franto.com

Tower Defense Design – The Future of Gaming?

I don’t know about you, but I’ve noticed something of a trend on the Android Marketplace, and for that matter, on most arcade-game style marketplaces – the appearance of wave after wave of tower defense titles. Their popularity has soared to the point where it’s hard to envision the indie games market without these titles.

Of course, there are big-budget versions – DoubleFine’s “Trenched” is a good example of the fact that major studios and developers are paying close attention to. Whether you’re looking at gaming phones on o2.co.uk or browsing flash game sites, it’s hard to ignore the appeal of the strategic tower defense genre.

But what does that say about games and how we perceive them today? There has always been a definable gap between the casual and the hardcore, with those few perfectly-balanced in betweens finding fame and fortune. But tower defense titles are in an odd place – outside the Venn diagram that helps us define the current swathe of video game design ideas.

Specifically, it’s because they are games that are at first, enjoyable and casual, but soon become a hardcore experience in their strategy and depth. With no discernible means of altering difficulty levels, and certainly no way to tell if the cartoony, simplistic feel to earlier experiences before it becomes all about stopping the mobs from crossing beyond the point of your reign of destruction ever actually dissipates.

It could just be a phase – there’s nothing wrong with capitalizing on the gaming audience’s sudden urge to endlessly build militaristic architecture in order to fend off hordes of hostile entities. But once the gaming crowd moves on, will there be a niche? Presumably – all games survive to some degree, even just in memory. I hear Backgammon’s still going strong. But it’s key to note that while tower defense is the big thing, it’s best to jump on in. The design is straightforward, the appeal is huge. If you’re curious, start work. You could just fund an entirely different project.

WordPress Mobile Edition

If you have your wordpress based blog and want to have “mobile” version of your blog, there is nothing easier. You can download WordPress Mobile Edition and install it. Plugin includes mobile theme which is independent of your currently used wordpress theme. If user is viewing your blog from mobile device like iPhone, Android or other mobile devices, wordpress mobile edition theme will be displayed, otherwise your selected theme is used. All you need to do is just activate plugin. Go and let’s try it. If you are viewing this post from your mobile device, please let me know whether you like mobile version of my blog.

Flex Hero – Android links collection

Lately in my free time I’ve started to learn Flex Hero to be able to develop mobile applications for Android devices in Flex. I’ve downloaded Flash Builder Burrito from Adobe Labs, which already consists Flex Hero SDK, so I could immediately start developing my first Flex Android application. It’s quite new area and there is lot of articles, tutorials, examples about Android application development in Flex Hero. I’m collecting links for me and for you as a source of help and knowledge base for developing Android applications in Flex. I hope my collection will be useful for you as good base to start playing with Flex Hero and Android devices. Enjoy it.

Download IDE and SDKs

• Flash Builder Burrito with Flex Hero SDK
• Android SDK (not needed)

Flex Hero Help

• Flex Hero SDK: AIR 2.5 Help
• Mobile Application Development in Flex SDK Hero
• What’s new in Flash Builder Burrito
• Introducing Adobe Flex SDK Hero
• Mobile development using Adobe Flex SDK Hero and Flash Builder Burrito
• Adobe Flash Mobile Platform
• Code, Package and Debug Flex Mobile apps with Flash Builder Burrito
• Adobe Flex Mobile Overview – Part 1

Flex Hero – Android Development Tutorials

• How to Skin AIR Mobile ActionBar
• URI handlers in AIR for Android
• Flex 4.5 PersistenceManager
• Building a native menu in Flex Mobile
• hacking native android with air app to allow air access unavailable apis
• Flex 4.5 Mobile Development Post Burrito
• How to Install Non-Market .apk Apps on Google Android G1 Phone

Flex Android Development – Video tutorials

• Flex Mobile Part 1: Beginning a mobile application
• Flex Mobile Part 2: Navigation and Lists
• Flex Mobile Part 3: Debug and package apps for devices
• Debug Adobe AIR for Android applications
• First Adobe AIR for Android App

