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

Get detailed statistics about your Flash game with SWFStats

Are you looking for a fresh and complete tool to track how your game is performing?

Then SWFStats may be the API you need.

SWFStats is a Flash analytics software with a lot of features, some of them absolutely unique for this kind of software. Let’s see them:

• Easy integration
• Track views, playtime
• Tracks views and plays seperately – unique
• Public reports
• Detailed source/country reports – unique
• Distibution reports – unique
• Custom metrics / events
• Level metrics
• Unlimited data

The overall look and feel is very similar to Google Analytics, but we are talking about Flash games statistics, not website reports.

SWFStats provides clean, complete, fast and professional reports, as you can see from this video:

SWFStats also provides a completely transparent leaderboard service with no branding.

It can be integrated directly into your Facebook application, can be used to show global or site-specific scores, and you can easily delete and block cheaters.

SWFStats is currently in beta and during the beta is completely free. Once it will be officially released, you will be credited with an extra game you can use, after which you will have to decide if you wish to continue using the service for new games.

At the moment there isn’t any pricing plan, but the service looks very promising and I think you shouldn’t miss a try.

Games that Challenge the World Come2Play contest – $8,000 in prizes

Do you want to make something interesting out of the Come2Play multiplayer API tutorial?

Here it is your chance to win up to $5,000!!

Come2Play – Creators of the first white-label social gaming platform and multiplayer game API – are holding a contest, in conjunction with the LinkedIn Flash Game Developers group, for the development of turn based multiplayer games with prizes totaling $8,000.

In a gaming world where new games are launched and disappear just as quickly, multiplayer games with a social infrastructure are a huge hit amongst users; developing a loyal fan base that come back daily to play against each other and their friends.

Come2Play has developed this infrastructure and are inviting game developers to take advantage of it.

Come2Play is revitalizing the formula by allowing for correspondence challenges. With correspondence challenges, a player makes the first move in a game and then sends it to all their friends through email or their favorite social network. Each individual friend can then send back their next move. Each friend who responds starts a new game with the creator of the game. This gaming form provides a huge viral opportunity to game developers looking to expand the reach of their games.

In light of this initiative, Come2Play is launching their latest contest – The Games That Challenge the World Competition. Read more

Triqui’s Picks #15

Only two games this week, and a lot of garbage jigsaw puzzles…

Hill Of Defend: Fresh defense game, with a different view. This time you’ll defend your base from a side view.

What I liked: Normally I hate classic defense games, but this one has a new and original approach.

Programming difficulty: Very complete game. 5/5

Sagoo: Platform game with interesting physics puzzles

What I liked: Cool game, cool character.

Programming difficulty: Interesting use of Box2D combined with various stuff. 5/5

See you next week

HiRoads case study: the aftermath

Do you remember Filippo Bodei’s HiRoads case study?

After two months with HiRoads in the wild, Filippo shares with us the result of his project.

« Here we are again after about two monts since HiRoads went live!

Today, the 21st of January, I can count 1203 registered users and 250 roads published on www.hiroads.com
What does it mean? It means an average of 20 new users and 4 new roads per day.
Also a grand total of 1050$ (Mochiads + AdSense + 2 site-locked version) was earned.
But let’s start from the beginning. Read more

Way of an Idea Box2D prototype – Step 3

Welcome to the 3rd part. In part 2 we allowed the player to draw the chalk track in a “paused” Box2D environment and then run the simulation.

Now it’s time to delete our chalk track.

A bit of theory: although the simulation is paused, the chalk bodies are already placed in the Box2D world. So we can easily select them with our old friend GetBodyAtMouse function.

Then we need to know whether the selected body is a chalk or not… we don’t want to delete other level assets or even the ball!!

So we must check if the userData of the selected body (that is the attached sprite) is a chalk. If true, we can remove the sprite from the stage and destroy the body.

This is the code: Read more

Triqui’s Picks #14

We’re starting the new year with just three games:

Running Blue: Interesting platform game with 12 levels of pure action… run, jump, throw bombs…

What I liked: It’s a good platform, and I don’t see Mario…

Programming difficulty: Platforms aren’t easy. 4/5

Frutopia: Eat all fruits during all 20 levels

What I liked: It’s a very simple concept, with interesting graphics. All those fruits icons reminded me a bit Bubble Bobble

Programming difficulty: eazeeeeeeeeee… 1/5 Read more

Come2Play multiplayer API tutorial

Today I want to introduce you a Come2Play multiplayer API tutorial written by Emanuele Ornella from Mind the Move.

Emanuele is a Flash game developer and a board game designer too.

« After the development of my first two games Tokyo Train and Haunted house I am interested in development of a multiplayer game. For this reason I started to study the Come2Play API.

Links to the project: http://www.come2play.com/developer.asp

The goal of the tutorial is to show how to build a Tic Tac Toe game using these API.

The project can be downloaded from
www.mindthemove.com/blog/projects/TicTacToeC2P.zip

These API are basically used to have a communication between one or more clients (in Flash AS3) and the Come2Play server to allow a multiplayer game.

There are 2 type of functions: operations and callbacks.

I am going to use two classes.

- MainTTTC2P that extends ClientGameAPI. This is the main class the acts as controller

- TTTC2PViewer that is the viewer class. In some way, because the game is simple and it is for tutorial purpose, this will work as model as well.

I am not using an event driven approach as in the tutorials from come2play project because I found this confusing the main focus that is to learn how to use the basic API by come2play. Read more

Top 40 Countries giving the best MochiAds CPM in 2009

As a new year begins, it’s time to recap what happened during previous year.

During these days, I saw a lot of people publishing MochiAds’s 2009 CPM.

I have to say you must not trust such kind of statistic because CPM may vary a lot according to two variables:

1) The number of impressions

Sometimes you see developers saying “hey, I’m having a $2 eCPM!! wow!!” – This happens probably because they’re having a very few visits and a couple of clicks, raising the estimated CPM. Once (if ever) they’ll reach some thousands plays, the CPM will surely stabilize on a lower value, usually from $0.30 to $0.50.

2) The Country your game is being played in

Since MochiMedia does not sell ads in every single Country of the world, in most Countries your game won’t show relevant ads because there aren’t advertiser willing to show (and pay for showing) their ads to people living in Countries outside their market.

This means a very different CPMs from Country to Country

Top 40 Countries in 2009

The following is a list of top 40 countries that gave me the best CPM during all 2009. I included in the list only countries that gave me at least 100,000 impressions, to avoid misunderstandings explained at point 1 Read more

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