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At 5/9/14 04:46 PM, GeoKureli wrote:

At 5/9/14 03:03 AM, PrettyMuchBryce wrote: Hey guys. I felt compelled to let you know that I am moving to San Francisco soon ! I'm really excited about it.

Good luck In SF. One of the reasons I took my current job was so that I'd eventually request a transfer out there. Awesome place, and a way better place to get into a stable gaming job than Chicago.

Thanks man. I'm not really doing game development anymore. I'm doing more traditional software engineering at this point. Still doing games in my free time, though !

Hey guys. I felt compelled to let you know that I am moving to San Francisco soon ! I'm really excited about it.

Meanwhile.. I'm still working on Civillains with my good pals Andy and William. I am pretty disappointed with how little time I have had for doing "my own stuff" lately. Unfortunately I am finding that as I am getting older I am having less time to dedicate to "my own stuff". I hope someday maybe in my 30s I will just stop working to focus on "my own stuff" for some indeterminate period of time regardless of whatever happens in doing that.

Anyways. Another thing I did recently was that I made this really simple template for making games in javascript.
http://prettymuchbryce.github.io/webgametemplate/

I actually made it for myself incase I ever wanted to create a prototype for an HTML5 game. There is quite a lot of boilerplate code necessary to create and serve an HTML5 game. It is not like a Unity game where you can simply create a new project. So my hope is that I can continue to evolve this project. If you have any ideas (Rusty I know you have some experience in this arena) I would be happy to incorporate them.

At 4/12/14 08:32 PM, slugrail wrote: Developing for Android, on Android.

I had to do some debugging on a kindle fire recently, and I was pleasantly surprised by adb. It didn't take long and I had shell access to the device. I was thinking.. wow. I was surprised that Android gives the end user so much control. You could never do that with Apple's blessing on an iOS device.

Still working on the server-side of my game. I have authentication totally working now on client and server. Now I am moving on to writing gameplay code on the server-side, and porting code over from the prototype and cleaning it up. I'm hoping I have something interactive and playable in the next few weeks. I have already finished a lot of the client work of rendering units, and the game board. I'm kind of approaching it from both ends which will hopefully eventually connect.

Pic related: epic screenshot

At 4/9/14 02:14 PM, GeoKureli wrote: So, I'm gonna start learning Haxe, specifically HaxeFlixel. What was your biggest habit change you had to overcome?

As a Mac user -- no decent IDE. I use FlashBuilder for flash, which I've grown seriously used to. Luckily there is a Sublime plugin. Still not as good, though. I would welcome a solid Haxe IDE for Mac with open arms.

I don't have any screenshots to show today, because I've mostly been working on the server-side of my game. I decided I would record a short video to you show you what I was working on, however, I realized it was really boring so I added some exciting music to make it more interesting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=kG0_1ta9UWA&vq=hd1080

At 3/27/14 04:52 PM, Sam wrote:

At 3/27/14 04:51 PM, Sam wrote: Any bets on the successor to Flash? Flash as in the Flash Player, not the Flash IDE and its workflow.

It will be HTML5. It's already HTML5 as canvas is supported at 82% (source: http://caniuse.com/canvas) it shows just how fast it has penetrated browsers. WebGL will certainly be the successor, as it allows near native speed with hardware acceleration. Even Unity announced a WebGL target a couple of weeks ago.

Unity player penetration causes too much friction to become a big player unless browser vendors start shipping it with the browsers.

That's my opinion from this vantage point anyways.

Tyler is right about the neutering. In the newest version of Chrome, you can no longer see any outgoing HTTP requests that flash is making in the developers tools.

Also I've heard that Safari has switched, or is soon switching to a model whereby the user must "allow" the flash content to show, similar to how Java works on Chrome.

Flash is totally dying. I too wasn't a big fan of the "flash is dead" meme that seemed to be so popular a few years ago. After all - it certainly isn't dead, but at this point it is very clearly dying.

Imagine if Adobe made a push to export Flash to WebGL in the same manner as Unity. They could figure out a way to relicense things to make some money off of it. It seems like they've resigned to maintenance mode and not much else at this point.

Fortunately Unity is really awesome, and they have their heads in the right place. Although, I am really skeptical about investing my time into any proprietary platform anymore. I really got my soul crushed with Flash, and I feel it's the same mistake again.

OpenFL is pretty awesome. I am also a big fan of HTML5 and WebGL.

So yeah. Flash is biting the dust hard. In fact, if you only have flash skills, I would definitely encourage you to start branching out, like, yesterday.

