8bitrocket.com Blog

3/11/2010 Poll: How Long Should The Flash Gaming Summit Be Next Year?

New Flash Game Development Blog Entry : I have to tell you, after going to FGS (Flash Gaming Summit) on Monday, the rest of the week has been a complete drag. I can't 'get over' meeting all the great, serious Flash Game Developers out there, and finding out how much we had in common. I know the GDC follwed FGS, but GDC is hardly focused on Game Development any longer, opting to grow into more of an E3.

My question to you is this: how long do you think FGS should be? How much good content do you think could be collected and shown that would interest serious Flash developers?

Head over here to take our poll and tell us what you think

3/10/2010 Steve Woita: An Original Atari 2600 Game Developer Tackles Flash Games, Speaks-Up About Flash And CGE 2010

New Flash Game Development Blog Entry :

' I feel like I've got more ideas for new types of games to build now then I did back then because there are so many great games to get inspired from now'

- Steve Woita, March 9, 2010

If you know 8bitrocket.com then you know we love Flash games. You also know that we love retro games. You also know that we love retro-evolved games, and that we love to interview and gleen game development knowledge from the masters and creators of the genre, the 8-bit and 16-bit programmers for systems like the Atari 2600, atari 800 and Atari ST. Last week we were please to find out a 'perfect storm' was brewing along these lines, and was visiting our site. Steve Woita, A genuine Atari 2600 programmer not only contacted us, but told us that he was using our tutorials and information to help make his own Flash games. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING could be more exciting to us than to have one of our heroes not only contact us, but treat us like peers in this odd and fascinating journey through the world of Flash games.

(more information and an interview after the jump)

3/9/2010 Flash Gaming Summit Report Num. 1: The Longest Day

New Flash Game Development Blog Entry :

(edit: I was so tired I smiised that the title for this story was 'Flah Gaming Summit:' for the past 7 hours. Duh!)

We just returned from our day in at the UCSF Mission Bay conference Center attending The Flash Gaming Summit 2010.

I left my house at 4:00 A.M. this morning, picked up my brother, drove the airport, parked in the $30 maximum a day lot, received my boarding passes, got scanned my airport security, boarded the plane, flew for 1:30 minutes, disembarked, caught a taxi, rode to UCSF, waited in line for a badge, got my free t-shirt and bag, ate the free breakfast, listened to a key-note by Jameson Hsu, attended 3 more successive panel discussions, ate lunch, got a free Zynga t0shirt (I'm not sure why) attended 4 more panel discussions, rode a bus to after party, had a beer, walked through downtown SF looking for a restaurant, ate at CPK, fooled the Westin concierge that I was guest so she would call taxi, rode in taxi with foul-mouthed driver named Sam to the airport, got scanned by airport security a second time, changed my flight so that I would not be stuck until 10:45 on delayed flight, boarded the plane, flew back home for 1:30, got in my car, paid $30, dropped my brother off at his house, and drove and returned home at 11:00 PM.
(more after the jump)

3/9/2010 Classic Gaming Expo Returns in 2010!

New Atari Nerd Blog Entry : I've been 'off' retro games for the past few months. I gave them up for lent (actually, I gave them up after some ex-classic gaming a-hole personality decided that the well received interview I did with him was not good enough for him). I still like making and playing 'retro inspired' and especially 'retro evolved' games, I'm just not that into actual retro games because there are just too many great developers doing great things right now to waste my time on the past too much any longer)...but I really digress.

Today I received this announcement of the Classic Gaming Expo 2010 in the email. I've never been to one of these, but they are the premier event in the Classic Gaming World. Right now, I would not be a good person to interpret this thing, so instead, I'll just post the press release. It looks like fun.

(larger, thrilling images that you can actually read after the jump)

3/9/2010 Flash Indie Game Interweb Mash-up: March 9, 2010: Flash Gaming Summit Edition

New Flash Game Development Blog Entry :

Flash Indie Game Interweb Mash-up: March 9, 2010: Flash Gaming Summit Edition

The 2010 Flash Gaming Summit was a great day all around (with a few strange exceptions). Today's mash-up will be based on things we saw and people we met during this long day

Who we met:

Untold Entertainment
During a couple of the presentations there was one dude who kept asking some pretty 'hard-hitting' questions. For example, he asked Joel from Addicting Games why his content has adult themes but is targeted at children. Ada Chen also seem to not want to say anything on record to him. He turned out to be Ryan Henson Creighton of Untold Entertainment. Ryan (like everyone else) turned out to by quite a nice dude. He had an iPhone demo app he tried to show us, but somehow we got distracted in any case it was good to meet him. Ryan, let's talk further about that one. I have two new Objective C books that I am going through right now...

