Several years ago I co-authored in New Masters Of Flash Volume 3, and wrote a tutorial for it which extensively covered illustrating in Flash then bringing the graphics to life with code… adding the interactive layer. It crossed my mind that I could port it to Actionscript 3.0 for fun! I really loved making it. The original Frog Pond was part of an unreleased portion of BlueSuburbia. BlueSuburbia is 100% vector art, and, as was the case with all the graphics in BlueSuburbia, it was drawn in Flash. The original tutorial (found in the book) is still an excellent walkthrough...
Continue reading...Web/Game Dev: Tutorials & Sourcecode
Super Simple Script Snippets: Button RollOver & RollOut With ENTER_FRAME Fun
Here’s something basic, and fun, while my next game is underway — it’s a small components from the next release. Dictating the animation of a movieclip with ENTER_FRAMEs – for smooth and consistent rollover, or rollouts. I prefer these (as I know many other developers / designers do) up against standard button events or animations. These are basic examples, and I’m sure they’ll be useful to those starting out, and looking (googling) for a solution like this. So here’s my approach at it… Example #1: have a button, or movieclip, increment or decremnt its frame number according to its mouse...
Continue reading...Source Code Snippets: Generate Gibs (Particles For Fatalities) & Shake The Stage
As some may know, the upcoming title for Tetrageddon Arcade is titled Offender 2 (World War B: War on Rabbits). It’s a delightfully epic violation of the senses taking place in the speculatively not to distant future where aliens (once again) attack Earth for the sake of abducting rabbits. Much like the original Offender, this version will be a far more rounded, and over-the-top adaptation of the original. It features gibs, adorable ass kicking rabbits with tons of attitude, and sociopathic aliens. You play the aforementioned alien, and have to survive abducting the rabbits. Like I said, they have attitude....
Continue reading...Super Simple Script Snippets: Enemy Projectiles
I’m making a game! The premise of which is that there will be enemy sprites (like tanks) shooting at you (a spaceship). Enemy projectiles will be fired in short controlled bursts… that’s the basic idea. The real thing is a lot more complex… Imagine short controlled bursts exploding in fireworks that you have to dodge if you don’t manage to “deactivate” them in time with your beam. Here’s the example (click “Fire!” button): [swfobj src=”http://nathalielawhead.com/sourcefiles/Projectiles/gravity_projectile.swf” height=”400″ width=”480″] DOWNLOAD .FLA HERE At any rate I’m releasing code snippets as I progress. Hopefully these will come in handy for others developing awesome...
Continue reading...The Wacky Name Generator & Downloadable Source
The Wacky Name Generator (Version 1.0.0.0.1.0.2) Try it bellow: [swfobj src=”http://nathalielawhead.com/sourcefiles/Wacky_Name_Generator/namegenerator.swf” height=”261″ width=”500″] So I’m making a game! The premise is that you play a monster tearing up a fictional city. Any city really. Probably Tokyo, but I’m undecided. The other great premise is that you eat A LOT of civilians, military, and law enforcement officials. To add a touch of random (and reduce the time it takes for coming up with names for an “expendable” population), names for each enemy sprite are randomly created (in this case pieced together using a set amount of vowels and consonants), and then...
Continue reading...The Source Files Archives – Offender
The newest release to the source files archive is Offender. *Click here to download (available in both AS3, and AS2). I made the game a few years back to serve as a mini-game-easter-egg for Tetrageddon, when you size the browser window too small. Re-size the window when you’re on the site, you’ll trigger a resize bomb, and if you size it too small you get… well… Offended. About the game: Remember Defender; that popular arcade shooter of the 1980’s? Well, how do you think we Aliens felt about it? Sponsored by the Intergalactic Foundation for Non-Anthropomorphic Rights, Offender is a...
Continue reading...Super Simple Script Snippets
I’ve been working on a game. Some super simple stuff that has come in handy… CLICK HERE FOR THE SOURCE FILES — //splitting a string every given amount of characters and saving the result to an array //DOWNLOAD SOURCE var arr:Array = new Array(); function str_split(str:String, splitTo:Number) { var arr_str:Array = new Array(); for(var i:Number=0; i < str.length; i += splitTo){ arr_str.push(str.slice(i, i+splitTo)); } return(arr_str); } var str = 'This has been split every 3 characters.'; arr = str_split(str,3); trace(arr); //outputs Thi,s h,as ,bee,n s,pli,t e,ver,y 3, ch,ara,cte,rs. -- //timing the length of a text field based on its character...
