With so many encryptors/protectors/obfuscators around the web, choosing the right one could be an hassle.

I’ve chosen mine: Kindi’s secureSWF.

It has the most comprehensive set of options you can imagine. You can select the level of encryption, with some presets settings, you can prevent the SFW to be played locally and you can even sitelock it.

How does it work? secureSWF renames just about every identifier (including classes, symbol instances names, and even frame labels) in your ActionScript into short meaningless names that include unprinted characters. This means decompilers won’t read your code, and if they manage to do it, once the code will be exported, it will generate a lot of errors if you try to compile it.

Now I wanted to put some screenshot here and there, and finish the post, but Kindi’s guys published a lot of screenshots on their site, better than any screenshot I can take.

This made me angry, so I launched Sothink SWF Decompiler 6 and Flash Decompiler Trillix 5 to put secureSWF in troubles.

Then I took the SWF used in the Box2D slicing engine to see what happens.

This is the code you get with the Sothink SWF decompiler:

and this is the one displayed by Trillix:

Both are clean and perfectly understandable, while being a bit different.

Now, let’s compile the SWF using the safe option, which is the weakest encryption but ensures your final SWF to be working.

This is what Sothink returns:

And this is Trillix’s result:

Both codes are obfuscated, with Trillix’s looking a bit worse because of the way it calls methods. Trying to understand even a simple example like this one becomes really really hard, but the best has yet to come.

Decompiling the SFW made with the standard settings crashed Trillix while Sothink (which will be the only decompiler used for the tests from now on) returned this incomprehensible code:

Even with just the standard settings, I feel safe with this code, I don’t think people will bother trying to steal my games. They’d rather build their own game from scratch.

And what happens when I sitelock a game? Obviously it must add something like the code explained in this post.

Well, I sitelocked the movie to emanueleferonato.com, then I decompiled it and that’s what I found:

I suppose the lock lies in the highlighted code which calls this class:

I couldn’t even find the string “feronato” and searching into some files also made the decompiler to crash.

But I wanted to push more the test, so since it has a “Best size” protection, I tried it on a file which has been compressed as much as I could.

I am talking about the complete Bejeweled game in less than 2KB which SWF is only 2.035 bytes.

With secureSWF I managed to get a 1998 bytes file!!

There’s no doubt, secureSWF will be the Flash obfuscation software I will be using for a long time and I am highly recommending you to do the same.

I am using encryptors for years and at the moment this is the best choice on the market. And the professional edition costs less than a half of the cheapest Flash game sponsorship I got.

While you can see the huge list of features at this page and a lot of case studies here, I am publishing a tutorial about the creation of a seamless texture from a normal photo.

Let’s say you are making a top-down shoot’em up and you need a seamless texture of a forest to have your helicopter fly over it and blast some enemies, and you don’t want to start looking in an endless list of sites selling royalty free textues, you can use Genetica to have your own, unique seamless texture.

So here we go:

Like in every software you are used, select File->New…

From Library->Advanced select Synthesis and drag it in the Empty box in the centre of your document

You just created what Genetica calls “node”, which is something between a Photoshop layer and a batch action. Click Texture->Edit to define the texture

In the Edit tab click Select Image to import your photo

At this time, you can choose your photo from a series of presets offered by Genetica or import your own. We decided to import our own photo, so in Import tab we select Import Image.

And this is the image we are going to import. I’ve downloaded it from freewallpapers.pro and as the name of the site suggests, it’s not a seamless texture but a wallpaper.

Anyway, once the image has been imported, click Ok and you’re ready to turn it into a seamless texture.

This is how Texture Synthesis comes into play: you can adjust picture attributes such as saturation and contrast, select the area to turn into a seamless texture, which can have any shape. In this specific case, it’s an irregular polygon.

On the left panel, you can see the preview of the final seamless texture.

Once you are satisfied, press Ok

And finally your seamless texture is ready to be exported. You can export and save it clicking on the toolbar icons, or save the nodes in the proprietary format, just like when you save a PhotoShop file as a PSD.

And this is what I got, look at my 512×512 seamless forest texture:

With Genetica you can make any kind of graphic effect in the easy way, just like the seamless texture I just showed you.

I am using it in a couple of projects so I am going to talk about it soon.

You can download the demo and evaluate the software, then buy for a price starting from $149, but using FERONATO as discount code you will get it with a 30% OFF.

Sometimes you find yourself trying to draw some Christmas ornaments for the background of your image, or browsing the web looking for some Photoshop brushes which can fit your needs just to find the set of brushes you just downloaded cannot be used for commercial projects, or it simply does not have the quality or the resolution you was expecting from the preview.

BrushLovers is one of the largest collections of exclusive and high-quality Photoshop brushes you can find for download, free for both personal and commercial use.

You can also buy premium brushes starting from $3, or save money purchasing brush packs. But unlike most commercial brushes collections, BrushLovers‘s free and premium brushes have the same quality, they are all high-resolution, and perfect for both Web and print design.

As example, if you look at the Light Brushes collection, you will find 13 free sets out of 15.