The Push Button Engine
Ben Garney (pretty tall dude) was there doing a talk on his amazing Push Button Engine (Flash game development framework/engine). We didn't get to see his panel discussion as we were stuck taking notes on some other presentations (I'll get to those in a minute). We did get to talk to Ben for a few minutes as we waited for the ill-fated ride to the over-crowded after party. I think I will have to take some time and build something with his engine soon and test it out. I feel very late in the game on this one... [more]

3/8/2010 Yes Steve Job, SWF IS An open standard: Click Team's Products Now Export Games in .SWf Format

New Flash Game Development Blog Entry : Click Team, the company that has it's roots in STOS, AMOS and Klik And Play, has recently released a new product that will export applications made in their popular development tools (Multimedia Fusion and The Games Factory) in a .SWF format. The Games Factory is a basic version of their too lset, while Multimedia Fusion is the full blown tool suite. both applications have a large following, and are fairly inexpensive. This is a great move to help open-up Flash to a whole new set of developers.

The train keeps running Apple. HTML 5 is still not here, and Flash is not going away. What to do, what to do?

3/6/2010 Flash Gaming Summit: Role Call?

New Flash Game Development Blog Entry :

The Flash Gaming Summit is now sold-out. Jeff and I were both going to go this year, but Jeff got called back home, so I have to hoof-it alone. Still, it looks to be a fun day. Most people going are also going to the GDC, but that is not possible for me this year. I'll be making it the 'longest day ever', flying in staying as long as possible, and flying out the same day.

Is anyone else who frequents this site going? If so, please tell me so I can look out for some friendly faces (that I have never met or seen in real life..oops)

-Steve

3/4/2010 Poll: Which Platform Have You Had The most 'Success' Developing On?

New Flash Game Development Blog Entry : Another Thursday Poll over at our Ning Community. Here is the question:

Which Platform Have You Had The most 'Success' Developing On?

Tell us your answer!

3/4/2010 Video: An Adobe Employee (somewhat awkwardly) Discusses Flash/HTML 5/Apple with Mashable

New Flash Game Development Blog Entry : In an interesting video with surprisingly 'marble-mouthed' audio (rivaling only our own terrible productions) and very nervous looking participants, an Adobe employee discusses Apple/Flash/HTML 5/Mobile/etc. with Mashable.

3/3/2010 Tutorial: AS3: How to Blit an animation from a tile sheet embedded at compile time

New Tutorials Blog Entry :

Tutorial: AS3: How to Blit an animation from a tile sheet embedded at compile time

Today we are going to look at how to use a tile sheet embedded into an AS3 project at compile time.We will cover the embedding, instantiation, and actual usage of the tile sheet to do a simple blit canvas animation. I am currently working on a scrolling re-make of the classic Atari 2600 game, Sky Diver. I have started to create my own simple 8-bit styled tile sheet for the game. I only have the first three preliminary tiles created for the player sprite's free-fall animation. Here is the tile sheet so far:

The sheet is actually 10 tiles wide (320 pixels) by 2 tiles high (64 pixels). The tiles are 32x32 in size. We are only using three tiles so far, but there is room for many more if we need them. We will start to build a simple class that will demonstrate using this sheet for animating the character using a classic blit technique...[more]

3/3/2010 Some Troubling Tidbits On Flash And HTML 5...But Maybe Not For Flash Game Developers

New Flash Game Development Blog Entry :

Today a couple stories arose that, on the surface seem to point to some troubles for Flash, but maybe not yet for flash game developers.

The first comes via PC World: Virgin America Ditches Flash on Its Site . It looks like the Virgin Airline site has decided to remove Flash content so that the site is better suited for iPhone users. It's a bit frustrating to hear about this, but at the same time it makes sense. Why did they use Flash in the first place? For UI or animations of planes flying? For an airline wen site, you'd expect to get information as fast and easily as possible, so HTML should be standard.

