8bitrocket.com Blog

11/11/2009 8bitrocket Flash Game Distribution Game Review Podcast 11/11/2009

New Podcasts Blog Entry :

In This podcast we review 8 games. We also learn how to use Chroma Key! (but we need to use it for something better). Also we have some more techincal problems (lighting?!?!?) but the games are pretty good this week, so who cares?

Games Reviews This Week:

Revert to Growth
Heli
Chicken Rampage
Dodgem!
Phytrix
Urban Vintage Gal
Notepad Wars
LadyStar: Jessica Hoshi and the Ajan Warriors

11/9/2009 Optimized Game Timer Loop Update Num. 2

New Flash Game Development Blog Entry : Optimized Game Timer Loop Update Num. 2

Ok, so I spent the weekend (well the free-time part anyway), looking at the timer and found that in its current form it works best at 30FPS across all platforms. With updateAfterEvent turned on, you might still run the risk of an older computer with a new FP10 plugin not working (in the future), but so far this configuration works fine on all systems I tested,

I am not content though, so for now, if you are using the Sleep Based Active Render Game Loop Timer with a frame rate above 30, then I suggest turning off the updateAfterEvent and replacing it with stage.invalidate(). This doesn't seem to have the exact same smoothing reaction as updateAfterEvent, and it might just be a placebo, but it makes me feel better to have something it its place for for now.

Also, it is best (like I said up above) to try to keep the FPS at 30 with or without the updateAfterEvent turned on.

Now, I did work on 6 different timers in an attempt to profile a game while running and reset the frame rate and or turn off UpdateAfterEvent dynamically. It actually worked, but while the game played the FPS would continue to drop to the minimum I set no matter what I tried. This is because it never knew exactly when the game-play started or how long to continue profiling before it was satisfied. It just began profiling as soon as the application started (even on the menu screens). I keep my render loop and my game code decoupled and to continue to do this, I didn't want them to know too much about the state of the other. I added code to wait a specified number of frames and then lock in the current frame rate... [more after the jump]

11/7/2009 8bitrocket Mochi Game Review Video Pocast: 11/06/09

New Podcasts Blog Entry :

8bitrocket Mochi Game Review Pocast: 11/06/09 We review about 8 games, and Steve touches his hair far too often, as we both never look into the camera because we are looking at a laptop to see the goods. Still, the new gameplay overlay screens are pretty cool.

Game Links:

11/6/2009 Tutorial: Using The Open Source CamStudio to Record Flash Game Play Animations

New Tutorials Blog Entry :

We have found the need to take screen animations of our games lately, but were at a loss on how to do it cheaply and easily. That was until last week, when we found CamStudio, an Open Source utility for capturing video.

CamStudio is a very interesting piece of software. It is available for Windows only, which is a slight downfall (fire-up those Windows XP Bootcamp partitions Mac Lovers), but the benefits far outweigh the trouble of setting it up.

After you have downloaded and installed the program from CamStudio.org, launch it and you will see this screen.

The most important button is the big red circle. This will start recording. Before you press that button, find a Flash game you would like to record. Preferably one with a title screen, and launch it. This can be stand-alone, in a web page, or even in the IDE.

11/5/2009 SFXR native in Mac OS and AS3!

New Flash Game Development Blog Entry : SFXR native in Mac OS and AS3!

I installed Windows 7 on my Bootcamp drive this last weekend. There were a few pitfalls, such as getting BlueTooth devices to work properly (black magic), but it was mostly painless. To start up work on the games book again, I needed to re-install all of my usual development tools. Everything from FlashDevelop to Paint.net worked fine, with the exception of the wonderful 8-bit sound generator, SFXR. Originally created by DrPetter for a Ludum Dare weekend game contest over 2 years ago, this incredible tool has now been ported to multiple platforms, including MAC OS and AS3! No longer do I have to rely on Windows for all of my best free tools.

The great site, Woolyss Chipmusic, has a zip of all the version ports for you to play with.

You can use the AS3 version online without downloading anything. Written by Tomas Pettersson, you can read all about it on the great SuperFlashBrothers blog. Plus, the code is open source, so you can add sound generation directly to your own games.

Sweet Sweet 8-bit Zarjaz!

11/3/2009 8bitrocket.com Games Demo Reel: 70 games in 3.5 minutes.

New 8bitrocket History Blog Entry :

After making the last video podcast, the most enjoyable part turned out to be capturing video of some of our games. Taking that lead, we created this new 'demo reel' with game play video from just about 70 games in 3.5 minutes, most of which have never seen the light of day. Many of these are demos and experiments, while some are full games that are 95% complete but never 'released' for various reasons.