Custom Flex Android Mobile components

• Android Time Picker for Flex Hero
• Android Date Picker for Flex Hero

Optimizations techniques for Flex Mobile development

• Optimize Flash Content and Improving Usability on Mobile Devices – Part #1
• Optimizing Flash Content for Mobile Devices by Ben Stucki
• Optimize web content for mobile delivery
• Optimization Techniques for Air for Android apps
• Practical Performance Tweaks (not just mobile optimizations)
• Adobe AIR Mobile: Application performance optimization on Android

Mobile Applications Performance

• Mr Doob’s Memory Monitor
• Flash Optimizing Tools by Elad Elrom

There are more than 30 links in Flex Hero – Android development links collection. If you are missing anything and want to add anything inside, please share your links in commenst and I will update collection. And please let me know if you are also trying, playing or learning Flex Hero for Flex Mobile apps development.

Send links to your Android

Browsing in my HTC Desire HD is very nice, though I don’t like that much write long URLs on touch screen. Normal keyboard is still better for me. But if you’re sitting in front of computer there is nice way to send URL links from your computer to your Android device. I’m sure there are more solutions, but this one works for me nicely. It’s Google Chrome To Phone extension for Google Chrome browser. Also you need to install application on your Android device as well: http://code.google.com/p/chrometophone. Please be aware Android 2.2 (Froyo) is required and also Google account (for synchronizing).

Let me know what is your favorite solution for syncing links between your computer and android mobile.

Enjoy

Android Time Picker for Flex Hero

I’ve create new Android mobile component in Flex Hero. Last time I’ve created Android Date Picker, which allows you to pick date. But if you need change time, there is another component: Time Picker. So I’ve recreated it for Flex Hero. There are 2 different possibilities: changing time in AM/PM format or full day mode. It’s just matter of setting property: timePicker.fullDayMode = true/false. In next article I will post new Time picker with gestures support and not using buttons +/- for changing hours, minutes and seconds. Using Android Time Picker for Flex Hero is similar as for Date Picker, just open it with PopupManager.addPopup. Please download FXP project, which consist example of usage Time Picker (Date Picker as well) and import it to your Flash Builder Burrito.

Native Android Time Picker

Android Time Picker for Flex Hero – AM/PM mode

Android Time Picker for Flex Hero – full day mode

Android Date Picker for Flex Hero

I’ve been testing new Flex Hero SDK with AIR 2.5 on my HTC Desire HD. In Flash Builder Burrito it works very nice and smooth. Even debugging on mobile works nicely (computer and mobile must be connected to same wifi). I’m just playing and testing some new stuff and have needed date picker for choosing date, but there is no such component in Flex Hero SDK I can use. So I’ve checked native Android Date Picker and try to create it from scratch in Flex. It’s pretty easy component, you can make it on your own in few minutes. But if you don’t want to bother to recreate it, you can just use mine.

Native Android Date Picker:

Flex Android Date Picker:

Download sources as Flash Burrito project with .apk file.
This file is hosted straight from our web hosting provider.

If you have already use another DatePicker or made your own one, let me know your thoughts. I’ve just tested it only on HTC Desire HD (screen resolution 480x800px).

Problems with latest stable Flex 4 nightly build

I have commercial project in Flex 4. That’s great I always wanted to use Flex 4 for commercial project (otherwise I didn’t have time to work with Flex 4). It was too risky, because Flex 4 is just beta 2, but application depends on custom skinning, so we have decided to implement it in Flex 4 together with Flash Catalyst. Workflow is not ideal (as graphics designer didn’t know about Flash catalyst), but surely it was help (at least for cutting assets ). There were few problems, but after month of development and reading some stuff and tutorials on web I want to try use latest stable nightly build. Right now it’s Flex 4.0.0.13875 from 29th of January. So I’ve downloaded and install it to Flash builder.

First, what I’ve found out that namespace mx was change to ns namespace. xmlns:mx=”library://ns.adobe.com/flex/halo”
xmlns:ns=”library://ns.adobe.com/flex/mx”

some properties was renamed e.g BitmapImage resizeMode to fillMode, some properties was removed.

