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04 Aug 2010
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Indie Flash Games 101

My buddy Adam, who has just started teaching interactive media at university in Denmark, emailed me some questions about how to get his students started with publishing their own indie Flash games. These days I can't write anything without making it into
Iain Lobb
 
tags: gamedev flash
Aug 05 2010 12:28 AM
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Understanding Game Time Steps - Your 3 Options

I was just answering a question over at the gamedev Stack Exchange beta site and I realised I was pretty much writing a blog post about time steps for games. How you handle your time step has big implications on how your game architecture needs to be set
Iain Lobb
 
tags: maths gamedev fix your time step flash
Jul 27 2010 12:25 PM
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A code review of PewPew by Mike Chambers

A very rare event has occurred - the chance to look at, discuss and play with the full source for a Flash game! I've worked with the source to dozens of games by different developers, but I'm normally under a non-disclosure agreement so I cannot divulge
Iain Lobb
 
tags: open source games gamedev code
Jul 24 2010 05:07 AM
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Goals, missions and quests

Games with little in the way of narrative tend to have quite abstract goals for the player to aim for. I've written before that "games are about the relationships between objects in space", and in a pure game like Tetris or Connect 4, the goal is simply
Iain Lobb
 
tags: games game design
Jul 22 2010 05:28 AM
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Gamedev and Indie Games Podcasts

Some decent podcasts about designing, developing and playing games:AudioAnother Castle - Professionals talk game design.Game Developers Radio - Great guests, a different game or development platform discussed each week.Brainy Gamer - Game design from
Iain Lobb
 
tags: podcasts game design
Jul 21 2010 02:29 AM
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Some thoughts on character design

Some random things I remember reading about character design, and some things that have worked for me. Thomas the Tank Engine breaks both my first two rules, so should be an example of the bad character design, but somehow kids love it!a character should
Iain Lobb
 
tags: games game design character design
Jul 20 2010 02:46 AM
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Now I have a games portal too! (DullDudeGames.com)

Now I have a portal. There are a lot of Flash games portals out there. Maybe a million, maybe a billion; who can say? And does the world need another one? Probably not. So why have I made one? (OK, enough rhetorical questions now!)In case you don't know,
Iain Lobb
 
Jul 01 2010 06:17 PM
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Unity Game Development Essentials - Book Review

The publishers of Unity Game Development Essentials, Packt, were kind enough to send me a review copy of the book at the end of last year, but I have been so stupidly busy I didn't have much time to read the book let alone post my review. I had
Iain Lobb
 
tags: unity3d books
Jun 29 2010 02:51 PM
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Gamepad ported to Processing / JAVA

Gamepad, my opensource keyboard input utility, has received a great reaction so far, with many retweets, over 1000 views, and some great partnerships with other libraries in the pipeline. And now it's not just for Flash, because Michael Heuer has ported
Iain Lobb
 
tags: java gamedev gamepad processing
May 20 2010 03:33 PM
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Geometry Wars in 25 lines of ActionScript source code

I recently noticed that Keith Peters' 25 lines competition and all the entries have been purged from the internet, so in case you missed it first time, here's my port of a Geometry Wars style game, with source code below.Here's the source, under free for
Iain Lobb
 
tags: open source games gamedev code
May 13 2010 01:03 PM
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The Essential Guide To Flash Games... infomercial?!

Just wow. For a couple of months I spent many of my evenings writing the "technical review" for "The Essential Guide to Flash Games" a new book about programming games with AS3, by Jeff Fulton and Steve Fulton, aka 8bitrocket. Which basically means Jeff
Iain Lobb
 
tags: games books flash
May 10 2010 10:09 PM
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Help! How do I generate classes for a new project?

Ok readers, I gave you my indispensable Gamepad class, now I need something back: Whenever I start a new game, I make a whole bunch of classes that extend my base classes, so:com.blah.Game extends com.iainlobb.Game and has some setup codecom.blah.Player
Iain Lobb
 
tags: help code code generation
May 04 2010 02:29 PM
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Introducing Gamepad.

Gamepad is a free, open source project by me, Iain Lobb, with the aim of greatly simplifying keyboard input for Flash games. The idea was born out of 2 realisations – first, that since key.isDown was removed from ActionScript it has been more work for
Iain Lobb
 
tags: open source gamedev iain game design
Apr 30 2010 06:04 PM
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Start Repeating Yourself

On the latest Game Developers Radio is a great nugget of advice from Manuel Saint-Victor of infiniteunity3d.com, which is basically that you need to tweet / blog something 3 times before all the potential audience will actually see it. At first this
Iain Lobb
 
tags: podcasts games flash on the beach game design
Apr 23 2010 05:53 PM
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Play Monster Ball on Kongregate and NewGrounds

Who knows what will happen to the Flash iPhone packager in the future (I hope it survives), but for now Monster Ball, the game I made for iPhone is still available on iTunes for free. True to the write-once, deploy anywhere spirit of Flash, you can now
Iain Lobb
 
tags: games flash iphone
Apr 20 2010 06:09 PM
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I'm speaking at Flash on the Beach: Prepare for awesome!

