At 11/23/09 10:34 PM, Luis wrote: This article kind of annoyed me cause FarmVille and Mafia Wars are such terrible 'games' if you even want to call em that.. but who am i to judge if the guy who made them is worth 1 billion.... i suppose if anything, there is still some profitability on the net ... meh.

Whatever amuses people Lu. The thought of competing with the world, even at basic random number generation and resource management at it's most simplistic keeps people playing these games, whereas a lot of people need shiny 3d models and some kind of pace on top of the game structure before they're interested.

Personally I'd think there'd be a market for someone making one of these games, but tying it into a twitchier Flash game for those who lack the patience to wait thirty minutes for a new turn

At 10/23/09 05:23 AM, Deadclever23 wrote: How can i improve this turret then?

By making it look less like a box.

To be fair, it'll look perfectly fine when shrunk down to a much smaller size, but at this kind of resolution it just looks a bit underwhelming - not least of all because it looks ridiculously off balance (gattling guns, when mounted, are mounted from the center of the barrels, or have a much lower center of gravity for thier stands, a quick google search suggests).

Even without photo reference, the gun still needs to look like it *could* work. It needs an interface for a gunner to hold onto and trigger the firing mechanism, it needs an ammo feed, it needs a place to deposit (or at least eject) dead shells, and an access point to fix jams and the mechanism. Depending on how permenant an installation it is, it needs some kind of blast shield to protect in case the entire gattling gun explodes when it structurually fails, or telescoping for the tripod so that it can be quickly repositioned. And it definately needs some iconography so you can tell who it belongs to.

Personally, I'd stick two mickey mouse style ears on the back (rotary drums. Forget it being practical, it looks cool), and drop the back entirely to give the gunner somewhere to stand. If the turret's AI controlled, at least give it a computer terminal so that an engineer can turn it off and on. And generally, just make the thing look more like an instrument of death than a lego box on stilts.

You have two options here, dependant on your final outcome.

The first is the option stated above - you render the 3d animation using a 3d package, and use Flash to add some interactivity to it. You could export the animation as an AVI from Blender and import it into Flash (possibly using Premiere to export it to an FLV with chromakey), or use Swift3D to create a vectored up 3d SWF to use directly. Swift imports .3ds files, and last I checked Blender will export to that pretty standard format.

The downsides of that method is that it will remain a flat animation. If thats fine for your purposes, this will be a perfectly good solution. However, if you need runtime 3d (because you've got a user controlled camera or some such), then you're going to need to step into the world of 3d Flash engines as liaaam stated. The aforementioned Papervision3D is the current open source leader (and it's fork, Away3D is similarily powerful), but there are alternatives such as Sandy, which has an old version stashed away which can run in AS2 (for Flash 8 users). Commercial wise, Alternativa blows everything else out of the water, and is free for noncommercial use.

Papervision, Away and Sandy all import COLLADA standard models (again, Blender exports to this), while Alternativa imports 3ds files. The support for these 3d engines from this forum is going to be close to zero - no one here seems to have any expertise with these things, or if we have we're apparently not sharing our knowledge. These are also very, very code heavy so a good understanding of actionscript will be required, as well as a head for programming.

Still got to work out a storyboard for this. It'll be the first bit of animation I've done in years, and trying to work the song I want with the visuals and kind of story I want around the word 'ring' is proving challenging.

That and the song I want is six minutes long (and commercial...) so some severe cutting is required

At 10/20/09 03:41 PM, ReNaeNae wrote: I REALLY wanna do something for this. I've been trying, but I just can't seem to come up with anything.
I think my brain is broked! :'(

Poor Re brain :(

Anyway. If people are struggling with needing to use AS3 but can only develop in Flash 8, I'll offer to help with migrating and translating code between AS versions even if I end up dropping out of the collab.

At 10/20/09 12:07 AM, HarryControl wrote: okay, thank-you very much. Did anyone have any other suggestions?

Box-Modelling a head in Swift3D. Should introduce all the concepts for basic vertex and edge manipulation

At 10/19/09 11:39 AM, JKR wrote: Looking good so far! You'll have to forgive me, I'm not familiar with vcam. What does it entail? I suppose it shouldn't be a problem as long as the AS is 3.0 and doesn't interfere with any of the other animations or menus. Feel free to explain it further, but I don't think it will be an issue.

Not that I'm complaining, but you've given us a template for Flash 8 users, who wouldn't be able to code particle effects and the like (or use thier own V-Cam) in a project where AS3 is mandatory.

