Create a Flash game like Mass Attack

If you love to stay updated with latest addicting Flash games, probably you already know Mass Attack.

Mass Attack is based on the very simple idea of balancing weights on a scale. Just press the mouse button to create a spheric weight. The longer you hold down the mouse the larger the weight that is created.

Maybe you are thinking about physics, but I am showing you how easy can be the engine behind this game.

Let’s start with the object we are using:

ball: it’s… the ball

bar: represents the bar where balls will fall

The first step consists in creating some balls that will grow as long as I keep the mouse pressed Read more

Artillery with bounce: a modification of Artillery tutorial

I received an email from Massimo M. – an italian reader – that modified the code explained in Create a flash artillery game – step 1 tutorial.

Massimo wrote:

“Hi, my name is Massy and I browsed your tutorials about Flash games. I think they are very good.

I modified a bit your artillery 8 file adding two rows to the code and obtaining some kind of artillery 9. I am attaching it in case you are interested in publishing it.

I’ve just added elastic bounces to cannon balls when they hit the ground, using a low bounce factor to make it “realistic”.

This is the code to replace in the first frame: Read more

Experiment: monetizing a Flash game

Multipart tutorial: available parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

This is the first part of an experiment I want to start. Can we monetize a Flash game? And what kind of Flash game should we monetize?

Before starting to explain my experiment, let me introduce you three different categories of Flash games: one-day game, one-week game and one-month game.

The one-day game is a game you can develop in one day, or in a few hours. The game will not have great graphics or stunning level design because this requires time, and the gameplay will be very simple. The one-day game can only rely on originality and gameplay.
Pros: very quick game development – easy to play for everyone
Cons: poor graphic – repetitive gameplay
A big example: Boomshine

The one-week game is a game that requires some days to be coded. It should feature levels, powerups and a more complex gameplay.
Pros: very similar to a “big” game – can be very addictive
Cons: debugging could delay the release or the game may have some bugs
A big example: Bloons

The one-month game is a game that requires a month (or more) to be ready to play. Excellent graphics, great gameplay and a lot of well balanced levels is what it should offer
Pros: It’s a damn good looking game!
Cons: May require a team – If people will not like the game, it would be a very amount of time wasted
A big example: Ball Revamped 5

It’s up to you to choose what kind of game you are about to code, even if I suggest to make a couple of one-day games before trying to shock players with a more complex project.

I’ll try to monetize every category of game, and I am starting with a one-day game called Circle Chain.

It’s inspired to Boomshine and it’s made of about 200 lines. I will release the source and the tutorial very soon.

At the moment I want you to know I made it in 3 hours. So it’s time to decide how much I want to earn from a game I made in 3 hours. This depends a lot from the Country you live in… here in Italy, an average programmer is paid about 30 euro/hour, even if I know a PROgrammer that earns about 80 euro/hour.

So I am going to define three goals: one for the “average programmer”, one for the PROgrammer and one “dream goal”.

I said the game took me 3 hours, and I am going to calculate an extra hour promoting the game on forums, blogs, sites and so on.

So the average programmer should earn 120 euro, the PROgrammer 320 euro and I am fixing the dream goal to 1000 euro.

Since all payments are made in dollars, here it is the goal sheet:

Average programmer: $172
PROgrammer: $460
Dream: $1439

Honestly, I am not quite sure I will hit the $172 goal

Never mind. It’s just an experiment, and should it fail, we’ll learn how not to monetize a Flash game.

Next question is: how to monetize? I decided to publish it on a page of this site with some Adsense ads and to embed Mochiads ads.

I would like to include Kontera ads too but I dont’ want to fill the page with ads.

The page I made is very lame, but I had to to it this way because I have only an hour to promote the game, unless I want my goals to raise…

Note: being a one-hour game, I am not looking for a sponsor. I will contact some of them when I’ll publish at least a one-week game.

Note 2: Mochiads does not pay you until the game is approved by its staff even if you are displaying ads. So at the moment I won’t submit the game to big portals. I’ll wait until they approve the game.

