Indie Games Competition at GDC
By Mims Wright | on February 20, 2008
In Conferences and User Groups, News, Video Games | 1 Comment
Greetings from GDC ‘08. I’m here in S.F. getting the scoop on the game industry first hand. So far there has been some pretty exciting things and I’ve been totally overwhelmed by the sheer size of the industry.
One of the most interesting things that I saw today was the Independent Game Design Competition. Here were a few of my favorites from the competition finalists.
Flipside
In Flipside, you play an escaped mental patient with bipolar disorder. You start out a happy-go-lucky person in a brightly lit field
but at any time, you can let your dark side show and flip the screen into a nightmarish version of reality. You have different abilities depending on which world you’re in so you’ll need to go through both modes to beat each level. The amazing visuals for this featured a lot of DIY-looking textures such as cardboard and the character really looks like a paper doll.
Fez
At first glance, Fez is a classic 8-Bit, 2-D platformer with incredibly cute graphics. Then the camera flips around and you realize that your character is actually in a 3-D space. Well, mostly. Your character only interacts with the environment in a two dimensional way so using the depth-squashing adds a puzzle-like element to the gameplay.
Pay special attention to the faux-Engrish used in the dialog.
World of Goo
In world of Goo, you control a colony of crude oil-like creatures who are able to stretch themselves into complicated structures. The goal of the game is to engineer a structurally sound scaffolding to move your colony to a destination. The gameplay is quite a lot like Stick Remover but in reverse.
Crayon Physics Deluxe
Crayon Physics Deluxe is a very simple yet very expressive game. The goal is to move a ball to a target across the screen and all you have to work with is a crayon. All you do is draw something with your crayon and it becomes an object with physical properties. The genius thing is that there are as many ways to get the ball to the goal as you can think of.
Flash / Flex podcast
By Mims Wright | on October 17, 2007
In Authors, Conferences and User Groups, Flash, Flex, Programming, Rants, Serious Stuff | 2 Comments
I’ve been kicking around the idea of starting a Flash / Flex podcast. The plan is to get drunk and talk about Flash but maybe you have a better idea.
Do you care? Would you listen? What should we call it? What should we talk about? What topics would you like to hear discussed?
Please leave us any feedback you like.
Apollo FileSystem Tutorial Part 1 - File and FileStream
By Mims Wright | on May 27, 2007
In AIR, AS3, Conferences and User Groups, Flex, Programming, Tutorial | No Comments
One of the most important new features in Apollo is the ability to access the local file system directly. This provides developers with the ability to read and edit text or html files, save preferences locally, store application states as external files, serialize and de-serialize data and much more. This tutorial will cover the File API features in Apollo step-by-step and will serve as a supplement to the talk I recently gave at the New York Flex Users Group.
This tutorial will be presented in multiple sections. This first will cover the File and FileStream classes and the subsequent ones will cover the Flex components used for viewing and accessing the file system and serializing and de-serializing data.
Continue reading Apollo FileSystem Tutorial Part 1 - File and FileStream…