At 3/25/14 03:50 PM, Rustygames wrote: I thought it was quite reasonably priced. The licenses scale instantly too so you can start small and work your way up as and when you need to without down time. Only thing is I do believe they charge you for it per box. But at least you only pay once up front and it isn't a recurring thing.

It is 3400 USD for 5000 concurrents or 4800 USD for unlimited. I guess it depends on your budget whether you think this is reasonably priced or not.

True. I guess it's just a matter of just trusting them, and since they have games like club penguin under their belt, that's all the trust I need :)

It's not about trust. No denying they have built a solid product. It's just that the freedom isn't there to change things. What if I build something and then in 3 years some new protocol comes out and I want to implement it ? That won't be possible without the source.

I thought they do support a couple of DB's not just the one? Plus I think you can add pretty much any one you want via some convoluted method. Not sure on this though. But is the DB really a deal breaker? :(

Nope I believe it's just MYSQL, and maybe PostgreSQL. It's not a deal breaker. Just a PITA to build my own adapter, manage connection pooling, etc.

What do you mean about the JSON thing? Because they do all the compressing and decompressing for you so you still get JSON objects out the other end. The performance improvements really add up and there is a very noticeable speed difference in 2X.

See here: http://docs2x.smartfoxserver.com/DevelopmentBasics/sfsobject-sfsarray

At 3/23/14 06:45 PM, Rustygames wrote:

At 3/22/14 02:47 PM, PrettyMuchBryce wrote: Well it is looking like I am going to have to do a complete rewrite of the Civillains server again.

I like SmartFox :)

I like it too Rusty. My big issues with it are.

1. It is expensive. You are charged flat rates for licenses based on # of concurrent users.
2. It is closed source. No way to change anything about the underlying code.
3. It is built in Java. I only say this as a negative, because my own personal experience with Java is not incredibly strong. I have a good understanding of the language itself, but it when it comes to maintaining and debugging the application in production I feel underprepared.

There are some other things such as the fact that it only ships with a single database adapter for MYSQL, and no support for NOSQL solutions like MongoDB at all. The maintainer doesn't even have experience with these types of datastores as far as I can tell.

Another thing is that in the SFS2X version they have dropped support for raw JSON-based protocol in favor of a more strongly typed solution which sends data over the wire as raw bytes. This is great in theory, but somewhat tedious in practice. I would prefer to prioritize convenience over micro-performance as I build on the initial version of the product.

All that being said I still feel SFS is a strong product.

Well it is looking like I am going to have to do a complete rewrite of the Civillains server again. This will be my 3rd attempt. Hopefully I can build this thing in node.js without having it completely fall over with every uncaught exception. There are also some big questions about how does it scale with xx,xxx concurrent users. I think I will need to be prepared to spin up multiple servers in this case, and then in the lobby the player can choose something like "US East, US West" based on where I stick the EC2 instances. Considering the game is socket based, it requires sticky sessions, so I cannot simply have any player hit any server. I think I am going to use MongoDB to store player data, and user data with an object modeling framework to keep things more tidy. gl hf

At 2/20/14 11:48 PM, MSGhero wrote:

At 2/20/14 11:36 PM, PrettyMuchBryce wrote: Pass the tissues, we all got z sorting issues.

What language are you doing this in, and how are you doing the hexa-iso? I want an isometric engine for openfl, but I don't want to use a port of as3isolib if I don't have to cuz of the slow z sorting.

MGHero, my goo friend. I am doing this in AS3. How am I doing the Hexa-iso ? Hmm I have never heard that term. Well... I figured out the math on how to lay out a 2D array in a hexagonal grid. There are many tutorials about it. Who needs as3isowhatever ?

Pass the tissues, we all got z sorting issues.

Hey guys. I was messing with AngularJS, Express, node.js, and Bootstrap. I made this thing to try to ensure I could do it. I can take any feedback.

http://54.83.0.182:3000/

I am also still working on http://www.civillains.com with some awesome people. I am trying to implement the core gameplay right now with AS3 (Starling), and Java (SmartFox). It's not that bad. Mostly just pretty tedious, because we have been spending an enormous amount of time on tools development.

I hope to open source some of it. At least the tool I have built to convert SWFs to SpriteSheets (In a way better than Adobe tried to do too).

What kind of computer chairs do you guys use ? I need to get a new one. My ikea chair is destroying my spine. :P

I can't believe it's 2014 and were still calling this the flash reg lounge. This should be game dev general. @TomFulp @Luis

I've used SendOwl, because I'm lazy. It handles this sort of thing for you.