At the moment I have no further news, so I am waiting for Mochiads…

What else can I say? Play the game and give me feedback about it… how much will I earn? Did you like it? Did you beat all levels?

Multipart tutorial: available parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

The Googlement day aka why Google dropped PR

I just wanted to play with the title of one of my favourite movies (T2 Judgement Day) to say something about what happened to most blogs and websites today.

Google updated its PageRank and it’s something like the Judgement Day has come.

Most bloggers today have a PR dropped by one or even two points.

And it was very funny to read bloggers reactions: the most original title in my opinion is “Google Declares Jihad On Blog Link Farms” by TechCrunch.

I also enjoyed the reasons bloggers gave to their PR drop: “I was selling too much links”, “I removed Adsense ads”, “I don’t wear underpants”, and so on.

Last but not least, it’s hilarious how bloggers saying PR was everything when they had an high PR now say thar PR does not mean anything.

Today Google reminded us who rules (ruleZ in geekish): Google itself. You can whine as much as you want, but things won’t change.

Google dropped most PR because there was too much scam with high PR, and Google can’t let its PR to be understimated just because some thousands of bloggers discovered how to raise PR without having content that matters.

Look at the web today: there are tons of “How to make money with internet” that does not make any money with internet and just cut/paste contents from the only 2 or 3 sites that really makes money with internet. The same content, the same banners… Google punished them all.

Another curious thing is some of the bigs names got penalized too: I mean Washington Post, Forbes, Sun Times and more… bot for those sites I think PR means nothing (this time for real).

Probably big information sites got penalized by services like Digg (PR 8) and other social bookmarking sites that allow us to read the last news in only one site.

Now it’s time for us to write some fresh content: if you are a victim of the Googlement day don’t whine, don’t complain, don’t write a post, let’s say, with “5 reasons because PR means nothing” (the first should be “my PR is not high anymore”)… just sit down and think about some fresh and original content.

I don’t believe you walk in your real-life town screaming bullshits, so please promise you won’t do it in the net anymore.

And… one last note… my PR is still 7. But my Alexa rank sucks. That’s life…

APE – Actionscript Physics Engine tutorial – Part 2

I’ve been playing a lot with APE in the last days, so I am ready to write another tutorial.

I strongly recommend you to read the first part before continuing.

The first thing I wanted to do is having the APE environment working on Flash CS3 instead of Flex.

It’s very easy: when you create a new Flash file (Actionscript 3), just go to “Publish Settings”, then “Flash -> Settings” then “Browse to Path” and then select the path to your ape_a045\source directory

Look at the picture and follow the 6 steps:

Now you are redy to execute APE files on Flash CS3, but it’s not over. In order to get the funniest features of APE, you have to update the current alpha 0.45 to the one you will find in the “trunk” of the code repository. Simply go to this link, and overwrite your files with the ones you find there.

Now you are really ready to rumble! Read more

The end of internet in Italy

I suggest a game: tell me the name of a Country that’s trying to “close” internet. China? Maybe. Cuba? Maybe.

Italy? Sure!

Ricardo Franco Levi, Prodi’s right hand man, (Prodi is the Prime Minister here in Italy – I did not vote him and I am proud of it) undersecretary to the President of the Council, has written the text to put a stopper in the mouth of the Internet.

The draft law was approved by the Council of Ministers on 12 October. No Minister dissociated themselves from it.

The Levi-Prodi law lays out that anyone with a blog or a website has to register it with the ROC, a register of the Communications Authority, produce certificates, pay a tax, even if they provide information without any intention to make money.

This means that almost all no-profit sites (or sites with a small profit) will shut down, and the few survivors will have to pay taxes and risk to be guilty of defamatory content in accordance with articles 57 and 57 bis of the penal code (JAIL).

Obviously this blog won’t close. I am planning to transfer it to a democratic State soon as possible.

Maybe I will even get some more extra bucks when I’ll have to assist my customers to the “migration”.

What really pisses me off is the situation. They think they can do what they please.

Anyway… do you know a good internet provider in a democratic State? It would be even better if there are no morons in charge.