Badly written imho - it doesn't explain what you're actually doing in any of the phases, just blindly gives instructions. The layout is atrocious without formatting or use of the available code tags, and the advice given here is just a wee bit dangerous...

At 7/25/05 06:02 PM, bigftballjock wrote: $query = "INSERT INTO user (username, password, email) VALUES('$user','$pass','$email')";

Holy fuck, have you ever heard of SQL Injection!?

Hmm... maybe...
I was waiting for Orange to come up as a 5 Shader back when mynamewontfitin was heading the group, but I've not animated in years... still, can't hurt to try.

At 10/15/09 10:17 AM, Rucklo wrote: Only thing I can come up with is to take the current movieclips, make them into a new movieclip and then just move it down, but I'd prefer not to do that.

The other alternative is to use the V-Cam.

At 10/15/09 09:31 AM, Jawdyn wrote: Hey! I was wondering if it was possible to load data from websites on the internet into a .SWF file.

For example, on our Newgrounds userpages we have stats such as Experience, Saves & Blams. For each user, we have our own unique stats on our page.

... eeeh...

Okay. Normally you do this with the various connection scripts out there (LoadVarsobjects with sendAndLoad methods if it's AS2, URLLoaderand the other classes and thier load methods for AS3). But without actual database access priveleges, you're a bit stuck...

I know this kind of thing can be done with Java, I don't know what the limitations of Flash are. I'd be looking to do something similar to loading these stats much like nglogs does.

I suppose what you could do is load the HTML page in as an XML file, and then rip it apart. Assuming the site doesn't change designs, you should be able to find what you're after with a few string comparisons.

Maybe there's an actual feed for stats that I don't know about however.

At 10/15/09 12:06 AM, JoeyCU wrote: I am at a barnes and noble and I am thinking of buying it. Amazon says it's good but they also said that the anaconda dildo is a great product and I ended up in the hospital.

Not familiar with the book, but make sure it's for the version of Flash and Actionscript you are using or intend to learn, seeing as the Bible series, like the Essential series, just updates every year or so and keeps the same title each revision.

We'll only laugh at you for trying to use the techniques for this one when you should have bought this one or waited for this one

At 10/15/09 06:37 AM, skylinegodzilla wrote: doose any one know what version of flash is on the ps3?

i went to the ngds page that told you what version of flash u have and it said 3 9.0.151.0 now that maee no sence at al

First part is your platform (which would be PS3... it's clipping the name off the left).
Second string is the version - Player 9 is the important part of it, and indeed the PS3 has been FP9 capable since firmware 2.53.

At 10/14/09 07:54 PM, Anewusername wrote: When i convert something to a movieclip i cant even add actions to it.

Check the dates on the tutorials. Anything pre-2008 can be written off as being "AS2.0 only" and will not apply to any of the stuff you use in CS3 (since it's AS3 unless you change the publish settings...)

While it's perfectly fine to learn AS2 (since it's applicable in a few cases), you should really learn it alongside the newer stuff. AS3's been around for three years now, and the Flash 9 and 10 plugins are quite well accepted everywhere

if anyones got a link to like a book on how to make flash games or something that'd be awesome.

- AS3.0 Game Programming University. Hands down, best entry level book on the market.
- Essential AS3.0, also known as the Moock Book. Comprehensive, but overkill for te hobbyist.

Both are, as the titles suggest, for the AS3 versions of the language (CS3, 4 and soon to be released 5). For an AS2 view on the world, try this beautiful book

At 10/14/09 07:46 PM, sir5000 wrote:

At 10/14/09 04:07 PM, Deadclever23 wrote: Over-rated.

I actually kinda agree with the writer in stating that there's no purpose in making any CS apps for the iPhone as it would be tedious and impractical in so many ways...

While I agree in principle with the fact that Adobe would need to break the performance thing wide open before we're all developing Castle Crashers clones in Flash for the iPhone, there's one part of the article that disapoints...

OK, so you are a Windows person and don't have a Mac. So what? Get a Mac. If that's your sole reason you are holding yourself back from doing iPhone development... I'm sorry, but you are delusional.

Actually it's because I'm living on a shoestring as it is, and don't want to be purchasing a grand and a half* worth of hardware solely to POSSIBLY develop applications that MIGHT have a return on investment for another quarter of a grand** worth of hardware I don't own yet.

Because I would have no use for a Mac, or indeed an iPhone/iPod Touch otherwise. I have an MP3 player which holds two gigs of music (seriously, you can listen to more than that before the batteries run out and you need to plug it into the computer anyway?), and I have my current tools which are sufficient for all my artistic and development needs. I do not need another bit of hardware until the stuff I have falls apart. Which means no Windows 7, no getting my offline XP PC upgraded, no buying a PS3 because it's newer than my 360, no buying an acoustic drum kit until I've exhausted every option on my electronic one (hella unlikely), no GH5 until the Rock Band store closes, and certainly no buying a shiny new chunk of silicon that none of my current software will run on without emulation.

