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Geek Culture / My Flash games / blog (aka "What I've been up to this year")

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Richard Davey
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Posted: 11th Apr 2008 02:09
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Greetz,

The short-version:

At the start of the year I decided to learn ActionScript3. I've never touched flash / actionscript before, so it was quite a learning curve. But it has been a real blast! So I just wanted to share my latest games / experiments with you all:

http://www.photonstorm.com

My games are in the links on the right-hand side (there are 3 so far, which isn't bad going for 3 months worth of learning AS3!)

The long version

Hello everyone I haven't posted on the forums for a while, but I do check in every week to see what's hot. I love reading the TGC newsletter each month, even more-so now I don't have to write it! It's great to see this place thriving.

Following Ric's lead (posting about his awesome flash game Kinetikz) I just wanted to share what I've been up to recently. Lots of the stuff going-on where I work is flash games development, so at the start of the year they asked me to go away and teach myself AS3 so I could contribute towards the new work coming in.

I have never touched flash before, which I think has worked in my favour to be honest, judging by the large amount of issues I see on flash forums re: moving from AS2 to AS3. Work bought me a copy of CS3, I installed FlashDevelop, and I've not looked back! AS3 is a beautiful language, powerful, compact and extremely versatile.

Combine this with the sheer explosion of online casual games over the past few years and it made sense to dive in head first. I set-up a blog for myself this month, mostly to just keep track of all the neat things going on in AS3 land, but also as a place to let people try my games (and WIPs).

http://www.photonstorm.com

My first 3 games are up there, along with what I consider to be the pros and cons of each one, plus development comments. I figured it made sense to write this while the games were hot in my mind, rather than later on. Maybe April 2009 I can look back at it and smile

The games I had to write to start with are very "casual" in nature, because they needed to fit onto a web site primarily aimed at kids. Those of you who know me realise I'm more of a hardcore arcade person myself, so I promise my next release will definitely involving shooting of some variety I've been playing with Box2D AS3 a lot, and am toying with a vertically scrolling jetpac idea, but we'll see how it goes!

It's really exciting for me to actually be in a position where I can code games and demos again. I used to do loads of it before I joined TGC, and it's somewhat ironic that it isn't until I left that I could resume this passion once more. I guess it's that whole "taking your work home with you" syndrome.

Anyway - hi to everyone!


http://www.photonstorm.com
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Michael S
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Posted: 11th Apr 2008 02:37 Edited at: 11th Apr 2008 02:47
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OMG!!!
Hey there Rich!
Good to see you again.
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Zaibatsu
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Posted: 11th Apr 2008 03:09
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Hello, haven't seen you in a while.

I'm sure it's just me being extraordinarily thick, but I couldn't figure out your color chains game...

The colors only fell at what seemed like random intervals, at least I could see no pattern in why only some of the ones i clicked got destroyed.

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Zappo
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Posted: 11th Apr 2008 03:37
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Very nice games and VERY polished. I visit the 'Shaun The Sheep' site quite regularly as my daughter loves the games on there and the TV show.

I agree with your comment about jumping straight into AS3. I have been writing in AS2 for quite a few years now and when I tried AS3 a short time ago I gave up quite quickly. Its just so different it would really require a lot of time to get to grips with it. Most of the Flash I do is educational type games for school Web sites so they aren't very complex. Mostly puzzles. I have also recently got a new mobile phone which plays Flash games so I am hoping to write a few games especially for that. I think there is a big market there.


Chart data provided with kind permission from ELSPA
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Jeku
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Posted: 11th Apr 2008 10:34
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Hey Rich, nice to see you around here again. We use AS3 at work too, and I'm wondering if you're taking full advantage of the OO aspects with your games?

Also, the tween library looks pretty cool


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Van B
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Posted: 11th Apr 2008 10:41
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Good to see you back in the code mines again Rich

Being paid to write casual games, can't get much better than that huh!.


less is more, but if less is more how you keeping score?
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Richard Davey
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Posted: 11th Apr 2008 11:57
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Quote: "The colors only fell at what seemed like random intervals, at least I could see no pattern in why only some of the ones i clicked got destroyed."


There are instructions at the start, but I forgive you if you skipped them Basically the colours must link-up. The minimum link is 2 blocks. So if you click a red that has another red to the left of it, that will form a chain that you can then click again to explode. The longer the chain, the more points you get.

Quote: "I agree with your comment about jumping straight into AS3. I have been writing in AS2 for quite a few years now and when I tried AS3 a short time ago I gave up quite quickly. Its just so different it would really require a lot of time to get to grips with it."


Yeah I have read this a LOT over the past few months - people seem really scared of it (I'm not saying you are, but the less experienced kids on the forums sound that way). I'm quite glad I don't have any AS2 knowledge because it's so very different. For example I don't use a single line of code on the Timeline, I have never even needed to use a MovieClip yet (Sprites all the way). So I do think this has worked to my benefit.

Quote: "Most of the Flash I do is educational type games for school Web sites so they aren't very complex. Mostly puzzles."


If you've got any games we could re-brand for the Shaun the Sheep web site, then drop me an email (richard.davey@aardman.com) - we're always looking for new games, and would of course pay for this.

Quote: "I have also recently got a new mobile phone which plays Flash games so I am hoping to write a few games especially for that. I think there is a big market there."


