was really going there anyway?

Me? Well I'll be dropping my 3D project for now, maybe reworking it into JPCT - I've been meaning to have a go at that for ages anyway. As always the software is designed to switch renderers at the drop of a hat so thats all good.

Right now? Other fish to fry :)

EDIT: As a side note, check out the wonderful ads that google selected for Josh's post. Ford should be proud!