Archive for November, 2008
Distort an image in Flash 10 with DrawTriangles
Posted by Will | Filed under Adobe AIR, Adobe Flash, Experiments, Flash Games
One of the coolest features to come out of Flash Player 10’s new 3D capabilities is an addition to the Graphics class, the DrawTriangles method.
Most Flash designers discover early on that distorting a DisplayObject is impossible through the Flash IDE. This is unfortunately still the case (3D notwithstanding), however by making use of a bit of Actionscript trickery involving DrawTriangles we can create display objects that can be distorted dynamically at run time. Pretty cool I reckon!
This example shows how a Sprite containing a Bitmap fill can have it’s corners dragged, distorting the Sprite’s fill. You will immediately note that this example is not perfect. I’m only using 2 triangles here but it’s safe to say that by increasing the number of triangles will provide better results.
This next example is effectively the same as the above one except we are drawing an animating MovieClip to the BitmapData object used as the Sprite’s fill. The MovieClip is drawn to the BitmapData at the frame rate of the movie giving it an animated effect. This same technique can also be used for full motion video. (more…)
Anatomy of a Banner Ad: From paper to screen
Posted by Will | Filed under Adobe Flash, Advertising, Banners
I’m hoping to release some posts over the next week or two discussing some of my experiences building banners with Adobe Flash and to give a general overview of the process from concept to delivery.
This overview is based on my experiences as a freelance Interactive Designer in various advertising agencies and therefore the process is geared towards creating a banner for a paying client. Naturally the design process can vary from agency to agency so I will try to keep this fairly generic but highlight potential pitfalls along the way. (more…)
Kongregate adds “developer tipping”
Posted by Will | Filed under Adobe Flash, Flash Games
No, It’s nothing like cow tipping. Kongregate has just released a new way flash game developers can earn a little extra cash… with tips.
Kongregate is a site devoted to online games, unique in that it doesn’t allow developers to submit games that have in-game ads. It supports game makers through a revenue share model based on ads surrounding the games on the site. Developers can increase their revenue percentage up to a maxium of 50% by including Kongregate’s statistics or high score API’s.
Tipping is exactly what it sounds like. Players can tip the developers of their favourite games a monetary value of their choosing using the new on-site currency aptly named Kreds. Players can purchase Kreds with their own ‘real world’ money and use them on tipping as well as ‘virtual items’ in upcomming Kong produced muliplayer games.
This is certainly an interesting move by Kongregate. There is a stigma with casual gamers (and the internet in general) that things should simply be free. This is a common problem for casual game developers trying to make a buck. While it’s a generous move for Kongregate to give 100% of tips to the developers It will be interesting to see how many players jump on board and are passionate enough to hand over money for something they’ve been getting, and will continue to get for free.
Picross flash game, ‘Picross Forever’ released!
Posted by Will | Filed under Adobe Flash, Flash Games
So I’m a little slow with getting this news out but my latest game Picross Forever has now been released to the public!
You can play it over at Kongregate by clicking here. Comments and critiques are most welcome.