I can see this as troubling trend...(more after the jump)

3/1/2010 Still don't Think Using someone Elses I.P., Even For a 'Fan' Project, Is Not A Problem?

New Game Design And Theory Blog Entry : So, do you still think that using the intellectual property that belongs to someone else is not a problem? Do you think that if you are creating a 'tribute' or 'fan project' that you will be left alone?

Think again.

The guys over at The Silver Lining had been working for EIGHT years on a fan-made game using the old Sierra I.P., 'King's Quest'. They even got the tentative 'OK' from the old owner of the I.P., Vivendi. Now that Activision owns it, they have been told to shut-down:

'Recently, however, ownership of the Sierra IP changed hands and becamethe property of Activision. After talks and negotiations in the lastfew months between ourselves and Activision, they have reached thedecision that they are not interested in granting a non-commerciallicense to The Silver Lining, and have asked that we cease production and take down all related materials on our website.'

Eight years eh? These look like a bunch of smart people. I wonder how many games of their own they could have created in that time (maybe they did create some games, who knows?)

Anyway, again, we say: use your own stuff.

3/1/2010 Flash Indie Game Interweb-Mash-Up: March 1, 2010

New Flash Game Development Blog Entry :

Flash Indie Game Interweb-Mash-Up: March 1, 2010

First off, Steve and I will be at the Flash Gaming Summit next Monday, so I hope to put a few faces to names, etc.

Ning Community
8bitrocket is now part of the Ning community social platform. We did this to help create a community to support the upcoming book release and also give us something else to keep us from interacting socially with our families..

Gaming Your Way's iPhone/CS5 hints
Check out the incredible list of iPhone / CS5 hints that Squize has posted from his experience creating 'Zap' for the platform using the beta tools. The cool thing (for me) is that our book covers much of this ground work even though it doesn't have anything really to do with iPhone development. Its just the way I make my games anyway (for the most part).

By the way, if you have not tried the incredible, Ionic, please do yourself a favor. You are in for a treat.

Also, check out the enlightening interview with Barry White of GamesChart.

How to Save a Movie Clip as a PNG
Richard Davey has the goods...[more]

2/27/2010 Hey You Kids, Off My Lawn Num. 2: More Fun With Possible Flash Game I.P. Issues

New Podcasts Blog Entry :

We're not saying these games have barrowed other people's intellectual property, we are just saying it's possible. No matter what, we have fun looking at them anyway.

2/25/2010 New 8bitrocket Game Release: Tunnel Panic

New Flash Game Development Blog Entry :

New 8bitrocket Game Release: Tunnel Panic

Tunnel Panic is the first game from the Essential Flash Games book to be released into the wild in a viral fashion. It's self sponsored (by the book of all things). The original version of this game is featured in chapter 12 of the EFG Book as a way to demonstrate viral Flash games. In this chapter we build a simple game in a few hours and then explain how to add Mochi ads and leader boards to the game. We also go into detail on sponsorships and discuss our friends at FlashGameLicense.com and their offerings in detail.

...[more]

2/25/2010 Poll: How Irritated Are You Tech Pundits Who don't Understand Flash?

New Flash Game Development Blog Entry :

Poll: Poll: How Irritated Are You Tech Pundits Who don't Understand Flash?

Here is a good example of a popular tech pundit who talks about Flash, but doesn't seem to understand it. Bob Cringely, I guyI have respected and followed for more than decade, has weighed in on the Flash/HTML 5 topic with some boneheaded statements:

'Flash always picked up where the browser left off, but it can't talk to your webcam, store local files, or draw pixels directly to your screen.'

WTF? Flash can do all those things (if you include Air for storing local files...something you DO NOT want your browser doing anyway).

Cringely is well respected, but it looks like he doesn't do any %,amp;$*! research before he blows his tech wad into his blog. After 10 years of blogs, I'm done with him.

Anyway, please take this poll now: (did I sway your vote?)

How Irritated Are You Tech Pundits Who don't Understand Flash?

2/24/2010 Game Storm Video Podcast Num. 1

New Podcasts Blog Entry : Game Storm Video Podcast Num. 1

Bonus Content: [more]

2/23/2010 HTML 5 Canvas For Flash Developers Num. 1: What The Num. @*! Is The HTML 5 Canvas?