11/3/2009 Indie Flash Game Development Inter-Web Mash-up: November 3, 2009 (including Flash Game Distribution Reviews)

New Flash Game Development Blog Entry :

Indie Flash Game Development Inter-Web Mash-up: November 3, 2009 (including Flash Game Distribution Reviews)

There is a lot of cool new stuff to cover, so with no further delay here is a survey of my favorite sites, games, and blogs. We start with some Flash Game Distribution reviews:

Flash Game Distribution Reviews:
Game of The Week: Zip Zap

Zip Zap is an awesome classic Defender style arcade game with a style and presentation all it own. Sweet sweet Zar Jaz!
Grade: 90% Retrotastic!

-Rag Doll Pirates: Fire cannon balls at attacking pirates. The music, SFX and presentation are high quality. The game is pretty fun.
Grade 80% Retrotastic

-Spectromancer: A very made crafted card battle game that looks like a PC game. The file is large, but the presentation is well worth the wait.
Grade 85% Retrotastic...[a lot more after the jump]

10/31/2009 8bitrocket.com Video Podcast-Essential Flash Game Book Games Preview

New Podcasts Blog Entry :
8bitrocket.com Video Podcast-Halloween Edition. In this edition we preview the games from our forth coming Flash game development book, Essential Flash Games. You actually see them in action. We also learned to use a screen capture utility and the results are...mediocre as always. Hey, but it's getting better. Also, check out out new title sequence!

PS: Sorry for the terrible edit at the beginning. I had to cut 2 minutes to get it on YouTube.

10/29/2009 Editorial: Two Big Kids On The Block In The Viral Flash World

New Flash Game Development Blog Entry : When Jeff and I were little, we lived on a block with a lot of other kids. Of all those kids, there were two bigger ones that we tried to be friends with: Justin and Travis. Both had good qualities and bad ones too. Justin was a pretty nice guy, but he sometimes would do some underhanded things that would make his aunt (the one he lived with) pretty upset. Travis on the other hand was a pretty tough but fair character. You never wanted to get on his bad side, but at the same time, he would passionately defend you if you were his friend. Jeff and I always tried to walk the line and be friends with both of them. As the smaller kids, this sometimes worked and sometimes got us smacked around and hurt. No matter, we always felt that Justin and Travis should have been better friends: the whole block would have been better for it, but it never happened.

I tell you this story because in the Flash viral game space we have a couple big kids who should think about playing nice together before the whole block falls apart.

10/28/2009 Kill Screen: A Video Game Magazine That Aims For The Mature Mind

New Required Reading Blog Entry :

If you are like us, you constantly lament the demise of great game magazines like Electronic Games and Next Generation. Those magazines went beyond the standard news/preview/review/strategy format of most gaming tomes to include in-depth articles on subjects like sociology and future of the hobby. However, even those publications still followed a familiar format (obviously invented by Electronic Games but improved-upon by Next Generation) that made them stand-out as magazines for video game fans only. Mainstream general entertainment magazines like Rolling Stone and Entertainment Weekly have dabbled in gaming, but games never appear as any kind of regular in those publications either. At the same time, there are some very sophisticated, format busting magazines dedicated to music (Blender) technology (Wired), D.I.Y. (Make), culture (Fader) that try to go beyond the mainstream and look at their topics in the context of the real world. However, there has never been gaming magazine that tried to tackle the topic from that angle ....until now.

10/28/2009 A Youth Well Wasted: Lee Bradly Bogs His Youth In Video Games

New Required Reading Blog Entry :
UK game journalist Lee Bradly has been writing an on-going blog chronicling his youth playing video games. His series, A Youth Well Wasted is a a fascinating story about his friendship with a kid whose dad was a Sega executive.

As you may know, we here at 8bitrocket.com have been running a similar series named Atari Nerd Chronicles that follows our youth loving Atari. Bradly's story is 100% his own, but at the same, it could be called 'Sega Nerd Chronicles'...

10/26/2009 Mochi Game Review Mash-Up: October 26, 2009 (10 new games reviewed)

New Flash Game Development Blog Entry :

Mochi Game Review Mash-Up: October 26, 2009 (10 new games reviewed)

Games Reviewed: Street Fighter 2: CE, GraveShift 2: The Sewers, Zombie Taxi 2, Globulos Challenge, Froggy, Lost Mouse, WS Cup 2009, Battlerun, Speed

Game of the Week: Street Fighter 2 Championship Edition

I don't know why I haven't got around to reviewing this one yet. I was never a huge fan of the fighting games in the 90's (mostly because I button mash), but I always appreciated the technical skill it took to both create and play these games.

