So whats everyone been up to?

[rumblesushi]

That's actually very impressive for an HTML5 game, other efforts I've seen are pretty awful.

Why the choice to use HTML5 over Flash to start with though?

[mr_malee]

Squize, About 500 times. That game took about 3-4 weeks to complete, it started bad, got better, then sound came to the party and it got worse. We were not allowed to use flash as a backup for sound, so its all html5 sound which is unbelievably buggy and different on all browsers.

Hooligan, yeah I had to learn it while building, I almost had my own renderer setup, but then came across easel JS by grant skinner, that saved my life. Haven't used any webGL or molehill, yet

rumblesushi, wasn't our choice, was Microsoft. They wanted to showcase the hardware acceleration on IE9. Weird that they went with pacman to do this, I don't think they had webGL support yet, so it had to be something 2d.

[.hooligan]

I was just wondering, of everyone who has ducked their head in to say hi. Who's missing?

People that come to mind phreax, marmotte, tonypa, mad_sci, renderhjs, ripX, magneto, pred, daydream, frag, lux, strillie, fillrazor

Sorry if I've missed anyone

[mr_malee]

Renderhjs sits behind me at work, don't think he likes this place anymore.

[Squize]

I'm working on a project with Lux atm, I'll try and remind him about this place as he's got some sexy sweet art to show.

hooligan, no molehill for me yet, I keep wanting to do some abstract demo type stuff with it, but just don't have the time.
As to making a game with it, I dunno, I'm kinda dragging my heels to see what Unity come out with in terms of molehill support. Even just being able to use it as a level designer would be a thing of beauty, if it does as hoped and spits out a working game then that's just the best thing ever.

I've never been an early adopter, I came to as3 relatively late. I find it's best letting the clever people figure stuff out and learn from them.

Squize.

[.hooligan]

Renderhjs sits behind me at work, don't think he likes this place anymore.

Works at soap huh? Thinks his too good for us huh? His probably right...
PS: Didn't realise he was working in Sydney? Thought he was from elsewhere.

I'm working on a project with Lux atm, I'll try and remind him about this place as he's got some sexy sweet art to show.

Miss his artwork. Is this the RPG you've been working on for a little while?

Yeah the idea of using Unity like that would be cool. I've been using it a lot recently and having a visual editor like that would be handy for level design. I doubt a near future version of flash would implement such a thing.

I've never been an early adopter, I came to as3 relatively late. I find it's best letting the clever people figure stuff out and learn from them.

That's actually a pretty good idea. I think I'm going to wait a little before I attempt to fool around with molehill. Not really something I need at the moment.

[ImprisonedPride]

I was just wondering, of everyone who has ducked their head in to say hi. Who's missing?

Honestly, I don't devote time for it anymore. What with the Flash economy all but non-existent for freelancers, there's no real incentive other than personal preference. I rolled out the final beta of an AIR app I spent a few years on in my free time and it was well received. That was in late February; don't think I've even opened CS5 since.

All my work that I do now is job-related and that's pure VB/ASPX I'm afraid. I think the only reason I still visit is because the bookmark is still on my browser. Should something happen and I lose my bookmarks...

[Squize]

"What with the Flash economy all but non-existent for freelancers"

You're doing something wrong then mate, it's as good as it's ever been post dot-com-boom.

Squize.

[samvillian]

Studying for mcat's, SMH....

Been a while since i visited. Been I while since i touched flash, lol. I have a few android apps out, nothing spectacular though.



Premed, heading into senior year. MCAT is next friday at 8am.. studying my ass off for that currently (and since vacation started ~ 2 months ago.)


Meh. Cool to see some of you again, others not so much


<--- that guy looks like the guy from yahoo.

[ImprisonedPride]

"What with the Flash economy all but non-existent for freelancers"

You're doing something wrong then mate, it's as good as it's ever been post dot-com-boom.

Squize.

It's hearsay, really. I suppose it's my own fault for not investigating the matter further than a few unmentionable forums I used to soak side-jobs from. Good to hear it's still alive and kicking; now I just have to remember how to code in AS3...

[.hooligan]

Honestly, I don't devote time for it anymore. What with the Flash economy all but non-existent for freelancers, there's no real incentive other than personal preference.

Yeah I hear you, my impression is that the industry is busier in different parts of the world and at different times of the year. Also the types of flash work sometimes seems scarce. I personally don't see to many sites built with flash these days, just mostly banner ads, mini promotional sites and the odd promotional game and these normally go to agencies first before freelancers. At least the bigger jobs seem too.

One reason why I think people stop hanging around here is because their done learning flash. It gets to the point where working with it either feels like a job or you lose that feeling wanting to fool around in flash because it was new to you and they move onto bigger and better things.

samvillian: Welcome back, long time. Hope the mcat's go well. I'm guessing there isn't much flash work in your future I hope Premed goes well for you, but when your not too busy pop your head in to say hello.

[kdsh7]

This is great, like a high school reunion or something

Dying under horrible client day job work at the moment, getting to grips with Unity3D in the off hours.

But speaking of client day job work, we had mr_malee's* pinball game for the film Horrible Bosses come through the office the other day, and typically, it's awesome

*at least I think it is!

[Sietjp]

I guess a lot of people still makes money with Flash. Sponsored games mainly. But with people browsing the web more and more with tablets that are not capable (or too slow) to read Flash, let's face it, this is not a good trend for Flash.
Unity looks promising as the number of platforms explodes. But native coding will always beat them all. It's just a matter of days to learn a new platform.

