Get up to $100,000 for your next Flash game with Mochi GAME Developer Fund

Imagine a Flash game sponsor encouraging you to use MochiAds, helping you to market and promote your game, reviewing and testing it putting his experience at your service and helping you to integrate the latest APIs in the most proficuous way.

For some developers this dream could become true because MochiMedia created the Mochi GAME Developer Fund: a $10 million fund that will help promising Flash and social game developers support their games through sponsorship, licensing and publishing deals.

The fund will assist small Flash game development studios and independent game developers worldwide in building world-class games and businesses.

You will find the details in the official page, with some FAQs. Here’s the four more interesting:

Q: What is the Mochi GAME Developer Fund?
A: The Mochi GAME Developer Fund $10 million USD fund for investing in promising Flash and social game developers through sponsorship, licensing, and publishing. The goal of the Fund is to assist developers in launching and building rockstar premium games on the Mochi platform, and to cultivate long term relationships with Flash and social game developers looking to build world-class games and businesses.

Q: What is the target deal size for the Mochi GAME Developer Fund?
A: The Mochi GAME Developer Fund intends to partner with Flash and social game developers on a sponsorship, licensing or publishing basis anywhere from $1,000 to $100,000. Additional consideration may be given to other types of relationships on a case-by-case basis. Generally, the funds will be given upon the achievement of certain milestones of the game development process. The specific milestones can be discussed with the Mochi GAME Developer Fund team.

Q: What types of games is the Mochi GAME Developer Fund seeking?
A: We are open to Flash and social games of all genres and gameplay types targeting all kinds of audiences. Particular attention will be given to games that have high potential to monetize via MochiCoins microtransactions, include social elements that may be enhanced via MochiSocial or are particularly great games.

Q: I don’t live in the United States. Can I still work with the Mochi GAME Developer Fund?
A: Absolutely! Flash and social game developers are located all across the world. We care less about where you live and care more about helping you build great games using the Mochi platform.

According to these FAQs, it looks like an exclusive sponsorship, but I hope to give you more information as I’m running to submit the form and ask for some millions for my next game.

Sell sitelocked version of your Flash games and even .fla sources to Free Online Games

Are you looking for a quick way to sell a site locked version of your game? Do you want to earn some more selling the .fla source code? Then Neil from Free Online Games (aka FOG) is your man.

FOG is looking for any game, no matter how old it is or how wide spread it is already, as long as it’s a decent game. In this case FOG will buy you a site locked version of your game, or even the .fla source code.

What happens when FOG buys a site locked version of your game

* The game is sitelocked to FOG
* You have to interface your game with their API
* You have to remove all external branding and ads

What happens when FOG buys the source code of your game

* FOG retains the rights to re-release, resell, re-use, delete, make more version and all in all everything with your code
* All branding, ads and credits will be removed

Note: if your game is already sponsored, you may no longer have the right to sell your source code. Check with your sponsor as FOG is not responsible for your previous deals Read more

Box2D Flash game creation tutorial – part 2

After seeing the character creation in Box2D Flash game creation tutorial – part 1, it’s time to add some coins to collect.

This process will involve some interesting Box2D features, like sensors and custom collision management.

I would suggest to read the basics of sensors at Erase Box: the tutorial and custom collision management at Creation of a Flash Stabilize! clone using Box2D – part 4.

Although they are both referred to an older Box2D version, they’ll introduce you to sensor and collisions.

Now the concept is simple: we are placing some circular sensors around the stage (the coins), then we’ll create a custom contact listener class to check whether the player is over a coin or not. If it’s over, we’ll remove the coin.

So this is the main script: Read more

11 Flash isometric engines you can use in your games

I am playing isometric games for more than 20 years… probably started with Q*bert, one of the oldest games I played is Head Over Heels on my Commodore 64, and I was an hardcore player of UFO: Enemy Unknown.

As you should know, isometric projection is a method of visually representing three-dimensional objects in two dimensions, in which the three coordinate axes appear equally foreshortened and the angles between any two of them are 120 degrees. A great way to represent 3D worlds on old 8-bit computers since their CPUs did not handle a real 3D world, and a great way to create casual adventure games nowadays.

I am showing you a list of 11 Flash isometric engines, some of them are free, others are commercial, and some still unreleased. I am writing to all authors to have more info about their engines, meanwhile this the most complete list I was able to make.

Engines are listed in alphabetical order.

2D isometric engine – Free

http://code.google.com/p/2d-isometric-engine/

Open source, multilevel and multiplayer tilebased isometric engine, reviewed in this post

as3isolib – Free

http://as3isolib.wordpress.com/

As3isolib is an open-source ActionScript 3.0 Isometric Library developed to assist in creating isometrically projected content (such as games and graphics) targeted for the Flash player platform. As3isolib includes utilities, primitives and views. As3isolib was developed with simplicity, speed and performance in mind so that developers can focus on actual implementations rather than having to learn a complex API.