All brushes have been tested for compatibility in Photoshop CS, CS2, CS3, CS4 and CS5 and can be installed in Adobe Photoshop on both Windows and Mac.

The only limit is you can’t download more than 10 free brushes per day, but it won’t be a limit since in a single day you won’t need a larger amount of brushes.

Anyway, I wanted to test the service and I downloaded Lush Leaves. Let’s see the effective quality of this brush.

From the preview page you can see we are going to download an 1MB six-brushes set. The zipped file contains two preview images and the brush file itself.

This is a detail of the brush at its maximum size, as you can see it does not scatter in any way.

I tested various other brushes as well and the quality was always high.

If you work with Photoshop, then you can’t miss BrushLovers on your bookmarks.

Expect a review as well as a series of tutorials as soon as I finish reading the book, meanwhile read some book specs:

Cocos2d for iPhone is a robust but simple-to-use 2D game framework for iPhone. If you are just starting with game programming, cocos2d will enable you to make your first game in no time. Even if you are a seasoned game developer, you will still be able to benefit from what it offers. Yet beginning with cocos2d for iPhone may be an arduous task without a proper guide.

Cocos2d for iPhone 0.99 Beginner’s Guide will help you to learn how to make games with cocos2d from the ground up. You will learn all the key concepts of the framework and game programming in general while building your first game using this exciting platform.

You will start by learning the basics of cocos2d then you will learn how to enhance your game with a lot of cool features and eye candy. After spending a little time learning the basics, you will jump straight into action. The book will then teach you to build games from scratch and how to add animations, sounds, and particle effects to them. Then you will be guided to have your game behave as in real life by using a physics engine. After reading Cocos2d for iPhone 0.99 Beginner’s Guide, you will be able to write your own games for iPhone while using all the elements Pros use. There are a lot of examples, images, and diagrams to get you up to speed in no time.

This book is a practical guide for building your own fun and exciting iPhone games in no time using the cocos2d for iPhone framework.

What you will learn from this book :

* Learn the basics of the most popular 2D framework for iPhone
* Packed with tips and tricks for using this framework
* Use actions and effects to make your graphics stand out
* Implement particles to make your players vibrate
* Make huge levels with Tilemaps
* Play sounds in many different ways
* Give your game real-life physics
* Integrate OpenFeint, the most popular social gaming network, with your game

See you in a while with some iPhone tutorials!

Some days ago I told you to take a look at this video to test Wistia‘s reports, and here they are my considerations:

First, uploading the video was quick and easy as if you were uploading a video on YouTube or Vimeo. Embedding is also that easy, but what makes Wistia different than YouTube is the video tracking analytics.

Starting from the summary, you can see it’s not just a “total plays”, but shows the page loads, the number of visitors, the video plays and there’s even a chart showing the video timeline and giving you a summary how people watch your video.

This is very interesting in case you are making a screencast and want to know if people finish your lesson, or quit it at a certain point.

Then, you have a detailed log of each visitor, along with Country and IP address, with an heatmap giving you a visual spectrum of how each individual watches your video.

The more a visitor watches the video, the more the heatmap turns to read. Useful to see if people replay your screencast, and what they are watching with more interest.

Prices start at $39 per month with 100GB of bandwidth, heatmaps and analytics but you can try it for free for 15 days without using any credit card.

While it’s not the solution for the average blogger, Wistia in my opinion is a must have for bloggers with a private area where people can see featured screencasts. Since they’re paying to watch your videos, you need to know if your screencast are receiving the right interest.

I am playing with its features to make a review so I need you to watch a video. I uploaded something funny to entertain you while you help me.

And… yes, I ripped the music from Hawaii Five-O TV series. See you in a couple of days with the full review.

Ryan spent nine months to write this guide about making a Flash game more appealing to sponsors.

The guide assumes you have an almost finished, unpolished game ready to be released into the wild, and teaches you how to give your game a name, write a description, create a thumbnail, taking a screenshot and a shooting a video trailer.

Then it takes you into the process of polishing the game adding a good looking menu, featuring rankings and achievements, creating a level editor and more in general making players come back and play it again and again.

Finally, once your game is finished and polished, it shows you how to get constructive feedback and find sponsors both submitting the game and contacting them by email.

The text is clear although the clip arts are the same you may find anywhere… by the way the overall look works fine.

In this book you won’t find killer tips or secret recipes to make you rich overnight like most scam “make money online” books claim. It’s a “do” and “don’t” guide which will help you not to forget anything to make your game be noticed by sponsors.

This is the most valuable thing of the book in my opinion: a complete checklist for developers who don’t want to miss important details, without making them dream about six figures income.

I am afraid at $20 it’s a bit expensive, but all in all if you are about to release your first Flash game, or you are planning to make a Flash game and want a complete overview about Flash game sponsorship, this is be the book for you.