Good news if you like Flash games and going to conferences: after the great response to my Elevator Pitch last year, I have earned a full speaking slot at this years Flash on the Beach! No session description yet, but my speaker bio is live, and I have a
Iain Lobb
 
tags: flash on the beach speaking game design fotb
Apr 14 2010 02:41 AM
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Monster Ball: a free iPhone game made with Flash CS5 beta and AS3

A short while ago I joined the Flash CS5 beta program and started work on my first iPhone game, and just a short while later it is finished and Monster Ball is live on the AppStore! It's a pretty simple game - you swing a ball and bop some monsters.
Iain Lobb
 
tags: actionscript flash iphone
Feb 22 2010 06:41 PM
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Creating Successful Flash Games (notes and slides)

Last night at The London Flash Developers and Designers Meetup Group I gave a talk called Creating Successful Flash Games. I think it was the most fun I've had doing a talk so far, and I've had some really lovely feedback:"Great evening at South Bank Uni
Iain Lobb
 
tags: games gamedev talks code
Feb 19 2010 05:11 PM
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Speaking at London Flash Developers and Designers Meetup Group on Thursday

This Thursday, 18th February 2010, I will be giving a talk called "Creating Successful Flash Games" at The London Flash Developers and Designers Meetup Group. The group meets at the Southbank University in London, and caters to designers as well
Iain Lobb
 
Feb 16 2010 05:31 PM
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I bought some Indie Games on XBOX Live (XNA Games)

I had some credits left over from buying Castle Crashers, so rather than wasting them on ports of 16bit arcade machines that aren't half as good as you remember, I decided to show love to some indie developers. All the games I bought were 80 "points"
Iain Lobb
 
tags: opinion reviews games xna
Jan 06 2010 09:54 PM
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8 things that annoy me about ActionScript3

TextField.text can't be set to a number or object, only a String (unlike trace() for example, which will toString() anything you throw at it). There is no logical reason for this that I can see, and makes for some ugly code with String() casts
Iain Lobb
 
Dec 01 2009 12:04 AM
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Using Git and Github on Windows

Github is all the rage for source control / hosting OpenSource projects right now - which is a great thing, because for end-users who just want to grab a .zip file of the code or report an issue, it's really easy to use. If you want to check your code in
Iain Lobb
 
tags: git github svn source control
Nov 13 2009 06:39 AM
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Game Review: Bloodwych (Amiga, Atari ST)

Like most things, RPGs were better in the 1980s. Take Bloodwych; I re-read the review of this game in ST Format about a hundred times because I didn't believe anything could be so brilliant. I bought it "mail-order": this meant that for no good reason it
Iain Lobb
 
tags: games oldschool atari amiga
Nov 11 2009 06:22 AM
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Game Developers Radio podcast - Flash game design special (with me!)

I was recently on a special 2 hour edition of The Game Developers Radio podcast with host Joseph Burchett, Ryan Henson Creighton of Untold Entertainment, Daniel Cook of Lost Garden and indie developer Edmund McMillen. It was a great laugh to record and
Iain Lobb
 
tags: podcasts opinion games iain game design
Nov 02 2009 11:53 PM
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Video of my talk from Flash On The Beach

As I blogged previously, I gave a 3 minute "elevator pitch" at Flash on The Beach this year. I've already posted my notes and slides, and now for your viewing pleasure, here is the video:FOTB09 - Elevator Pitch - Iain Lobb from John Davey on Vimeo.You
Iain Lobb
 
tags: opinion games iain flash on the beach speaking
Nov 02 2009 11:42 PM
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My thoughts on Flash for iPhone

Keith over at bit-101 just published a very thoughtful post on the newly announced Flash to iPhone publishing. I wrote a reasonably long comment, so I thought I'd just do a quick republish here. These are my thoughts:I was definitely in the "this is
Iain Lobb
 
tags: opinion flash iphone
Oct 14 2009 04:50 PM
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A 3 minute lesson in game design (my talk from Flash on the Beach 09)