Continue reading...The Source Files Archives – SpaceCom Chapter 1: The Big Gib
SpaceCom Chapter 1: The Big Gib by Nathalie Lawhead is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.Based on a work at nathalielawhead.com/sourcefiles/SpaceCom_The_Big_Gib/.Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://nathalielawhead.com. *You MAY create derivatives, please share alike. *Please credit the author (Nathalie Lawhead), and provide a link to the author’s website (http://nathalielawhead.com). Download the source files here: DOWNLOAD NOW! I started SpaceCom Chapter 1: The Big Gib circa 2008, and finished it in 2010 A.D. It is popularly known as “one of those games” that was: “[…] Started, dropped, remembered, then finished.” -Broverb Originally it...
Continue reading...The Source Files Archives – Part 2: Haxed By Megahurtz
Actionscript 2.0 Flash 8 68.2 MB This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. *You MAY create derivatives, please share alike. *Please credit the author (Nathalie Lawhead), and provide a link to the author’s website (http://nathalielawhead.com). Download Source Files Here! Play It Here! Haxed by Megahurtz is a casual game written in AS 2 targeting the Nintendo Wii platform/flash player. It’s an older work, and was authored in Flash 8. Back end wise it was coded “free-hand”, and evolved from a sound experiment to a full fledged game. All scoreboard related code has been disabled. About:...
Continue reading...The Source Files Archives – Part 1: Bump To The Beat That Moves Your Meat
I’ll be releasing old project files, source codes, and various back-end miscellany. This is the first. More soon… Download it here! Preview it here! This is a prototype/rough of an old dynamic VJ / DJ I was creating for a game (Haxed By Megahurtz). It’s in AS 2 because I was targeting the Nintendo Wii (at the time AS 3 wasn’t supported/recommendable). It’s a basic version of the final. This takes sounds from an array and plays them /combines them randomly. To go along with that it also splices videos together. As everyone knows, the newer platform/language capabilities open up...
Continue reading...Some Writing
“There’s a lot of untapped power in the internet as a medium for creating games, entertainment, and art that’s an entirely different mind blowing genre. When new themes like ARGs, or games-as-art, surface it inspires me to know that we’re only at the beginning of inventing variations of art, and entertainment, that are so radically different it sets a new standard for what can be done.” The Internet As A Game Mechanic – Click here to read. “The dot-com boom had a strong influence on what I wanted to do with my life. The internet has been a very life...
Continue reading...Super Simple WordPress To Flash Feed Reader (By Author, Category, Etc) — Source Files
SOURCE FILES HERE! (AS3, and AS2) Short Summary: Wordpress feed readers + Flash are a popular things to do (ever since the Macromedia weblogs). I had a nice and tidy widget version programmed way back for my old site, as well as played with the same model in Flex. Although it no longer displays because the feed is long dead (RIP early roots of social media), sorting them by category/author, then syndicating to Flash when you do have the feed URL (RSS or atom), is a simple endeavor once you get all the php query vars. Searching on the WordPress...
Continue reading...Alien Invasion (Download Source)
DOWNLOAD HERE (In the directory, right click over anything + Save Link As…) Some years ago I was asked to make a contribution to a book (to put it ambiguously). I made an animation called Alien Invasion, that was basically about arcade games springing to life and 8 bit characters taking over malls across the first world and bringing the economy to its knees because of the sudden decrease in shopping. The stock market suffered heavily because of this. In conclusion to their violent rampage, the 8 bit fiends attacked the human baby factories, and thus the end of humanity...
Continue reading...Vimeo To Flash (The Crazy Simple Video Microsite)
Click here to download the source files. Other than Youtube an easy, and significantly higher quality video service is Vimeo. It’s pretty much regarded as the professional version of Youtube because of the higher quality videos that you can upload and display without suffering horrendous compression. Vimeo Plus even allows you to embed HD videos… In unlimited amounts! Bang! Holy shit. The perk here is that, much like youtube, you can use their handsome API’s to get your videos into Flash. It’s an economical way of incorporating streaming video into your Flash site… Because installing cool shit like Red5 involves...