This is an official port, used as 'adverware' to promote the latest edition of the franchise. From what I remember, this is identical to the arcade version and is an amazing technical achievement as a Flash game...[more after the jump]

10/21/2009 Essential Guite To Flash Games Book: Pre-Order

New Flash Game Development Blog Entry :

This has been up for a couple weeks but were waiting some confirmations to post it. You can now pre-order the Essential guide to Flash Games book from Amazon.

Also, we learned yesterday that that great Iain Lobb will be the technical reviewer for the book,so if we lead you guys astray, you can be sure Iain will get us back on-track!

10/20/2009 Mochi Game Review Mash-Up October 20, 2009 (11 new games reviewed)

New Flash Game Development Blog Entry : Mochi Game Review Mash-Up October 20, 2009 (11 new games reviewed)

I wanted to do a full blog and site mash-up today (along with MochiGame Reviews), but I that task is so daunting, I decided to stick to just reviews for another day. I searched out retro games again (or thosethat were probably inspired by retro games) because, unfortunately, Iam THAT guy.

Gamesreviewed today: VectorConflict The siege, Magnets, Obechi, Assembler 4, EnergyLeak, Macrophage, Robot Bimmy, UFO Attack, Zero,Baldy Dash, Pumpkin Wars

Gameof the day: Vector Conflict The siege:

Wow, talk about a game that literally rocks, this is it. It's a littlelike the classic Atari coin-op, Battlezone in style but without themovement through the 3D play field. You man your turret,rotating 360 degrees and fire(helpedbyyour radar) your extensive arsenal at incoming hoards ofenemy craft.

There are many upgrades to obtain, and everything looks and soundsfirst class (especially the rocking soundtrack). I would give

10/17/2009 Essential Flash Games Book Ch.9: Dice Battle! A.I.Battle Puzzle Game.

New Flash Game Development Blog Entry :

Here is an alpha sample screen of the game 'Dice Battle' from the 'Essential Flash Games' book.

This game builds upon the material in Chapter 8 (Color Drop), adding ramping machine-based A.I., a soundtrack manager,multiple enemies in battle-style puzzle game like Book Worm Adventures or Puzzle Quest, plus a bunch of other enhancements. This another game that uses the graphics in spritelib.

10/14/2009 Mochi Game Review Mash-Up : Oct 14th, 2009 (Games where things shoot at other things day)

New Flash Game Development Blog Entry :

Mochi Game Review Mash-Up : Oct 14th, 2009 (Games where things shoot at other things day)

These were always my favorite types of arcade, video, and computer games, so I scoured the 'Coins', 'Featured', and 'Recent' Mochi lists for some arcade blastin' titles to review.

Games Graded: Tank Destroyer, Gravitor, Bug Squad, Mummy Tombs, Halloween Kill Zone, Spiders Attack, Target Shooter, Indirect Assault, and Jump 'n Gun

Games of the Day: Tank Destroyer

Tank Destroyer is a very well made, over-head scrolling 2D arcade blaster. You man a tank that can be upgraded with an arsenal weapons and you are tasked with destroying all of the enemy tanks.

The mouse moves the turret, [more after the jump]

10/12/2009 Essential Guide To Flash Games Book: Chapter 10: A tile-based scrolling driving game

New Flash Game Development Blog Entry :

Essential Guide To Flash Games Book: Chapter 10: A tile-based scrolling driving game

I put the finishing touches on the game for chapter 10 this weekend and started writing up the chapter text. It is supposed to be done by now, but the game took me a little longer than I had thought. I originally wrote a tutorial that covered some of this area, but never finished the game. Now that my code and game will be in print, I needed to spend extra time ensuring that I was doing everything as best as I can. It took a little more time than I thought it would. If this had been a one-off game, I could have taken some short-cuts, but the game engine needed to work will all of the levels that anyone could think of (within reason) and to do that took more time than I thought.

