Michel Wacker

Sometimes it seems unbelievable how time flies. It’s been a week already since we had to call off our second devjam, since Wolli caught the flews. So we’ll have to delay the work on our new game.

But my own game, that I decided to call “BubbleMath”, advanced pretty well during the last weeks and I put some extra attention to the engine that’s behind the game: I added a ScreenController and AbstractScreens, which allow building static menus easily. I hope to be able to post a first screenshot soon. Right now, I’ll have to work on a quick slideshow player for my parents big birthday this weekend. Pew!

In other news… I got an invitation to the Adobe AIRcamp, Switzerland, which takes place in Zurich on 28th and 29th of February, and signed up right away. Besides a six hour AIR workshop the free event includes a 24 hour contest in developing an AIR application. The best program does not only win a Macbook but will also be promoted at this year’s best of swiss web awards in March. Only one thing left to say: Wheeee! :)

So, time to practice my Flex skills, which reminds me: my Liip colleague Sandro and I will be giving speeches about two ActionScript 3 workflow approaches at the Swiss Flash user group meeting in Zurich next Monday. One will consider the basic workflow setup with FDT and one will be about our recently evolved Flex template approach. So if you’re around and interested, sign up today! :)

News just arrived that the iconomix project, Liip is heavily involved in, has been nomiated “Master of Swiss web 2008″. Find out more (and vote for it) at http://vote.liip.ch

The day I found out that it is possible to define code snippets within the FDT plugin my productivity went up about 20%. I wasn’t actually aware of the feature until I stumbled upon it by chance so I venture there are more people out there that are missing out on this unique chance to boost their productivity. What is this all about?

FDT lets you define templates for frequently used code snippets that you can call via a key word you define.

For example: when you type “fori” and hit CTRL+Space FDT will suggest to write a regular for-loop for you and guide you from one crucial element of the loop to the other e.g. to change the suggested index or array the loop is performed on. Isn’t that great?
And it gets even better: you can create new templates and call them via the keyword you choose. Never want to write a singleton from scratch again? Here is how it goes:

Read the rest of this entry »

After a week of snowboading down the slopes of the austrian Zillertal mountains, I’m back with fully charged batteries and ready for action (script – hrhr). There are various things I’m planning to write about in the next days so here are some infos to get you drooling with anticipation:

• At Liip we’ve done some major research on the various methods of embedding fonts into AS3 projects with or without using the IDE. I hope, I’ll soon get my boss’ go to publish the essentials of our results either here or directly on our company’s blog.
• I’ve set myself the aim to develop a game in less than 24 hours (not in a piece, though) and the outcome is already at 90% status. Screenshots and more info by the end of the week.
• There is a new Devjam session coming up on the 8th of February, but we’ll start working on a new game since the Christmas theme seems kinda … misplaced till next November :)

So stay tuned!

Initiated by our Christmas Devjam I am currently developing a small game engine in ActionScript 3 in my spare time. The aim is to create a setup that allows quick and easy development of casual games in Flash. The animation system, that I just successfully debugged, is based on the idea of checking the current frame label of the animated MovieClip as described by Jens Franke in this post (make sure to read the comments, too).

This technique completely separates code from design, allowing the designer to delimit animations without writing a single line of code, but by simply placing one label (e.g. “jump”) at the beginning of the animation and one at the end of it ( e.g. “done_jump” ).

So on each frame that starts with “done_”, the engine triggers a method that decides what to do next: play another animation? Loop this animation a certain amount of times? Jump to another animation? Destroy the object? … So, all the programmer has to do is override the function that makes these decisions and implement the coherent animation functions. Easy, isn’t it?

Right now, I’m planning to somewhat opensource the engine, once it’s done – and it doesn’t turn out to be a heap of useless code. As soon as I make progress in this, I’ll let you know.

As announced, Wolli and I sat together on Thursday for our personal Christmas devjam 2007:

At 10am the first coffee was brewed on my tiny stove and we exchanged ideas on the concept and the implementation of our little Christmas game. Then Wolli picked up his artpad pen, I started up my most beloved Eclipse and soon the room was filled with scratching sounds, the clicking and clacking of keys on the keyboard and the smell of RECK’s Moka Yrgacheffé coffee beans (anyone can pronounce that?).

We worked about 11 hours spread over the day interrupted by several coffee breaks and a major present shopping spree. After a lot of drawing, coding and even a broken Eclipse, we finally stopped the session at one o’clock in the morning stuck somewhere about half way through. So, sadly, all we have to show at this point is this nice little screenshot giving an idea of the game graphics:

Although we did not achieve the high aim to develop a complete game that day, we enjoyed the motivation and fun that came from sitting together, tossing ideas around and looking at the first results shortly after. So, we figured that this will have to be repeated!

But what about the game itself? Well, I might find some more time to code, but, still, we probably wouldn’t make it on time until Christmas eve :( But since we want to see this game on screen as much as you do, you needn’t worry: we will finish it sooner or later. Whatever we achieve, I’ll post it right here. Stay tuned!

Christmas time is game dev time – at least that’s going to be this year’s motto since I’m already on vacation. The plan is as follows:

Wolli and I will sit together, think up and implement a christmassy flash game within a day. The aim is to create something challenging and entertaining to shorten the unbearable time till Santa rumbles down your chimney.

Actually, we’ll have to cheat a little: Since this will be our first AS3 game, we’ll reserve some additional time to take care of the very basics such as evaluating a workflow, coding a bunch of classes that consider collision detection and animation treatment, buying a proper amount of coffee and stuff like that.

Now, the dev jam will take place on Thursday. That will be the day when we actually put our heads together and create most of the game code and graphics. However, things are already in motion: a basic concept has been sketched out and today I will start to pull up some classes so we’re ready to go when dev-day comes. Thus, we’ll be able to focus all our Thursday-energy on the game itself and hopefully we’ll have something presentable by the end of the week – watch out for news and updates!

But enough of the talking – let the coding begin! 8)

I finally managed to set up a references page where I’ll keep track of the most interesting projects I’ve been involved in so far. For now, I merely included a selection of web projects and neglected the various software projects I contributed to as gamedesigner, illustrator, animator or – yet again – programmer. I plan to set up another page for these no lesser interesting projects in the near future.

For those of you who’ve been looking for a quick introduction on how to setup FDT 3.0 with Eclipse 3.3.x in German this article by Jens Franke (if you havn’t bookmarked his blog, yet, now is the time!) may provide the end of your troubles. It is part of a collection of articles on how he arranges his AS3.0 workflow. Worth a glimpse for any flash developer working with AS3.0 since he shads some light on best practices in programmer-designer collaboration, as well.

In case you’ve been wondering why not even a single post has appeared since the (not very) exiting setup of this blog, take a look at iconomix.ch and you’ll know what I’ve been working on during the last months:

Iconomix is a rather big platform issued by the Swiss National Bank (SNB) that’s supposed to be used for educational purposes. Several interactive modules introduce the user into the magical world of economy.

As leading flash developer, I’ve been deeply involved into the development of flash-clients for two Red5 driven multi-player games and the production of dozens of custom flash components since I started working for Liip in October 2007. These in turn where used to build flash-driven multimedia courses and single-player games. So far, the biggest project I’ve been involved in.

For those of you who know German or French, check out the Liip page for more information.