New Tutorials Blog Entry :

In this set of tutorials, we will explore how the HTML Canvas relates to Flash developers.

So, the first question to answer about the HTML 5 Canvas appears to be this:

'What The Num. @*! Is The HTML 5 Canvas?'

The short answer is this:

It is an area on a web page set-aside to display and manipulate bit-mapped pixels in 'immediate' mode. 'Immediate' mode is a way to draw pixels that gives a programmer ultimate control, but requires the screen objects to be tracked and be redrawn entirely in code. You create it with the ,lt;canvas,gt;,lt;/canvas,gt; HTML tag, and you manipulate it with JavaScript. The Canvas is a window into a bitmapped world that, until recently, only existed with plug-ins like Silverlight , Java ,and of course Flash. The Canvas is currently supported (in part) in the latest versions of Firefox, Opera, and Chrome, but not Internet Explorer

(much more after the jump including a Hello World HTML 5 Canvas demo)

2/21/2010 Hey You Kids, Off My Lawn! We Whine About Flash Games And Intellectual Property

New Podcasts Blog Entry : Here is the first (and maybe last, who knows) episode of 'You kids, Off My Lawn!', a short podcast/music video in which we complain about (possible) intellectual property issues with flash games.

We did this a week ago. I prompted us to create the 'World's Worst Jigsaw Puzzle Collection'. Why? Because we wanted to make some jigsaw puzzles that used totally original IP...
(note, read a long-winded explanation after the jump)

2/19/2010 Tell Us About Your Latest Flash Project

New Flash Game Development Blog Entry : After you take the 'Flash Development Tool Survey', why don't you tell us about your latest project?

Yopu can do it all over here: http://8bitrocket.ning.com/forum/topics/what-is-your-newest-game

2/18/2010 Announcing: Ultimate Unscramble: HTML color Words

New 8bitrocket History Blog Entry :

Have you ever wanted to learn some arcane HTML trivia while playing a mediocre word game? Well, do we have the answer for you!

Ultimate Unscramble: HTML Color Words is the next game in our 'reuse everything possible' series following the 'World's Worst Jigsaw Puzzles'. This game is based on the '...palindromes...' engine. More to follow.
Play after the jump (if you dare)...

2/18/2010 Survey: What Are Your Preferred Flash Development Tools?

New Flash Game Development Blog Entry : OK, now for our first survey.
We'd like to know what your preferred tool set is for Flash development:
Head on over to here to take the survey.

(Is this a cheap tactic to try to get you to check out our new forums and social interaction features? Yeah, probably).

2/17/2010 8bitrocket.com Now Using The Ning.com Social Networking Platform

New 8bitrocket History Blog Entry : We've needed to create a bit more depth to this site for a long time, and with our book coming out next month, we thought it might be time to add forums and other 'social' aspect back to 8bitrocket.com.

We dabbled in with a message board a couple years ago, but it got so riddled with Spam that we simply got rid of it. Times have changed, and much better, more deep and interactive services now exist. One of them is Ning, a 'white label' social media platform that allows you to create a place for users to connect very easily.

We have now created the '8bitrocket.com Ning Community' to augment 8bitrocket. It's brand spanking new (about 10 minutes old), but we invite you to come by, create a Ning account, help us get this thing off the ground. We expect to spend A LOT of time there, and to feature good posts and discussions on the front page of 8bitrocket.com.

http://8bitrocket.ning.com/

2/16/2010 World's Worst Jigsaw Puzzle Collection Launches

New 8bitrocket History Blog Entry :

Today we announce the launch of a set of 20 games that took us less than 40 hours to complete:

The World's Worst Jigsaw Puzzle Collection

We have noticed that many developers create very simple jigsaw puzzles and launch them with Mochi ads. While this is a legitimate way to make some pennies, we've also noticed that, more often than not, these developers use (allegedly) stolen images from major corporations (i.e Disney, Nickelodeon, etc.). It's difficult to compete with that kind of I.P., even if it is not legitimate. Mochi does not remove games with I.P. concerns unless they get a complaint about them. they have to do this because they cannot know the legal situation of every game or piece of art in their system.