...[more after the jump]

10/10/2009 Jeff Minter's Grid Runner Revolution PC Review

New Atari Nerd Blog Entry :

If 8bitrocket.com had it's very own 'Mt. Rushmore' containing the faces of four video games designer/developers who have influenced us the most they would be:

Dan Bunten (programmer/designer of MULE and Seven Cities Of Gold)
Chris Crawford, Atari 8-bit evangelist and the author of the first ever book about the art of video game design.
Ed Logg: Long-time coin-op programmer/designer and co-developer of both Asteroids and Centipede.
Jeff Minter : Yak loving 8-bit and 16-bit game developer, developer of Tempest 2000, and the originator of the entire 'Post Retro/Retro Evolved' game genre.

The last one, Jeff Minter also happens to be one of the chief developers of Grid Runner Revolution, the modern update (27years in the making) of the 1982 Llamasoft game Grid Runner just released for the PC and available at the Llamasoft Web Site. Minter jumped back into the modern era of video game after releasing Space Giraffe for the PC and Xbox Live Arcade a couple years ago. Unfortunately for Minter, the reaction to Space Giraffe was not what he expected. While Minter expected to find on Xbox Live, a sophisticated gaming audience that would appreciate his modern retelling of Tempest via Space Giraffe, what he found was quite different. The masses must have been too busy filming themselves naked with playing Uno to realize what a gem they missed in Space Giraffe, but missed it they did. They missed it so much that Minter vowed to quit making games altogether.

10/7/2009 Mochi Game Review Mash-Up: October 7, 2009 (11 Games Reviewed)

New Flash Game Development Blog Entry :

Mochi Game Review Mash-Up: October 7, 2009 (11 Games Reviewed)

Today the game selection kind of made me feel like I was looking though some of the various pirate crew Atari ST and Amiga late era disc menus from the 90's. Some gems, some odd games with bad foreign translations, too many games with unintentional penis references, and many mediocre or unfinished arcade romps.

Games Reviewed: The Tickler, 2 Days 2 Die - The Other Side, Race, Gold Train, Raksha Bandham, Docokrampage, Kafrina's Cart, Watercolor Shooter, MX Creator II, Surreal Worlds Shooter, and Soul Survivor.

Game Of The Day: The Tickler: One word...(ok two)...Fcuking (sic) AWESOME! You are the Tickler, a cyborg gone wildly mad who is hell bend on destroying everything in his(her?) path. The game uses a relatively simple, over-head view of an incredibly well animated Tickler to depict the action.

Using the mouse, you use your extending claws to rip, kill and strangle everything and everyone...[more after the jump]

10/6/2009 Flash Indie Game Interweb Mash-up (plus Mochi Game reviews): October 6, 2009

New Flash Game Development Blog Entry :

Flash Indie Game Interweb Mash-up (plus Mochi Game reviews): October 6, 2009

I have a lot of updates that I have been putting off, so I will try to quickly squeeze them in here today...

Book Update:
Working on a book is hard. No whining here, just a statement because I have not had time to look over the blogs and games for a week and do a Mash-Up. I have almost completed my game for chapter 10 of our upcoming Friends Of Ed Book, Essential Flash Games. The chapter deals with creating an arcade, 2D overhead driving game in a tile-base, blitted, scrolling world. I am currently having a few collisions detection issues, and need to create a couple classes for some new screen types, but I should be complete today and and on to writing the text of the chapter.

Mochi Game Of The Day: Blaster Force By LongAnimals
My love of retro vector games holds no bounds, so when I encountered this little gem from LongAnimals today, I had to pick it as my game of the day. It is a simple contest where your fly an ship Asteroids-style through a top-down scrolling environment. Your job is to blast everything, and not let your ship hit the walls or fall off the bottom of the screen.

...[more]

10/6/2009 Adobe Max Report Num. 2: Adobe Takes On Mochi With their Own Game Distribution, Ad Serving, and Monetization (updated)

New Flash Game Development Blog Entry :

Ok, Adobe Max day Num. 1 was even better than Day Num. 1. Here is a run-down.

Adobe Distribution

First off, we were shown Adobe's answer to Mochi ads and Monetization, Adobe Distribition Services . Here are some of the features of the service:

Sharing : Easily distribute your app and game through Facebook, MySpace, Blogger, etc. This looks like a fancy widget to embed games based on the target social media outlet. Kinda cool.
Promotion: Basically, paid promotion to get you game/app our faster. This looks like their 'distribution'. Unlike Mochi or Flash Game Distribution, you have to pay for it.
Ad-Hosting: If you use the sharing widget, you can host ads (probably through the widget). You can still run Mochi (or other) ads in your game.
Tracking: Think Mochi-bot, or Mochiads tracking.
Shibuya: This is a new service that lets you sell your Adobe Air apps through an App Store. There is a try/buy model too.

