Play “alone”.

So, I decided on a whim to ‘enter’ Ludum Dare 22 (48?). I didn’t really do it “right”, only putting in a few hours work here and there, but I did finish off a simple game “alone”. Its based off my experiences as a kid (and adult, I guess). Upon reflection on the idea of being alone, I recalled when I was younger and felt very isolated. I wasn’t exactly anti-social (just happened to not have invested time into interaction, instead preferring to read books and play videogames). I was often informed that people actually liked me (I found that hard to believe), and that if I wanted friends, all I had to do was talk to them. Yes, talking, one of the easiest things in the world to do (spoiler alert: I didn’t do a lot of talking back then … still don’t). Even then, people would try to talk to me and I really had to work to keep myself alone.

So that’s what this game is about. The process of keeping yourself alone by putting up walls to keep potential friends away.

I made the game using “HTML5″ and easel.js. Javascript is interesting, as I seem to sometimes fall into a different scope without realizing it. In addition, the keyboard events leave a little bit to be desired (keyup events are sometimes lost, presumably when too many keys are down). I hope that gets sorted out (especially considering there is already a gamepad api in the dev builds of Chrome and Firefox). Easel.js was wonderful in providing some nice helper functions to the canvas, though it leaves a bit to be desired. Notably lacking is a width & height attribute on the DisplayObject or Bitmap level (it looks like you CAN get to it through the image reference on the bitmap… a bit ugly looking).

Some time ago I mentioned I would explore blobs / metaballs for my clouds. I found a hack that simulates them without me having to do all the calculations. So, happy near Halloween, I guess.

“Fun cool shit” is a label on a moving box of my friend. It had a random collection of nicknacks that I had thought both interesting and useless. As time has progressed, my belief has changed to be that “fun cool shit” may be the most important possesion one may own (or, in this case, create).

Approximately a year ago I finally left school. After spending years improving my mind (and being rather good at the Game of School), I was finally in the workforce. I found myself quite depressed for a number of months, hit with the classic “search for the meaning of life”. I undertook a long search for something that was “valuable enough for my time”.

What I eventually found was a love of creative coding that I had thrown away years earlier. You know, those things made by awesome guys like Mr. Doob, Soulwire, and Neave. “Oh,” I used to say, ” those are just toys.” I saw no value in them.

During my search for that something, I began to immerse myself in a developer culture. With that culture came the realization that, if I were to improve myself in any way, I would need to be working on side projects that truly stretched my knowledge and kept me interested in what can quickly become a very boring method of employment. It was then that I began to program little games. I never completed a single one, but each taught me a great amount.

It was then that I switched to programming other things that drew my interest. Things like random terrain generation, tree growth algorithms, or cloud generators. I began to make things that were interesting simply because I thought that it would be cool. As I did, I found that I really wanted to share what I had created. Inevitably, it would also get me talking about that process it takes to actually accomplish what I did.

Upon reflection, I realized that “fun cool shit” is quite far from frivolous. It is essential in storing our culture and passing it on. A ‘frivolous coding exercise’ can create interest in our craft for the same reason that many children want to become firefighters, pilots, or sports stars. An outside viewer can see it, understand it, and want to be as awesome as what they have seen. Allright, so we don’t get as much respect as the aforementioned careers. Maybe one day.

I suppose, what I am getting at, is that I encourage anyone to build that cool little thing they’ve always wanted to try. Its not as worthless in reality as it may be in your brain (or on paper). And, if you’re lucky enough, someone will express interest in learning how you did it. That is when you can have the joy of saying, “Well, its not hard. Let me show you the first steps … “

Being a ‘Flash developer’, it seems not a day goes by where I don’t hear about the impending doom of one of my favorite technologies. Especially among my peers who have not touched a lick of AS3, it is hard to explain exactly why I enjoy working in Flash so much. I believe this is one front that has not yet been adequately addressed, especially considering how ‘open’ any piece of HTML5 & Javascript can be compared to a compiled SWF. With a bit of web knowledge & a right-click, one can see the entirety of a webapp and learn from it quickly. I find myself doing it a lot on the examples for paper.js.

Leaving aside Flash Player performance (which alternatively either leaves a lot to be desired, or works suprisingly well), the major argument between developers is “What is Flash good for?”. Those who have not had a chance to play with the system will never know its strengths versus its weaknesses. If Flash developers wish to cast it in a good light, it would be wise to let people know what makes Flash so awesome. I would say it would be best to give them a chance to play around with it in as easily-approachable way.

I’ve spent the past few months exploring programming languages and different texts on programming in my best effort to shore up any deficiencies I have when it comes to busting out code. During that time, I have found a number of awesome sites that let me get straight to the fun parts of learning: typing in some code and seeing it run. I’ve gone through the tutorials on tryruby.org & tryhaskell.org. I have a few projects up on jsfiddle.net that were great for lunchtime coding experiments. And, perhaps best for the Flash community, there exists wonder.fl, which takes AS3 and compiles it for you without the need to download anything else.

In my mind, the best way to show the strengths of Flash to a developer audience would be to take the tech behind wonder.fl, and combine it with a detailed walkthrough similar to tryruby.org. Including a number of powerful libraries for the user to build with would show them how awesome our community is, and the giant shoulders they could stand upon should the need arise. Getting a decent dev to create a site with this tech in half an hour wouldn’t be too bad, and would let them understand just why AS3 is a great tool when you need to write once, run in a lot of places, and look cool.

I recently ran across an interesting way to handle mouse events in a friend’s bit of code. I wanted to share it here. I feel like it hurts readability and is not always the preferred way to go about handling mouse events, but it certainly makes for some concise code. Quite good for when speed is of the essence.

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button1.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, onClick)
button2.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, onClick)
 
function onClick(e:MouseEvent):void {
 switch(e.target.name){
  case "button1":
   //do something
   break;
  case "button2":
   //do something else
   break;
 }
}