I've also heard great things about stripe.

http://blog.civillains.com/post/70189723236/oh-hey-heres-a-fake-screenshot

So this is why you need artists in your life. Top one is my art, bottom one is an artists. :P

I'm playing with the idea of remaking one of my old games in 3D. (before & after)

http://i.imgur.com/9ZfJrdI.gif

I'm having a real blast with Unity. I downloaded it to try out the new 2D stuff in 4.3, and then found that I was having much more fun with 3D. It's a shame you can't use the lights with 2D sprites.

It's a big mental adjustment for me. I am particular about the way I like to structure my code, and Unity is having none of it. After chilling myself out and just going with it, I am finding that it is much more fun. :)

Hmmmmm interesting sales strategy :)

HOW MUCH IS THE PRODUCT ?

idk.. how much you got ?

At 12/6/13 02:32 PM, MSGhero wrote: http://gafmedia.com/converter/

@prettymuchbryce @rustygames I just saw the video for this, haven't looked into it yet. Maybe you can do games with it too.

Yeah this looks pretty good. I'll have to check it out. Is it commercial ? It's not immediately obvious.

At 12/5/13 05:46 PM, egg82 wrote: Hrm. Thoughts?

http://lifehacker.com/which-programming-language-should-i-learn-first-1477153665?utm_campaign=socialflow_lifehacker_facebook&utm_source=lifehacker_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

As I've gotten older I find that the language itself matters less and less and what I'm doing with it matters more. So I would say pick the thing you want to do first, and then learn the language that best performs that task. But this is my perspective as a self starter. :)

At 11/27/13 08:27 PM, Innermike wrote: @PrettyMuchBryce

Who is Phillip Dorseman?

He's a former accountant of mine. He helped me get a few deductions on my taxes in 2008 which saved me over 47 dollars. He's my hero, and every morning I wake up and I ask myself, "Am I doing what Mr. Doresman would do today ?". If the answer is no, I hit snooze and go back to sleep.

Actually it's just a random image I found online and I thought the guy looked really funny

At 11/27/13 02:01 AM, egg82 wrote: What've we all been doing this week in terms of games? Specifically playing, but developing works as well.

Last weekend I binged out on the new LOZ game for 3DS. It's really good. Probably my game of the year if not top 3.

I've been hacking on a side-project of mine that I am building with a few friends. Not much to show yet, but check it out.

http://civillains.com

At 11/23/13 05:10 PM, MSGhero wrote:

At 11/23/13 04:28 PM, PrettyMuchBryce wrote: I want to clean it up and open source it once I have some extra time.

I use this when I have to mc -> spritesheet. Though, it doesn't crop the frames, so there's a lot of empty space in the sheets.

Mine relies on TexturePacker for packing the actual textures. Mine also supports animation swapping. Similar to the way you might have a character with a "head" MovieClip which might have multiple frames for each type of head. Normally you could just gotoAndStop on each frame to change his head. Mine has a feature similar to this. Otherwise what I have built is basically the same as this tool you posted. Infact I wish I would have known that it existed. It probably would have saved me time.

At 11/23/13 05:02 AM, Innermike wrote: That's probably the main reason I've never really felt compelled to use Starling, I mean you just use movieclips/sprites and stuff but it secretly uses Stage3D to boost performance right?

It's considerably faster than blitting in my experience. If your game is simple then you probably don't need it. The downside is that you have to use texture atlases instead of MovieClips imported from the flash authoring tool. It does have a MovieClip class that behaves like the native MovieClip Class, but it must be populated with sprites from a texture atlas.

I have built a tool in Adobe AIR for a side-project I'm working on which can convert a MovieClip built in the Flash authoring tool into a texture atlas in an optimized way. It stores tweens in an animation data file rather than saving an extra sprite for each tweened frame like the native spritesheet exporter does. This means you could use MovieClips in flash for Starling projects, Unity projects, or any GPU-oriented project. I want to clean it up and open source it once I have some extra time.

At 11/20/13 02:56 PM, Glaiel-Gamer wrote: guys I announced a new game
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RS9O1t6nywY

awesome!

I finished redoing the website for my pathfinding library.

http://easystarjs.com/

I could use some feedback!

At 11/14/13 11:32 PM, PrettyMuchBryce wrote: I will post the solution I'm thinking of tomorrow if nobody gets it. I'll give you a hint. It involves the partition step of quicksort.

Alright here you go. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quickselect