[Ray Beez]

Flash demand is abolutely down, unless you are a Flex dev. For some reason demand is still high for Flex.

I just finished an AIR app. It's an absolute pig on resources. FPS set to 40 and the damn thing uses 50% CPU resources just sitting there doing nothing. It's ridiculous and this is on a Windows 7, dualcore 2.4 ghz, with latest AIR 2.7 built from latest CS5.5.

I'm looking into HTML+JS using pre-made frameworks, otherwise I'm going to be homeless by next year.

[Squize]

"Is this the RPG you've been working on for a little while?"

Oops, sorry, missed that. No, that's live on Facebook mate, it's being maintained by another team so I don't know what state it's in now ( Here if you're interested, Knight's Quest )

There's a certain beautiful irony that I must be one of the few people on here to actually have made an RPG, and that I'm one of the few people on here who never ever wanted to make one

Squize.

[Son of Bryce]

This is great, like a high school reunion or something

Dying under horrible client day job work at the moment, getting to grips with Unity3D in the off hours.

But speaking of client day job work, we had mr_malee's* pinball game for the film Horrible Bosses come through the office the other day, and typically, it's awesome

*at least I think it is!

Yeah, it's mr_malee's game! haha! I had the pleasure of re-skinning it. I've been at Soap for a couple years, I joined as the LA office was starting up. Been doing mostly games, but some banners and site stuff as well. You can see some stuff I've been doing at my portfolio site sonofbryce.com.

I've been in the depths of Flash but I'm kind of bored with it. I've been interested in experimenting with new stuff, been learning more HTML/CSS/JS/JQuery web stuff to get a feel for what it's all about. I was a lot more interested in HTML when it began seeming that Flash wasn't necessary for a lot of the more straightforward web/layout stuff. Javascript is a hindrance to me though, trying to figure out how scoping works and getting comfortable with that. Error city.

I've been into Unity for a while now but still haven't done enough experimenting with it. I participated in the Global Game Jam this year and our team did a Unity game, while learning it on the fly. It came out pretty good! Fortunately someone joined our team that knew Unity and saved our butts with the more of the complex things. It was a great way to learn the program, especially since we limited complexity by using spheres for our characters. And C# is a much better language than Actionscript from that experience because of all the math functions and utilities that it has built in. You can read a blog post about it, and download the project source at http://blog.sokay.net/2011/02/13/bry...game-jam-2011/

I like Unity, but it has a lot of quirks of its own. The concept of building a game out of an already made game engine was a bit different for me, and it took a while to figure out how to do small things like instantiating objects through code. But it's easy as hell once you get over the speed bumps, I think. And I very much like that it's fast.

[luxregina]

Thanks Squize!

Sorry, haven't been to this place for a long time - I don't do code since the shift to AS3, so hadn't any worthy tip to communicate

I did, however collaborated with a few members of FK, a couple of times with Squize (so often actually that we could be married now, for all I know...), Alilm, Kill5, etc...

I have a blog that I try to update with the latest work, that can be viewed here : http://www.luxgames.net/blog/

As far as the latest work with Squize, here are a couple of screens :







As far as the industry go, IP, I find it rather active, specially if you have a full-time job, and don't rely on the pure game-making income. I'm still working in advertising full-time, but had a couple of freelance project in Flash, I-phone, Samsung BADA system, etc that were quite nice "bonuses"... Of course, I'm talking strictly from an artist point of view ...

[Pazil]

Those screenshots dude...

I'm working on a top down shooter right now (well fine, it's been sitting still for a few months now because of other work, but it's still there!), which might include a spaceship and zombie-like things...
But your version is looking quite awesome so far! I'm loving the graphics! Are you guys leaning on the action side of things? Or puzzle? Becaue mine is delving deep into the horror side.

Also still missing from the thread is tidenburg and TOdorus...hmm...

P.

[.hooligan]

kdsh7: Unity3D huh? What do you think? Its a fairly easy learning curve code wise. The only thing I found the hardest was progressing from 2D to 3D space for calcs eg quaternions.

Sietjp: Seems Unity3d has stolen a few people from flash.

Ray Beez: What frameworks have you looked into? Found any good ones?

Squize: That RPG is sweet. How long did it take to put together. It is funny that your one of the only people that I've seen finish an RPG in flash. Seen years of posts about people starting RPGs and the one guy that does finish one happens to be someone who wasn't originally interested in the idea. Just saw the screen shots luxregina posted of your new game. Game looks awesome. When are we expecting that bad boy to hit stores

Son of Bryce: I see Soap has gone poaching all the talent in flashkit and is somehow responsible for everyone disappearing from the boards.

luxregina: That looks beautiful... I cant wait to check it out. I see you have been an extremely busy guy judging from the work posted on your blog. Amazing stuff.

Pazil: Your right I feel bad, left plenty of regulars off my list. Hows the top down shooter going? Do you think it has long to go before its ready for people to see?

[ImprisonedPride]

I've been in the depths of Flash but I'm kind of bored with it. I've been interested in experimenting with new stuff, been learning more HTML/CSS/JS/JQuery web stuff to get a feel for what it's all about. I was a lot more interested in HTML when it began seeming that Flash wasn't necessary for a lot of the more straightforward web/layout stuff. Javascript is a hindrance to me though, trying to figure out how scoping works and getting comfortable with that. Error city.

I strongly suggest you refrain from taking that stroll down the dark alley that is ASPX and .Net, then. You will lose a significant portion of your dignity along with your friends, hair, and sleep. I had the luxury of not having hair to begin with, so I fit right in at my office.