If I'm going to develop for iPhone, by all means I'll learn ObjC. I'm planning learning some C# soon as well so I can develop for nonoba server anyway, so two similar languages won't be a massive undertaking. But I'm not going to bother with the practical execution until I can compile it from XP.

Obviously I'm not the target audience here - part timers aren't welcome to this party - and so the chances of Apple opening the floodgates to Windows and *nux users isn't going to happen soon. Apple values it's exclusivity and all.

iPhone developers need to be the kind of people who are ready to throw a massive amount of money into the pot to risk them getting an ROI and spend a really quick time developing a real gimmicky app that hopefully takes flight, or already have to be platform advocates from the web or design industries***, and I have a strong feeling there's more emphasis on the latter group of old pros than there are of the former. There was a hope that with Flash being able to compile to .ipa gives another avenue to an indie developer or a freelancer without putting an extra straw on thier already quite brittle backs, as well as giving hobbyists free reign.

* iMac 24inch Core 2 Duo - £1,199.00
** New Apple iPod touch 32GB - £222.00
Source, Amazon.co.uk

*** Who owns a Mac and *isn't* working in the print, audio or web design sectors? Or isn't a pretentious college/university student (in which case, they should save themselves a few hundred pounds and buy a beret)

At 10/14/09 03:53 PM, ThR wrote: Thanks all of you!

But that wasen't my main question... What i was realy wondering about is how to make my flash document into a HTML code or something so that my flash will be on the website...

You still need to embed the flash into a HTML page, but you'll use CSS and proper XHTML methods to make the Flash the dominating content - width of 100%, height of 100%, center aligned... all simple stuff.

For getting it so that it recognises address bar changes, you might want to have a look at SWFAddress.

At 10/14/09 04:21 PM, Toast wrote: I'm kinda speaking for myself here but I say it because I'm pretty certain it roughly applies for all the other users who are in school.

Don't worry. It applies to those of us with jobs too. Only difference is people like me, who move like glaciers when it comes to doing projects, tend to cut thier losses and give the whole thing up, rather than stay here out of a sense of community spirit and a need to stay somehow connected to the cutting edge

At 10/14/09 12:02 PM, citricsquid wrote: for you, my sweet

Aww Sam, thanks.

To be fair, I know the answer to that one already. I can't picture anyone managing to sell a game a month for anything resembling sustainable income without having a contract established beforehand. The net of potential sponsors doesn't appear wide enough to allow for a large group of people with half the skills needed to make a casual game to claim £1000+ a month each. Future navel gazing aside, at some point sponsors need to make a return on thier investments, and a company like Armor really needs to be pulling in more than it's spending by now.

Even though web advertisement's a massive industry (now officially larger than TeeVee), I doubt most of it's rooted in flash games. AdSense sure, video ads and youtube sponsored links sure, but not Flash games.

I could be wrong. Maybe we need someone from the other side of the sponsorship fence to make an IAmA thread.

At 10/14/09 11:40 AM, citricsquid wrote: give it a few hours, he only just posted it. They normally end up with around 250 questions, sometimes up to 1,500 if it's a popular one :D

Fair enough. The effort required to register for yet another web community is stopping me from asking whether Flash games have a potential as a primary, legitimate and sustainable source of income.

At 10/14/09 11:07 AM, Xeptic wrote: Who else thinks the Halloween banner is ace?

Agreed.

At 10/14/09 11:25 AM, citricsquid wrote: So there's a site called reddit, it's like digg but a forum and it's awesome. So they have this section "IAmA" and it stands for "I am a ..... ask me anything",

The one the goons have over at SA is normally more amusing

Looks like it needs a few more questions.

At 10/14/09 07:48 AM, hdxmike wrote: Is it just me or do you seem to be next to all of my posts ?

Is it just me or are you posting barely acceptable replies in every topic on the first page of the forum?

At 10/14/09 08:00 AM, hdxmike wrote: or in AS3 just set it as a constant variable
const myVar:int = 12345

Oh wow. That totally works.
If you NEVER want to change a HP value throughout the game.

At 10/13/09 08:11 AM, Rustygames wrote: Surely you have to have a full license to publish anything? Student version must have SOME limitations?

Indeed.

Adobe answers all our questions for us!