You can see latest project using this engine at http://apps.facebook.com/downtowngame/ Read more

Monetize your Flash games with GamesChart

Do you remember Emanuele Ornella from Mind the Move? It’s the guy behind the Come2Play multiplayer API tutorial posted about a month ago.

Now he is explaining us a new way to monetize Flash games: GamesChart

« When I first saw the announcement on Flash Game Developers group on www.linkedIn.com about the GamesChart beta program I immediately thought to participate. It was a surprise to me to find that my game Haunted House was at first position for the entire 4 weeks of the beta program!

Actually also my Alice Memory game is also on the chart, even if never more than in the 6th position.

What GamesChart is about?

It’s another way to generate money from you Flash games. The nice thing is that it is not an alternative to the traditional banner you place during the loading of the game. But it goes together.
The main idea is to have publisher to “bid” for which game will be in the chart and this will generate extra revenue to the developer, to the publisher who correctly bid and of course to the GamesChart organization.

This is from Barry White directly from linkedIn group. Read more

Box2D Flash game creation tutorial – part 1

My first Flash game tutorial ever was Flash game creation tutorial – part 1.

It was the first of a series to create a game like jmtb’s ball games. It was an old AS2 series, and some steps have been ported in AS3 with Create a Flash ball game using AS3.

The “ball” game is so simple yet addictive and customizable that I think it’s the perfect game to start a tutorial series based on a new language.

This time I am not covering a new language but the famous Box2D library, but I am going to add all necessary features to make it an interesting game to play.

In this first chapter, I am going to create the ball and the way you control it, by tapping arrow keys.

I am using the basics of Understanding Box2D applicable forces and Box2D tutorial for the absolute beginners – revamped, which I recommend you to read.

Now this is the code: Read more

Flash AS3 Pixel based circle collision engine

After seeing the Lineball video teaser I got some email asking me how did I make the hollow circle with Box2D, and how to get a smooth drawing using box primitives.

Well, I have to say I didn’t use Box2d, but another library called Collision Detection Kit.

I’ll publish some tutorial about it once I’ll complete the game, but it’s not the point of today’s post.

A reader from Argentina, Adolfo Chacon, sent me an AS3 basic engine to do the same thing (maybe even better) using the concepts I explained soooooo long ago in the Create a flash draw game like Line Rider or others series.

It’s a basic, uncommented script because it’s just a prototype… basically Adolfo took my old script, adjusted trigonometry and did the magic dividing the simulation in steps to manage slower speeds.

I resized it, changed variable names (translating from spanish) and some operators since the auto format option gave me errors when trying to format a<-b, forcing me to change into a<b*-1.

Now enjoy the script Read more

Lineball video teaser

This is a quick video teaser of my upcoming game (probably) called Lineball.

It’s a draw game, a classic in which you must draw a line to make a ball reach the goal, but with some twists, such as the ability to control ball’s speed with arrow keys, red zones that will kill your ball if it touches the lines you drew, 42 levels some of them with moving environment, and so on.

The engine is almost complete, and at the moment I am working on level design, then I’ll retouch the graphics and polish some details, and it will be completed.

As you can see, I am keeping the menu very simple, with only two buttons, and some space for the sponsors. In the level selection screen, there is also a lot of space for sponsor logos.

The only thing I still have to decide is how to save level progression… I don’t know if I should use a Mochi account, or simply save it as a shared object, or using Mochi Coins to unlock some levels, or allowing to play some levels only on the official site…

The game will be completed in about a week, if there is anyone interested in sponsoring it, I am open to any deal since I am still working on the game… just drop me a mail at info[at]emanueleferonato[dot]com.

PixelBlitz AS3 game framework

PixelBlitz Engine is an old game framework for Actionscript3 created by Richard Davey from Photon Storm.

As said, it’s not that new, there isn’t any documentation or tutorial or even a feature list.

So, you may wonder why should I write about it, considering it’s a bitmap-based framework just like Flixel, which has a better documentation.

Well, the main reason is the blog is mine :) … the second reason is PixelBlitz supports the Flash IDE, and this means you can use the library with Flash, while Flixel only supports Adobe Flex Builder or FlashDevelop.

In the downloadable package you can find at Google Code you can find some examples but they are incomplete… you will only find the .as files, without the .fla.

So I took the most promising example (in my opinion) and created a complete project, with the .fla file and all needed objects (well, just one object, but it’s everything you need to make it work).

This is the script, let the comments guide you through the entire process. Read more

Triqui’s Picks #16

Three really funny and amazing games this week:

Go to Hell!: Dig through 666 meters to reach hell and find out its secret. You have to dig all the way down through caves filled with water, lava, boulders and enemies. You’ll need to eat, breathe and avoid or kill monster to survive.

What I liked: Nice concept, reminded me A Journey to the Centre of the Earth. I really enjoyed it

Programming difficulty: The water… 5/5

Snipedown: A “defense” game with a World War 2 theme… you play as a sniper and must defend your base from 20 waves of enemies. Air strikes and machine guns will help you.

What I liked: Obliterating the infantry has never been so much fun…

Programming difficulty: Not that hard… all in all it’s just an hit test with some twist. 2/5 Read more

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