Update: You can now watch the video here.I'm back from Flash on the Beach in Brighton. There are loads of great write-ups of the conference coming out, so you don't need another from me, but here are my slides and notes from my 3 minute "elevator pitch".
Iain Lobb
 
tags: opinion games tips iain speaking
Sep 28 2009 05:46 PM
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I'm doing 2 talks in Brighton

Thanks to the tireless work of Seb Lee Delisle, Jo Summers and John Davey, Brighton is totally Flash seminar central these days, and I'm giving two talks very soon in Brighton:Tuesday September 8th 2009 - The Flash Game School of Wizardry, a mammoth 2
Iain Lobb
 
Sep 07 2009 06:49 PM
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Podcasts for designers and developers

A good way to learn something while you would otherwise be bored commuting or doing the dishes is to listen to podcasts by other designers and developers. There aren't a huge number devoted entirely to Flash, but you can also learn a lot by listening to
Iain Lobb
 
tags: podcasts development design flash
Aug 27 2009 10:24 PM
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Are you a Flash outlier?

Just finished Malcom Gladwell's book Outliers (in audio form - you think I have time to read a book!?). The book is about success, and how external factors converge to give some people an advantage for success in a particular field. The best example in
Iain Lobb
 
Aug 26 2009 02:31 AM
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C# envy: properties

Recently I found out that in c#, if you want to put a variable behind a public getter and private setter, so that it can be read but not changed, you can do it on one line! Here it is:public int x { get; private set; }Or if you want both public, it would
Iain Lobb
 
Jul 07 2009 04:51 PM
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A new manifesto for Flash games

Danc over at Lost Garden has just released an inspiring call to action for Flash games developers. This is probably the most important thing I have read about Flash games, ever. In it he makes a good case for something I've known for a while - that the
Iain Lobb
 
tags: games blogs monetisation flash
Jul 06 2009 06:38 PM
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Suggestions for RSS feed of Flash game developer blogs, and a look a Yahoo! pipes

Since the excellent site FlashGameBlogs, which aggregated many developer blogs, has mysteriously stopped working, I am trying to fill the gap with a new rss feed. I'm using pipes and feedburner. Pipes is one of the most unusual pieces of software I've
Iain Lobb
 
tags: games blogs flash rss
Jun 26 2009 01:15 AM
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Open-source ActionScript libraries for creating Flash games

For some reason the incredible power of Open Source is on my mind today. In light of that, here are some open source(ish*) ActionScript libraries I've come across that can help you make games. I haven't tried them all, but maybe you will? *check the
Iain Lobb
 
tags: open source games code flash
Jun 25 2009 02:56 AM
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Better rollovers in PaperVision3D

I found a little perculiarity in the latest release of PaperVision3D today, and came up with a fix, so I thought I'd post it. The way it currently works, rollovers and rollouts may not be detected if you have a moving camera (which I normally do - hey it
Iain Lobb
 
tags: papervision3d pv3d
Jun 16 2009 03:19 AM
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62% of developers are using FlashDevelop? That can't be right!

That provocative title is just to draw your attention to the voting box over there in the right hand column where you can vote for your favourite ActionScript editor. As I write this, it says 62% of you are using my favourite piece of software,
Iain Lobb
 
tags: flexbuilder eclipse fdt flashdevelop
May 23 2009 02:03 AM
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Unity3D hands-on first impressions

Today I got together with my buddy Adrian who is a big-shot special effects guy, with the aim of trying to punch through the Unity3D learning curve and get some kind of game going. (Adrian is using the Mac in the photo, and for fairness I should point
Iain Lobb
 
tags: games unity3d c#
May 19 2009 03:58 AM
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Could Flash autogenerate classes from IDE information at design-time?

UPDATE: Chalk this post up to my own ignorance - Simon Cave has pointed out that you can basically do exactly what I proposed by just exporting a swc and compiling with the FlexSDK. Obviously that has it's own advantages and disadvantages, but for the
Iain Lobb
 
tags: flexsdk opinion what-if actionscript flash
May 15 2009 02:46 PM
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Do you extend or compose Sprite, MovieClip and DisplayObject?

I got such a great response from my last help request that I'm posting another:On my journey to try and be a better developer, I'm questioning some of the fundamental ways I work and organise code. Like most Flash developers (I think), I normally extend
Iain Lobb
 
tags: actionscript help
May 06 2009 02:26 AM
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Game framework architecture - view components or MVC?

I have a question for my learned readers - if anyone has an answer, please leave a comment. Here it is: I'm trying to build a very light reusable framework for my games, rather than starting from scratch each time I start a game. I have a component
Iain Lobb
 
tags: frameworks games actionscript help mvc
May 04 2009 06:04 PM