(more after the jump)

10/5/2009 Adobe Max Report Day Num. 1

New Flash Game Development Blog Entry :

OK, so here are my notes from Adobe Max Day Num. 1:

1. Biggest News: Flash On The iPhone. This does not mean it can run Flash apps in the browser, but it does mean that you can compile to native iPhone apps kind of like you make Projectors for Windows.

2. Flash Catalyst: I had not seen this before. It's a cheap, cut-down version of Flash that you can use to create animations. I liked this better when it was called Flash 4. I see what they are trying to do though...

3. Cold Fusion: Did you know that there are now 800,000 Cold Fusion developers, up from 200,000 in 2004. That's what the graph said anyway.

4. A cheap Physics engine for Flash Pro? It looks like they have added a cheap physics engine to enhance tweens. OK. Hopefully there will be some kind of AS3 interface to it.

5. Flash Player 10.1: Optimized for handsets to save lots of memory. It looks like Adobe fixed a few leaks.

6. Avatar Movie Preview: They had a preview for the Avatar movie. In 3D now less, introduced by the movie's producer. They showed about 10 minutes of footage. Now I know what this movie is about. I think I liked it better when it was called Dances With Wolves.

7. Oh yeah, Adobe is merging with Omniture. Yawn. Think Mochi next time Adobe.

10/4/2009 Atari Nerd Chronicles: 1982-1983: Computer Lab

New Atari Nerd Blog Entry :

Part I: Mr. Hughes

In the fall of 1982 I started 7th grade at Foster A. Begg Jr. High School in Manhattan Beach California. My classes were Homeroom, Honors English. Pre-Algebra, Honors Science, Honors Social Science, Drama, Spanish 1, and P.E. My Schedule was stacked with very difficult classes, and usually that would have been perfectly fine. I had been a pretty good student all through elementary school, wracking-up good grades and a fistful of dollars my dad would pay for every 'A' on my report cards. As 7th grade started though, I had began to change. Just 9 months before, at Christmas, my brother and I had received our Atari 2600 VCS. Then, instead of spending our free-time reading or watching baseball on TV, we were playing video games. A lot of video games. However, it was not just playing, we also spent a lot of time designing our own games on the graph paper my dad brought home from his job at Hughes Aircraft, and with BASIC language manuals we had borrowed from the Manhattan Heights Library. Where once I had found school to be the most thrilling thing I had ever experienced, the idea of playing and making video games had taken its place.

[continued after the jump ]

10/2/2009 Mochi Game Of The Day Review: Arthropod Armada By Rocketslap

New Flash Game Development Blog Entry : Mochi Game Of The Day Review: Arthropod Armada By Rocketslap

Arthropod Armadais a very well done sidescrolling blaster in the R-Type genre. Instead of a piloting a spaceship anorganic alien underworld, you are a flying bug soldier on amission to defendyour homeland from evil imperial armada. You are equippedofsome sortwith a sweettail weapon that fires over your own head and forward. The visual styleisvery reminiscent of the older Road Runner cartoons with less colorsaturation and more swatches of soft pastels. At first glance itcertainly don't look like the kick-ass blaster that is turns out tobe, but once you start playing, you are in for a retro arcade treat.

You begin the game as a cute little bug sporting an armored helmet andthe single shotkick ass blaster ...[more]

10/2/2009 Game Macropayments: A Developer Subscription Model?

New Flash Game Development Blog Entry :

I was thinking about this on the way home yesterday, and I thought I would run it up the old 8bitrocket.com flag pole to see what people think. After writing about what I might pay for using Micropayments a few weeks back, it occurred to me that there is another model that appeals to me even more as a consumer: Macropayments.

When I find a developer who has made a game that I like I'm usually very interested in all the other games they might have for sale. This has happened, well, since forever actually. Back in the 80's when I would buy a game from Synapse, Origin, SSI, etc. I always loved to pull out the catalog that was inserted in most game boxes to see what else the developer/publisher was planning to release. Much of the time these catalogs were filled with intriguing looking games that were not being promoted because they were not their 'big' titles. For every Blue Max there was a Drelbs or Breakers. For every Ultima IV there was an Ogre or Space Rogue. For every AD,amp;D Gold Box game there was a Roadwar 2000 or Demon's Winter. In the PC era, smaller games from companies like Apogee, EpicMegaGames, Mountain King gave me a similar visceral thrill. [contiuned after the jump]