But I’ve stuck on 1 problem… from flash.* packages, there is just flash.text.*, all other flash.* packages are not inside. So e.g. I can not use MouseEvent and similar stuff

Does anyone know if I don’t see anything obvious? Does anyone use latest stable nightly build of Flex 4? (I’ve tried also latest nightly build Flex 13963, same problem)

I really want to use it, because I know, there is some important things fixed. Please let me know, if you have how to fix problem

Thank you very much

Loosing children interactivity after setting perspectiveProjection

My current project needs to use new native 3D in Flash Player 10. It seems so easy to use it, just set any 3d property like x,y,z or rotationX, rotationY, rotationZ and all should work perfectly. It seems so. But I have found problem and it seems it’s Flash player bug (I hope someone proves me wrong ). I need to change field of view of some DisplayObject to have different perspective as it is set by default. So I’ve done it in way

var pp:PerspectiveProjection = new PerspectiveProjection();
pp.fieldOfView = 11;
 
this.transform.perspectiveProjection = pp;

it’s easy and it works. But problem is, that after setting of perspectiveProjection all children interactivity (mouse click, rollovers and rollouts) stops working and this is really big issue. I’ve tried everything I know to prevent this, but I could not make it work. So I’m trying to write this post to get help on this (if it is possible).

Let me know if you have similar problem and please vote for Adobe bug(s) I will post later to let Adobe fix it ASAP.

Some links with this issue on net:

• http://old.nabble.com/Setting-perspectiveProjection-disable-children-interactivity-td21207809.html
• https://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/FP-2445
• https://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/FP-1609 This is even marked as resolved by Adobe

Let me know if comments if you know anything about this problem. Thank you

WordPress plugin Permalinks Changer

When you want to change your permalinks structure in WordPress,there is easy way if your are WordPress semi-advance user. But there are also WordPress Newbies, which want to change WordPress permalinks structure as well. I’ve created small wordpress plugin called Permalinks Changer, which helps you to change you permalinks structure in more friendly way. This was implemented as help to one of my friend in some private interner marketer forum. Now there are just 3 simple possibilities of permalinks structure:

• use your post name in URLs
• use category and post name in URLs
• reset to default permalinks structure

If you have any idea how to make life easier for WordPress newbies, please leave a comment with your suggestion.

Download WordPress Plugin Permalinks Changer

Numeric sorting of Flex DataGridColumn

This is quick example for Numeric sorting of Flex DataGrid columns. If you want to sort column in DataGrid, default sorting is sorted by String and not by Number. If you have just one numeric column, you may create custom sort function and set sortCompareFunction for given DataGridColumn. If you have more such columns and your dataProvider is ArrayCollection, which consists of many objects, better solution is override DataGridColumn and implement compare function inside this class. Here is class

package com.flexets.components.dataGridClasses
{
	import mx.controls.dataGridClasses.DataGridColumn;
	import mx.utils.ObjectUtil;
 
	public class NumericDataGridColumn extends DataGridColumn
	{
		public static const NUMERIC:String = "N";
		public function NumericDataGridColumn(columnName:String=null)
		{
			super(columnName);
			initCompare(NUMERIC);
		}
 
		function initCompare(numeric:Object):void
		{
			if (numeric == NUMERIC) {
				sortCompareFunction = numericCompare;
			}
		}
 
		/**
		* Pull the numbers from the objects and call the implementation. TAKEN FROM mx.collections.SortField
		*/
		private function numericCompare(a:Object, b:Object):int
		{
			var fa:Number;
			try
			{
				fa = dataField == null ? Number(a) : Number(a[dataField]);
			}
			catch(error:Error)
			{
			}
 
			var fb:Number;
			try
			{
				fb = dataField == null ? Number(b) : Number(b[dataField]);
			}
			catch(error:Error)
			{
			}
 
			return ObjectUtil.numericCompare(fa, fb);
		}
	}
}

and then just use NumericDataGridColumn in your mxml in DataGrid like this

<mx:DataGrid id="myDG" width="100%" height="100%" dataProvider="{myDataProvider}">
    <mx:columns>
	<mx:DataGridColumn dataField="id"/>
	<dataGridClasses:NumericDataGridColumn dataField="order"/>
	<mx:DataGridColumn dataField="title"/>
	<dataGridClasses:NumericDataGridColumn dataField="price"/>
    </mx:columns>
</mx:DataGrid>

Enjoy this little Flex tip.