Continue reading...Programe E ALICE AIML Bot Using Flash (PHP & Actionscript Walkthrough + Source Files)
System requirements: *PHP (4.0.4 and up) *MySQL *Apache Server *Flash (If you found this via a google search… Source files for the Flash are at the end of the post…) Short Summary: Update: For a tutorial, and source code, on integrating Pandorabots with Flash, click here. This is a concise collection of all the information that’s out there (as far as my research leads me to believe – since I last checked), + some personal trial-error-experimeddling on installing Program’s to host your own ALICE bot. This also walks you through the basics for building your own Flash interface (for your...
Continue reading...Actionscript 3 Code Snipplet of The Day: Enhanced “Typeof” Evaluation
typeof is handy but can be a little too flimsy at times. Basically all it really understands are only six possible values; boolean, function, number, object, string, and xml. If you want to run a conditional to check if you’ve got some common ethnic group, such as a movieclip, on your hands then it works charms… BUT if you want to use typeof to check for a Text Field, or maybe something more exciting, then it’ll fail. At least I know of no other way… So! Today’s super simple code blurb of the day is: for (var i:Number=0; i<clip.numChildren; i++)...
Continue reading...Flash Actionscript 3 Countdown Timer Set To Servertime (PHP) – The Countdown You Can’t Cheat
I’ve been itching to do one for a long time since I keep being asked to do countdown timers… Then there’s always that pesky deadline that keeps me from actually not cutting corners and doin’ it fo’ realz. So dundid I didit! A countdown timer set to server time via PHP! (…You know, it should work, but I didn’t test it through n’ through, just threw the servertime integration together this evening :S ). Source files up for grabs HERE! The deal is if you do a countdown in Flash, the Flash Date object is set to the user’s system...
Continue reading...Super Stupidly Simple Particle Effect (Actionscript 3.0)
Here’s a quick particle effect I threw together. Thought I’d put it up here… figuring it might help some hapless googler searching for a quick fix, since it’s a super simple class you can easily reuse or (quite possibly) extend… probably. Download source here. [swfobj src=”http://nathalielawhead.com/sourcefiles/Mouse_Particle_Effect/silly_little_particle.swf” height=”400″ width=”480″] Mouse over the above area to preview. The AS (Particle.as) package { import flash.utils.Timer; import flash.events.TimerEvent; import flash.geom.Point; import flash.display.MovieClip; public class Particle extends MovieClip { protected var position:Point; protected var vector:Point; private var gravity:int; private var friction:Number; private var maxIterationsAlive:Number; private var iterationsAlive:Number; protected var update_i:Timer; public function Particle(p:Point, v:Point, g:int,...
Continue reading...Displaying IMAGES And MEDIA Files In A Flash Based Twitter Feed Reader
This is a follow up to my previous post “Loading Twitter Feeds Into Flash (Through PHP)” (Check it out for source code and other resources)… After successfully doing so, the next most obvious question of any Flash developer would be: “Wow, Flash is awesome! So, can I display images and media files in my Flash Twitter feed reader?” Well, son… The answer is both Yes and, um… No. You can display direct links to media such as: http://realylongurltoyoursite.com/directory/anotherdirectory/image.jpg BUT Twitter has a 140 character limit (that’s just the idea behind Twitter, if it where longer it would be Tumblr). So...
Continue reading...Loading Twitter Feeds Into Flash (Through PHP)
[swfobj src=”http://nathalielawhead.com/noodles/twitter.swf” height=”200″ width=”600″] -Supports ability to retweet, follow, and shows a profile pic. Download the sourcefiles here. There are many cool things you can do with twitter. See Smashing Magazine’s article “50 Twitter Tools and Tutorials For Designers and Developers” I like it. Rather inspiring. Twitter is cool. You know you can even grab the coordinates of where the twitter twat tweeted? I feel sinister seeing that. Consider making a “stalk your ex” app using Twitter and Google Maps where you can enter a user name and see your “ex’s” migration and travel habits. Hehe… Evilness. Importing Twitter feeds...
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