When Dreams Come True

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People who knows me know I’m a big fan of Sonic The Hedgehog. I still remember very clearly exactly how I felt the first time I saw Sonic the hedgehog on my friends tv screen. I was eleven years old and the graphics was like nothing I’ve ever seen before, it was crisp like a cartoon.

And now I’m excited again. I have just learned that some of the songs, especially “Star Light Zone” – one of my favorite Sonic level songs of all time – is actually based on a song by a Japanese pop group named “Dreams Come True”. This was totally new information for me, and hearing my old favorite tune with lyrics just gives me the biggest smile =D

So I just thought I should share my new joyous discovery! You can read more about the connection between Dreams Come True and Sonic in this article: http://info.sonicretro.org/DREAMS_COME_TRUE or watch the youtube clip right below! Enjoy!!
/Tommy

Runtime ASCII art generation in Flash

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On April 1 Youtube added a new mode called TEXTp – where their videos could be viewed as ASCII-art.
I really loved that feature, and was very disappointed when they removed it the next day, but ever since then I have been researching about ASCII art generation in flash.

To achieve the ASCII-effect they used the Adobe Pixel Bender Toolkit – a tool for programming your own custom filters, which can then be imported into Flash, Photoshop or After Effects. Googling the subject seems to prove me right about this.

Pixel Bender is free, and it is very powerful since it performs image calculations way faster than runtime actionscript is capable of (reading and writing pixels in a bitmapdata object is pretty slow). However I find that it’s a bit hard to get started since I didn’t find any really good Pixel Bender tutorials out there.
If you are looking for a good place to start learning Pixel Bender I highly recommend chapter 9 in Keith Peters book Advanced Actionscript Animation (I love all his books).

Now there are also a few limitations when writing a Pixel Bender filter for flash. You cannot use loops and you cannot define your own functions. However, there are still ways to achieve some really cool stuff!

So, after learning the basics of Pixel Bender, we’ll need to start researching about how to generate ASCII art from a picture. This – together with the “limits” mentioned above – is where the real challenge lies!

I have been able to pull off some cool workarounds this far, and as soon as I have something to show I will post about it here. I will probably write a short tutorial about it if it turns out nice.
Get ready for more posts on the subject!

A collection of tutorials

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Here are a collection of some really good tutorials.
Ok, it’s not really a “collection” since its only two – but I’ll probably add some more here later on.

http://www.bit-101.com/tutorials/
Excellent tutorials by Keith Peters about Perspective, Elasticity, 3D Rotation and more. A good place to start looking for your first steps in 3d!

http://student.kuleuven.be/~m0216922/CG/
Learn some really cool old school computer graphics effects such as perlin noise fire, ray casting or some Image Arithmetic.

Relaxy ActionScript IDE

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I have a habit of trying out new actionscript editors every once in a while, and right now nothing beats the free, open source FlashDevelop IDE, althogh their buggy debugger is a really huge drawback (I really hope they manage to get it right really soon!).

Anyway, there is another IDE coming up that seems really interesting – called Relaxy ActionScript Editor. It is currently in closed beta, but I will check it out as soon as the beta goes public. Until now I have only seen a few video demos, but it sure looks promising.

Read more about it here: http://makc3d.wordpress.com/2010/04/09/get-realaxy-actionscript-editor-beta/, or look at the video directly below.

AS Editor : Smart complete from den ivanov on Vimeo.

Kickass theme!!

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I found a kickass theme called BASH at http://item-media.ro/repository/wp/ and I just couldn’t resist. Maybe it is time to change from my old flash-based site into a wordpress driven one?

Seems like a shame NOT to use a flash-driven site though, since flash is my area of expertise. I was acctually considering a completely text-based flash-front end/wp-back end site with a look like this – although all navigation would be by typing text =D

So much to do, so little time. Better to keep working on Ripple Dot Zero instead.

So, I’ll guess I’m going to start blogging now. Guess it will be about flash/actionscript, game dev… well… thoose thing in the header basically.
KTHXBYE

Links

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Here are a few of my favorite flash games out there… a bit outdated, I will go over them again soon.

Pixeltruss
This is where I do my collaboration with Simon. Read more about our games (including Ripple Dot Zero) here.

Mirrors Edge 2D
The official flash game for Mirrors Edge! This game is probably the best flash game I have ever played yet! It even beats the crap out of the real game – by far! (Only its a bit short).
Kudos to Brad Bourne! Well done!

Desktop Tower Defence
This game is one of the most addictive flash games I have ever played! And I still cannot stop.
Place cannons at strategic spots and try to hold out as long as possible!

The Terrific Menace Of The Invaders From AudioGalaxy
An extremely well made point-and-click adventure game similar to the old classics like “Day Of The Tentacle”, and “Full Throttle”. A really great game so give it a shot!

Gamma Bros
This game is wonderful! The pixel-art! The controls! The music and soundeffects! The bosses! Enough said: Play it now!!
Kudos to the Pixel Jam team!

Helicopter game
I have played this game way to much. Think my top score is somwhere above 3.000.
It has some flaws but is simple… and really addictive!

Bounce Out
This is a puzzlegame (made in director and not flash), and it has some really annoying commercials before it starts… but fun as hell!

Globulos
Flash multiplayer game. A few levels are free to play. Try it out against a friend!

FLOW
This game is just… different. Cannot be explained. Can you reach the bottom?

N
Great physics in this flashgame where you are a ninja that collects gold and just trying to survive… not an easy task.
An extremley welldone and fun game. The downside is that you have to download it to be able to play (but it’s surely worth it!)

Gyro World
This is a very old game that I played a lot a couple of years back… although the controls and hitdetection aren’t very good it is a huge world to discover! And quite fun until you die too much…

Fighting game by Smooth Operator
Almost as good as Street Fighter II ;)
By my co-worker “Smooth Operator” (he is really a .NET-programmer)

Tv4Play

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During my time at Isotop I have worked a lot with flash based video players. It all started with a brand new videoplayer for tv4play.se in late 2008, and since then I have been maintaining and kept adding features and new versions. Let me take you to a trip down memory lane, and have a look at a few of all the different versions and variations of the player I have been involved in…

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