When I am programming something that requires a module or a sub-system of any kind, my first impulse is to always write it myself; sometimes, even rewriting things I had already written before. While there’s a danger in doing too much of this and avoiding well-established solutions to common problems – the syndrome of Not Invented […]
Continue reading →As expected, the new PS4 controller works out-of-the-box once connected to a Windows PC (using a USB cable) with no need for any special drivers. As such, it works seamlessly when using the GameInput API in Flash or Adobe AIR applications. I have updated the spreadsheet of known GameInput controls with the appropriate control ids. […]
Continue reading →When I set out to write a class to simplify game input control in ActionScript 3, I started from the assumption that Adobe AIR’s GameInput device control ids (the ids that relate to each button or axis) would be fairly consistent between platforms. The idea was that the class would just hide away the Keyboard […]
Continue reading →I use a lot of XML files on my most of my projects (Flash, Android or otherwise). I like the idea of having some configurations parameter on easily editable text files, and not having to re-compile a project just to change a behavior slightly; where I can, instead, just edit a configuration file, re-run the […]
Continue reading →The full archive for the Game Developer Magazine is now available for free on the GDC Vault in PDF format. This is an incredible (and sadly missed) magazine. I recommend any aspiring, hobbyist, or independent game developer peruse through this archive. It contains many insightful articles for all fields related to game development, from audio […]
Continue reading →Adobe Scout is Adobe’s most excellent profiler for Flash (web and AIR) content. Although it’s a somewhat recent application, it has easily become my go-to tool for measuring and optimizing performance of Flash content. It’s truly an invaluable resource for doing things like detecting memory leaks and performance hiccups, and something that should be used […]
Continue reading →Super ellipses. If you’re of the mathematical type, they are a geometric figure defined in the Cartesian coordinate system as the set of all points (x, y) with (x/a)â¿ + (y/b)â¿ = 1 where n, a and b are positive numbers. If you’re everyone else, they are those fancy rounded corners used in icons for […]
Continue reading →When testing my latest game prototype, I realized I needed certain player inputs to be time-sensitive, that is, only be acceptable if they were activated within a certain time limit. This is useful for one specific condition: jumping. In my game prototype, I had my jump activation checks like so: function gameLoop():void { // Calculate […]
Continue reading →The GameInput APIs are a somewhat new thing to Adobe AIR, and as such, I suppose it’s still undergoing some intensive testing and polishing. Following a tip from James D. Palmer (who encountered different results than me on some controls), I decided to do a new round of testing of the GameInput controls one gets from common devices […]
Continue reading →As it should be obvious based on recent posts in this blog, my latest AS3 game prototype thing is a platformer-ish kind of game that uses Nape for physics. I’ve been mentally debating how to approach level design for this game for quite some time. For a while, I was using the R.U.B.E. Box2D Editor for […]
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