Saturday, December 15, 2007

Iso, Particle, easing and water

I've wanted to do some AS3 stuff, never got round to do it yet so I finally set down and created this little thing.

Click to view

It shows 5000 little isometric bar-type thingies. and if you click and drag on them, they will simulate water ripples.
The bars ease to the ripple-data to make it all wobble around a bit smoother then by just using the ripple effect.

There's some bugs if you splash around too much at the top and bottom, but I couldn't be arsed to fix it. I'm coding this with my laptop actually on my lap, and its not the most convenient way to code thats for sure :)
Let me know what you think.

I got the water ripple routine from here

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

A Game with Balls

For a new type of Prodent toothpaste, we've made a game where you walk around a club/disco trying to pick up girls or guys (yes, we're gay-friendly :)

Your breath smells, because you didn't brush your teeth, whenever you touch someone, they pass out from your death-breath and you lose a life. But when you pick up a tube of toothpaste, or a Menthol-ball (ahh.. 'a game with Balls' now I get it) then you can approach the guys or gals and 'score' but be careful, your fresh-breath only lasts a small amount of time.

Everytime you score, more characters come into the club, so the place just keeps on getting busier.

The characters in the game move around the club semi-randomly, with a very simple route-planning logic.

Basically, they pick a random direction and distance to walk to, then check if that trip is actually reachable (no obstacles in between), and if it is, walk to the new location.

I've used a bitmap to also guide the characters around the club, and made them follow this path roughly 'most of the time' while sometimes they pick a completely random destination. This way you don't get characters walking around the club in the same way all the time.
In this bitmap, I colored the pixels in a certain way, using the Blue value to tell the characters where they should move (or color 0 = not allowed to be here)

0x000011 means, move right
0x000022 means move down and right
0x000033 means move down
etc.

Usin this bitmap means that you dont have to draw a lot of obstacles and do collision detection on those to make sure the character only go where they're supposed to, and not walk through walls for example. Now I can just check for a pixelcolor, which is a lot faster.

To play the game, first, pick if you're a boy or a girl, then pick if you like boys or girls.

Move around using cursor keys, press space to pick up a tube of toothpaste or menthol ball.

Play the game : A game with balls

And let me know what you think :)

Mokpads sjoelen

For Kanis&Gunnink (a big coffee brand in Holland) we made a shuffleboard-type game using basic physics. The game also shows the 2 spokespersons for this brand (known in Holland from the tv-commercials) who watch your game and give funny coments while you play.

The game controls are (I think) very intuitive. you pick up Mokpads (Coffee pads for big mugs) and throw them using the mouse.
This way, you don't have an abstract 'place the pad on the board, then aim, determine speed of throw, and throw' like you usually see in games.

The goal is to slide the pads into the little slots at the end.
There's also a special glowing Mokpad, which is heavier, and is more slippery. Also, you can use the talkcon/chalk can, to make the board smoother, so your Mokpads don't slow down so fast.

This game also lets you challenge a friend by E-mail, and after your friend played, you get the result back so you can put on you own little leage.

Oh and that hand you see in the game, thats mine, altered a bit to make less hairy and stuff :P

Play the game : Mokpads sjoelen

And let me know what you think :)

First!

Hi and welcome to my flash-blog.

After attending Flash on the Beach 2007 in Brighton, I've met some new flash developer friends, who showed interest in what I made, and asked for my blog address, which I didn't have at the time..

I've been wanting to put some of my work online, maybe even write a tutorial or two, but I needed a website for that first and I never got 'round to making one.

Then, at Flash on the Beach, my new friends pointed out to me that I should just signup for a free blog somewhere and start putting stuff online, without having to write a whole new website for it first :)

So here we are.

I shall now make some posts about the last couple of games I made at work.
Artwork is usually not done by me, we have our own skilled artists at our company, I just do the coding bit :)