Yeah, FlashLite looks great. Not had time for that yet

Quote: "We use AS3 at work too, and I'm wondering if you're taking full advantage of the OO aspects with your games?"


Hey Jeku Yeah all of my games are 100% object based, I wouldn't code any other way! For example in the yahtzee game, each die is an object which knows all about itself - what value is displayed, if it is clicked or not, etc. I then have a combo class which takes the 5 die objects and works out which combos are available for them, and it then fires an event to the comboPanel which does nothing but handle turning the buttons on/off and handling the clicks

I really love the way the events work in AS3, really powerful.

Quote: "Good to see you back in the code mines again Rich

Being paid to write casual games, can't get much better than that huh!."


It's great We're working on some quite large stuff internally (proper full-on AS3 based virtual world for example, based on ElectroServer) so it's definitely fun!

I'll post my Five Dice Frenzy game up now incase anyone wants to test

Cheers,

Rich


http://www.photonstorm.com
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Jeku
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Posted: 11th Apr 2008 19:10 Edited at: 11th Apr 2008 19:11
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Yes, please post Five Dice Frenzy.

I think that's a dream job you have there, and I see you've posted about a bunch of cool Flash libraries. There's one more blog for my Google Reader

Over the Christmas break I ported about 50% of WordTrix over to Flash in 2D--- it was such a breeze working with the large dictionary and the various sprite capabilities. For some reason I thought Flash was severely limited with its memory capabilities, my opinion has since changed. If you could recommend a nice 3D engine for Flash I'd be much obliged.


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Richard Davey
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Posted: 11th Apr 2008 19:46
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I think Flash has a REALLY bad history behind it (as far as most developers are concerned). Kinda like early DBPro maybe But the AVM is remarkable, AS3 a joy to use and the overall power is just great.

It's not perfect (what is?) and could always be improved, but for a true cross-platform system that relies totally on software rendering it's great!

I have uploaded a beta of Five Dice for you

Cheers,

Rich


http://www.photonstorm.com
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Xenocythe
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Posted: 11th Apr 2008 19:47
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That's great stuff Rich!

I'm getting quite into flash myself, and I have a few questions for a flash god like you.

Creating a simple online game in flash would require a socket server, correct? Most of them are costy, and I wanted your input on which socket server is best to be bought. ElectroServer?

Is there a big jump between AS2 and AS3? Which language would be better for an online game of some sort?

Anyways, good to see you back, and good to see you living the dream that many of us wish we could. Have fun mate.

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Richard Davey
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Posted: 11th Apr 2008 20:27
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Hi - I have absolutely no AS2 experience, so I cannot comment on that sorry. But from what I have read (and seen) the move from AS2 to AS3 is a dramatic one. Gone is the "ease" (and therefore imho clunkyness) of AS2 and AS3 fully embraces the new OO/event model in depth.

I honestly believe you should focus on AS3 totally - it is significantly faster, especially when shifting around masses of objects. It's also a lot cleaner, so easier to structure your code.

As for a multiplayer flash game it depends how complex the game is. For a simple game you could get away with just posting data to php scripts and reading a response. For a real-time game (where you need to see everyone walking around at once, etc) then yes you need a sockets based server. We evaluated ElectroServer (used to power Webkinz) and SmartFoxServer (which Club Penguin originally used). Both offer cheaper "basic" versions to get testing with.


http://www.photonstorm.com
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Xenocythe
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Posted: 11th Apr 2008 21:52
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Ahh, I see. Thanks for the info

What did you find better to use? ElectroServer, or SmartFoxServer? I've taken a look at both, they look quite good. Which one's for mmo's, and which one's for smaller scale online games?

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Richard Davey
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Posted: 11th Apr 2008 23:58
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They should both be able to handle what you need - it's just down to your preference for the API at the end of the day, so I can't really help you there. I preferred ES, but that doesn't mean you will.


http://www.photonstorm.com
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Xenocythe
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Posted: 12th Apr 2008 03:46
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Alright, thanks Rich.

Good luck with all of your stuff.

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Zaibatsu
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Posted: 12th Apr 2008 07:18
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Quote: "There are instructions at the start, but I forgive you if you skipped them Basically the colours must link-up. The minimum link is 2 blocks. So if you click a red that has another red to the left of it, that will form a chain that you can then click again to explode. The longer the chain, the more points you get."


I read the instructions, I didn't see anything about clicking the blocks twice. now it works.

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BiggAdd
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Posted: 12th Apr 2008 19:19
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Hi Rich.
Some smart games going on there. Pretty impressive for your first flash games.

How goes everything over at Aardman?

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Zappo
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Posted: 12th Apr 2008 21:19
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Quote: "If you've got any games we could re-brand for the Shaun the Sheep web site, then drop me an email"

Thanks Richard. I have emailed you with some links.

I guess there are two reasons why I have stuck with AS2 for now. The first is that I think AS3 would require learning from scratch again. Making the time is a problem there (isn't it always!).
The second is that I get the impression AS2 is compatible with more devices (especially as I can publish my Flash as version 6-8 if necessary). I know this isn't a problem with PC's as the player is free but for other things (including embedded devices) its not so easy to upgrade.

I will have to learn AS3 eventually but for now, it can wait


Chart data provided with kind permission from ELSPA
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