Since there is no way we could make 'good' puzzles to compete with this, we decided to make 'bad' puzzles. In fact, we decided to base our puzzles on some of the worst, most mundane, and boring subjects we could imagine. We came up with 20 different topics, and each one became a different game. Here they are:

Num. 1: Some of the dirty dishes I had to do last night. (seriously)

Num. 2: Shades Of My Favorite Color (it's a surprise!)

(18 more after the jump)

2/15/2010 Flash Inter-Web Mash-Up Feb 15, 2010: The Mail bag.

New Flash Game Development Blog Entry :

Flash Inter-Web Mash-Up Feb 15, 2010: The Mail bag.

I have received an interesting array of emails over the last 2 weeks, some good, some bad, some CGA with speaker sound... (all of these are the good ones).

Ace's Retro Picks:
First let's take a look at some New Grounds retro style games that 'our man on the street', Ace 'The Super Villian' has found.

THE BEST FLASH GAME EVER (According to Ace).
Level Up! It's a platformer where you have a number of skills such as jump, run, healing, knowledge, relationship, etc. that you can level up as you use them. At first it's just fun little gem gathering and chatting with the amnesiac hero guy, but a more sinister vibe becomes apparent as you go along. It's made by Titch using the Flixel Engine and has a very nice pixely graphical style and Cave Story -esque gameplay. I'd recommend setting aside an hour or so for this game, though you can save and come back.
Jeff's take: This is a sweet sweet game. I will be playing it for a while!

One Button Bob: This is a lot like Wario Ware if you've done that, but the visuals remind me of Pitfall a bit. You click the mouse to do various tasks. I thought it would be like press Space to Win, but it's much more skill oriented than that one.
Jeff's Take: A very clever retro styled game where the left mouse button performs a single different action on each screen.[more]...

8bitrocket.com Blog

3/11/2010 Poll: How Long Should The Flash Gaming Summit Be Next Year?

3/10/2010 Steve Woita: An Original Atari 2600 Game Developer Tackles Flash Games, Speaks-Up About Flash And CGE 2010

3/9/2010 Flash Gaming Summit Report Num. 1: The Longest Day

3/9/2010 Classic Gaming Expo Returns in 2010!

3/9/2010 Flash Indie Game Interweb Mash-up: March 9, 2010: Flash Gaming Summit Edition

3/8/2010 Yes Steve Job, SWF *IS* An open standard: Click Team's Products Now Export Games in .SWf Format

3/6/2010 Flash Gaming Summit: Role Call?

3/4/2010 Poll: Which Platform Have You Had The most 'Success' Developing On?

3/4/2010 Video: An Adobe Employee (somewhat awkwardly) Discusses Flash/HTML 5/Apple with Mashable

3/3/2010 Tutorial: AS3: How to Blit an animation from a tile sheet embedded at compile time

3/3/2010 Some Troubling Tidbits On Flash And HTML 5...But Maybe Not For Flash Game Developers

3/1/2010 Still don't Think Using someone Elses I.P., Even For a 'Fan' Project, Is Not A Problem?

3/1/2010 Flash Indie Game Interweb-Mash-Up: March 1, 2010

2/27/2010 Hey You Kids, Off My Lawn Num. 2: More Fun With Possible Flash Game I.P. Issues

2/25/2010 New 8bitrocket Game Release: Tunnel Panic

2/25/2010 Poll: How Irritated Are You Tech Pundits Who don't Understand Flash?

2/24/2010 Game Storm Video Podcast Num. 1

2/23/2010 HTML 5 Canvas For Flash Developers Num. 1: What The Num. @*! Is The HTML 5 Canvas?

2/21/2010 Hey You Kids, Off My Lawn! We Whine About Flash Games And Intellectual Property

2/19/2010 Tell Us About Your Latest Flash Project

2/18/2010 Announcing: Ultimate Unscramble: HTML color Words

2/18/2010 Survey: What Are Your Preferred Flash Development Tools?

2/17/2010 8bitrocket.com Now Using The Ning.com Social Networking Platform

2/16/2010 World's Worst Jigsaw Puzzle Collection Launches

2/15/2010 Flash Inter-Web Mash-Up Feb 15, 2010: The Mail bag.

3/8/2010 Yes Steve Job, SWF IS An open standard: Click Team's Products Now Export Games in .SWf Format