Goodbye 2013 | Hullo 2014
That’s another year over and it’s once again time for me to recap what I’ve been up to over the past twelve months and look forward to the next. It’s also an opportunity to see how close I came to achieving the goals I’d set out for myself at the beginning of the year. I […]
Oculus Rift
We had an Oculus Rift in the office the other day and I think it has the potential to be a real game changer. In fact, after only a few seconds inside virtual reality I was sold by the Rift’s amazing immersive experience. First up was the Sixense Tuscany demo, which was a great introduction […]
TypeScript
I’ve been doing a lot more JavaScript recently and while I’m enjoying it I do really miss the type safety and object-oriented language features provided by ActionScript 3. This is especially true for larger projects where a proper object-oriented approach would be ideal. JavaScript’s typeless and dynamic nature means it’s incredibly easy to introduce bugs […]
Getting to grips with Git
It seems every man and his dog is using Git for version control these days and I’d been feeling a tad left out of late. You see I’ve been using Subversion for close to seven years now both for personal projects and at WeeWorld (we used SourceSafe in the very early days but that’s best […]
BAFTA Play
BAFTA Scotland recently hosted an evening showcasing Scottish games talent, and I took the opportunity to pop along and see what was on offer. There was a really diverse selection available to play, including award-winning games from the 2013 Scottish Game Jam and the BAFTA Scotland New Talent Awards. I was struck by the innovation […]
Some AIR Mobile Apps
One of the nice things about keeping a blog is that I get contacted by people from time to time asking me to take a look at their apps or pointing me in the direction of other successful apps written in Adobe AIR. Here’s a few that have come to my attention recently. Picshop Pro […]
ActionScript 3: The New Bottleneck?
NOTE: If you read this post then please also read the comment at the end from sHTiF (creator of Genome2D) who details some poor assumptions/misunderstandings on my part. When writing my Monster Dash clone, I opted to start by using Flash’s classic display list. Although my intention was to eventually swap over to the Starling […]
Zynga introduce PlayScript compiler and runtime
If you’re one of the many people aghast at Adobe’s decision to abandon ActionScript 4 then you might be very interested in PlayScript. Developed by Zynga, PlayScript is an open-source ActionScript 3 compatible compiler that targets a variety of runtimes to quickly build 3D games for both the web and mobile devices. In addition to […]
Indie Game: The Movie
It took me long enough but I finally got around to seeing Indie Game: The Movie the other night at the Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA) in Glasgow, and I must say I thoroughly enjoyed it. The film documents the development of independent games, through the story of three well known games: Braid, Super Meat […]
Review: Box2D for Flash Games
It seems just about every game these days relies on physics. There are many engines available but probably the most popular is Box2D, which powers smash hits including Angry Birds and Tiny Wings. But if you’re looking to write your first physics based game then it can all feel rather daunting. Thankfully Packt Publishing’s latest […]