----
From the FAQ (emphasis mine)
----
Do the Student Editions have restricted functionality?
Adobe Student Editions give the end user all the features and functionality of the commercial versions. However, Student Edition software is for installation solely on private computers and for noncommercial purposes.

Can a Student Edition also be used for commercial purposes?
Student Edition software is fornoncommercial purposes only.
---

Kinda restrictive, eh?

Commercial Gain includes Advertising Revenue. Technically, you can't upload your work to somewhere that makes money advertising around your content, or use work created in the products for work-to-be-sponsored. So no Newgrounds uploads, no Kongregate sponsorship - hell, no uploading it to your own free-with-ads webspace or your own space with AdSense installed.

At 10/13/09 07:45 AM, ohguck wrote:

Edit your sprites in photoshop, and export the final versions as PNGs. And instead of using vectors in Flash, use those bitmaps.

So what you're saying is they'd be uneditable in flash but that shouldn't be a problem because I would have already edited them to my liking in photoshop?

Pretty much.

If you want the super clean finish from vector style artwork (ala Castle Crashers), then you would really need to redraw individual keyframes in Flash, using the images as a guide. If you wanted a sketchier style, then Bitmaps from Photoshop are a better bet. All depends on the style you're going for...

Also, in flash would they have transparent backgrounds and would you be able to stack them on top of each other?

If you export them as PNGs (which include a transparency channel) then sure.

At 10/13/09 07:41 AM, Xeptic wrote: Oh, and I found this thread, don't know why I actually tried to look for it.

Thanks Xep. Shame I don't have that old demo any more (nuked my sites and my computers ages ago, and didn't back up unfinished junk I would never go back to).

God... that was back before Flash CS3 was released, wasn't it?

At 10/12/09 08:44 PM, Kirk-Cocaine wrote: Just earned my first ever penny from NG, thanks Tom!

I think I'm up to a dollar ninety seven now...

oh, it's only been three years since I started the earliest version of this engine...
...and finally I have something I'm prepared to actually USE...
Click to drop an object which will run around the level of it's own accord, changing directions when it gets bored. There'll be some... erm... buggy behaviour around triangular tiles, so if people can bug report to me over PM I'd be happy.

If someone can find the post sometime circa November 2006 in the regs lounge where I posted the prototype of the AS2 version of this I'd be ecstatic. Think it must be near page 400ish.

At 10/13/09 07:10 AM, ThR wrote: What do i have to do with it?

Write <-code-> (without the hyphens), and close it with a </-code-> (again, without the hyphens). It should appear like HTML syntax

At 10/13/09 05:46 AM, ohguck wrote: I'm making a flash and in it the 3 main characters are going to be drawn on paper, scanned and imported. I was going to trace bitmap them so I could edit them, but I am aware that trace bitmapping can make the flash lag a lot when you are trying to work on it. Can anyone suggest any alternative methods aside from trace bitmapping?

Edit your sprites in photoshop, and export the final versions as PNGs. And instead of using vectors in Flash, use those bitmaps.

Bitmaps take up a lot less RAM than vectors for Flash processing, and can be as detailed as you like for the same memory usage. If you want to save space with your sprite sheets, cut vector shapes out in Flash around the poses, using a bitmap fill (to get the best of both worlds).

Genetics is a lie

</kansas>

Old Game Link: Island of Dr Brain (Genetics Puzzle)

Store your genetic sequence of recessive and dominant genes as a string, as in this video. Split the string using String.split() and you'll be able to identify the alleles that make up that identifier. Then you'll have to check which one's upper case (the dominant) and which one's lower case (the recessive), before running your punnet square. That should store hidden recessive genes for you. Multiple letters in the same location could be different configurations, but this might be a bit more complicated.

At 10/12/09 07:28 AM, citricsquid wrote: I have a simple flash idea, I'm going to make it, do I use AS3 or AS2? Assuming I have no knowledge of either, want to do it quickly and I'm mediocre at programming.

If the project will never be touched again, AS2. Its not like you can't do bad programming that cuts corners in AS3 (which is what simple, fast and mediocre normally requires happening), but its a less forgiving environment for it.

If the code's ever going to be reused for something else, OOP at a minimum, but either version handles that. Only when runtime speed or when essential FP9+ features are required does AS3 become mandatory.

At 10/9/09 11:28 AM, The-Super-Flash-Bros wrote: Ahh, Joey's site. I remember that!

Do you also remember those birds flying off into the sunset you coded?

Joey's managed to escape the grip of WoW these days, and there's actually a cartoon in the works. Pretty sure the forums have died out though.

More than likely. I dare not check. Too much nostalgia there.