Flash racing car engine

I found an interesting Flash racing car engine aged 2004 (!) coded in AS 1 (!!) on Mark Fennell’s site.

I asked the permission to write his tutorial (well, not quite a tutorial, but an “how did I manage to code it”) on my blog, but I never got a reply.

Looking at his homepage, the site was last updated almost a year ago. I am afraid its contents are about to be lost.

The only reason why I am bloggin about it is in one of the last paragraphs in his site:

“I hope that should you use this engine that somewhere you will include a link back to this site”.

Ok… I linked to the site, then it’s time to show you the engine, rewritten in AS2 (although I have to optimize it a lot more) and with the “skids” removed because I think it’s not an efficient way to manage skids. I am going to have it completely rewritten in a few days.

Meanwhile, this is the working (skids excluded) source in AS2… look at the game you can create.

Interesting, isn’t it?

Mochiads – The advertising network just for game developers

I was invited to the beta some time ago, but I never submitted a game. It was in my “to do” list but you know… some projectes in a “to do” list remain in the list forever.

Now Mochiads, the first advertising network just for game developers, is open for everyone.

Earn money developing Flash Games

Now that the beta is over, you can start earning money from your game. You can monetize your games in a four steps:

1) Register to Mochiads

2) Submit a game

3) Choose what type of ad formats you want to display (there is a rather wide choice of options such as ads format, when to display ads, and more)

4) Include the code provided by Mochiads in your game

Then you can repeat steps 2-4 as much times as you want, as long as you can produce Flash games.

Earn money WITHOUT developing Flash Games

For those of you too lazy to develop a game but running a blog or a site ,once you register to Mochiads you can use your custom referral link on your site, in forums, in your games, or anywhere else you want to tell others about Mochiads. When someone signs for a new account, you’ll get $20 when he earns his first $100 (the minimum payout).

I am going to submit a game in a week, then I’ll update you about the results achieved.

This is really a good reason to read my tutorials and start developing your game.

Create a vintage photo effect in Photoshop

Today I was playing with Photoshop looking for some interesting photo effect and I found a quick and easy way to convert a modern photo in a vintage one.

I have already created an action to simulate this effect in Vintage colors effect action for Photoshop, but I am sure you’ll like this effec too.

Follow me through this very easy tutorial and you’ll find by yourself how easy is to achieve this effect.

1) Open your photo

Read more

APE – Actionscript Physics Engine tutorial

October, 23rd update: Part 2 released

With the increasing performances of Actionscript and modern computers, now we have enough power to simulate physics in a Flash movie.

All we need is… let’s say… an huge knowledge of physics, constraints, integrations and so on. With all those things to think about, we cannot focus on the main goal: produce our game/application.

Someone should develop an Actionscript physics engine… APE (Actionscript Physics Engine) is a free AS3 open source 2D physics engine for use in Flash and Flex, released under the MIT License.

I started playing with it yesterday, and results are really amazing. While I need much more time for some experiments, I want to share with you my first steps.

The documentation about this project is very poor (some kind of API without examples, one tutorial and two demos….) so this tutorial could be a bit unclear, but I am doing my best.

Moreover, it’s my first time with APE and my first time with Flex… two new tools to learn quickly, but I am a geek and I am a PROgrammer, so that’s no problem!

First, download the alpha version (yes… just an alpha…).

Now, we need Flex. Let’s say Flex 2. From its official site: “Adobe® Flexâ„¢ 2 is a cross-platform development framework for creating rich Internet applications (RIAs). Flex enables you to create expressive, high-performance applications that run identically on all major browsers and operating systems.”

If it’s your first time with Flex, you can download a complete 30 days evaluation version from this page.

When you have Flex installed on your computer the unzipped APE folder, you are ready to go.

Launch Flex and create a new ActionScript project

Call you project “ape” (you can call it as you want, but later in the code you will have to use this name, so if it’s your first time call it “ape”), don’t click on “Finish” but go to “Next >”.

Seletc “Library Path” and click on “Add SWC…” Read more

Next Page →

  

Posts