I already blogged about Flash Thieve and SWF Protector as a remedy, but this time I want you to know there is an online solution to protect your SWF files: SWFLOCK

SWFLOCK main features are:

* Protection of your valuable sourcecode
* Domain Lock
* Allow users to run the SWF file for a given trial period only
* Protect the SWF file with a password

Protecting a SWF file is very easy: select the type of service among the free (with a watermark) and a premium one (without watermark) at $4.99 per file

Then choose the options: preloader and domain lock in my case

Finally upload and download the file (warning: you will get the same filename as the file you uploaded… it would be better to add someting like “_protected” to the file you download).

I tried to decompile it with a common decrypter tool, and once loaded I realized that the domain lock worked…

Then when I opened the source code, that’s what I got:

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//class Main
package 
{
    import flash.display.*;
    import flash.system.*;
    import flash.utils.*;
 
    public class Main extends flash.display.Sprite
    {
        public function Main()
        {
            var loc3:*=0;
            this.Content = Main_Content;
            super();
            var loc1:*=new this.Content();
            if (loc1) 
            {
                loc1.uncompress();
                loc3 = loc1.length;
                for (;;) 
                {
                    var loc4:*;
                    loc3 = loc4 = loc3 - (64 >= 0);
                    if (!loc4) 
                    {
                        break;
                    }
                    loc1[loc3] = loc1[loc3] ^ 32 % 8;
                }
            }
            var loc2:*=new Loader();
            loc2.loadBytes(loc1, new LoaderContext(false, new ApplicationDomain()));
            this.addChild(loc2);
            return;
        }
 
        private var Content:Class;
    }
}

Definitively not my code, and I could not my find my assets too… probably hidden somewhere around the web.

A good choice if you don’t have to protect a large number of files (unless SWFLOCK provides price plans for large number of protections) or you want to protect your sprites too.

With the latest SWF Protector from DCOM Soft you can firmly protect both ActionScript 1/2 and ActionScript 3, so none of your files, either old or new, will stay unguarded.

Version 3.0, actually available for Win and Linux (Mac version to be released soon) now supports Flash 10 including Flash CS5 files!!

You can see the complete features list at the official page, I am here for a test.

I protected the Basic Box2D editor using Flash movieclips as you can see in the picture:

Then I tried to decompile it with the best decompiler available at the moment.

This is the original draw_box function:

public function draw_box(x_origin:Number,y_origin:Number,box_width:Number,box_height:Number,angle:Number,is_dynamic:Number):void {
	var my_body:b2BodyDef= new b2BodyDef();
	if (is_dynamic) {
		my_body.type=b2Body.b2_dynamicBody;
	}
	var my_box:b2PolygonShape = new b2PolygonShape();
	my_box.SetAsOrientedBox(box_width/2/world_scale, box_height/2/world_scale, new b2Vec2(x_origin/world_scale,y_origin/world_scale),angle);
	var my_fixture:b2FixtureDef = new b2FixtureDef();
	my_fixture.shape=my_box;
	var world_body:b2Body=world.CreateBody(my_body);
	world_body.CreateFixture(my_fixture);
}

This is the one I decompiled from the original file:

public function draw_box(arg1:Number, arg2:Number, arg3:Number, arg4:Number, arg5:Number, arg6:Number):void
{
  var loc1:*=new b2BodyDef();
  if (arg6) 
  {
      loc1.type = b2Body.b2_dynamicBody;
  }
  var loc2:*;
  (loc2 = new b2PolygonShape()).SetAsOrientedBox(arg3 / 2 / this.world_scale, arg4 / 2 / this.world_scale, new b2Vec2(arg1 / this.world_scale, arg2 / this.world_scale), arg5);
  var loc3:*;
  (loc3 = new b2FixtureDef()).shape = loc2;
  var loc4:*;
  (loc4 = this.world.CreateBody(loc1)).CreateFixture(loc3);
  return;
}

And this is what I get when I try to decompile the protected file:

(sorry for the italian UI – it’s a Windows7 error)

So I can say your actionscript will be more than safe with SWF Protector 3.

Get the 25% discount coupon: use this code REFLPRTCT-RTW5 when purchasing the software. It works!

Also, you may want to stay up to date with new releases and announcements joining http://twitter.com/SWF_Protector.

Online Logo Maker is one of these tools, and I am going to take a test drive.

As the name suggests, it’s a free online logo creator

Ricardo Lopes, the author, needs some feedback so you are welcome to test it.

The first thing I liked is it does not require you to register to create a logo. Some similar tools actually take more time to register than to enjoy… So you can immediatly start your logo from scratch.

This is the work area:

This is where you will draw your logo, and you can make three basic actions:

1) Uploading an image from your hard disk

2) Adding a custom shape from the library. As you can see in this picture, the library provides a wide range of shapes ready to be part of your logo

3) Adding text

Then a control panel will allow you to modify, paint, and adjust the text and every object that forms your logo.

The whole process is very easy and you can really create your logo in a matter of minutes.

This is the logo of an airline company I own, made with Online Logo Maker and automatically exported

Online Logo Maker automatically exports your logo in png format with transparent background. That’s great.

There are a couple of things I would like to see, anyway… first I think an Undo button is necessary when working on complex projects… then I would be interesting having a gradient fill.

All in all, an easy way to make custom logos for free. Try it and give Ricardo feedback.