Stuart James ( Tooey )

Today I've started learning ActionScript to make a simple game of Asteroids, I have only looked at Flash that is for designers so it always seemed very alien to me. But ActionScript I am glad to say is a nice change and allows some quite easy programming of games.

I plan on doing some posts on how to use ActionScript for games programming but I want to complete my demo first so I can talk from experience.

If you would like to know more about ActionScript games programming a good place to start is:

http://www.adobe.com/flashplatform/apps/playfish/

Playfish are a games studio that make flash games that integrate with social networking site API's.

Anyway, will post again soon with a beginning of ActionScript Games.

Play fair!

It occurred to me after playing Fable 2 the importance of smooth loading in games considering a AAA Title couldn't get the transition between game menu's right it got me thinking about ways you could improve this by using common easily programmable effects often effects that can easily be implemented with the graphics card that would make this process much smoother.

Now not being an expert on the game that got me thinking's resource issues this wont work in all cases but it was a way of getting a few milliseconds of le way, of course there are trade offs to be done as with everything since a little resources are needed for everything.

The Scenario

You are in game so most of your resources are tied up with game assets and you don't want to waste any memory for silly menu items that only every 15 minutes are going to be accessed. But when the dreaded moment happens where the player decides he wants a break or is tired of dieing to a boss then he hits start or escape and pulls up a menu big small it still needs to quickly grab its resources.

Possible Solution 1

So the way I see it you can try to optermise down the menu so you don't need much time to pull from your slow storage or maybe even small enough to keep in memory while in-game. This hits several problems if you keep it in memory you are waiting for a moment that you hope will be far away you don't want your player to put down your game so you want to make the game as rich as possible and that extra 250KB could be a simple orc model that the player is about to encounter. Or if you load an optermised file you still have too load with possible nasty DVD seek times.

Possible Solution 2

Or you delay the users attention simple swirling loading screens work but they remind the user they are waiting but what about using effects that are commonly used in video processing to help elebriate the issue. For example using the example Fable then your menu is a scroll so a possible transformation effect could be to burn the screen into a scroll, fade's also work but they tend to be a little overdone. This hits problems too if you do an animated effect it will be based on a total time you can percentage that time so you monitor your loading that could be a little tricky and add an additional overhead so you only have the 2 seconds to pull your required resources for your menus.

The pluses are quite nice though if you can trick your user into thinking the game is loading smoothly it does a lot for end user opinion.

Conclusion

When designing a game make sure you consider all your delay points and the effect they will have sometimes you can use delays in ways that entertain people these work well and is why the art of distraction has created successful magic tricks for years. 

I often have a lot of project ideas floating around, whether there little tech demo's like a HDR Scene or larger applications like a Nokia phone game or even to bigger projects like a 3D game engine.

Some of these projects turn from concept and manage to get on the starting grid some just get passed by and never to be heard of again. Often when I start thinking of a project it often hits problems with financing or just is unrealistic.

For example last night after talking to a friend got me thinking about developing for iPhone Android Windows Mobile and Nokia. Was just thinking of a small game of pool to get me started then work up. Near enough every project I do is done for free so it made an interesting dilemma. Most platforms now have an entrance fee to release onto there system they all use different languages in there SDK's and all have different API's.

Now I realise there is a big escape root built into all of this, java most platforms support it to some extent and yes you can do quite a lot with it, but is it really the best idea for cross-platform mobile development? Especially in games?Crossplatform for mobile games development, is java a solution?

Its weird the unaware affiliations we create that cloud our judgement of power and performance, I got an email tonight that got me thinking along this strange path from XFX. I have always liked XFX graphics hardware it always comes in groovy boxes well kitted with accessories strange I know but its one of those things the last 3 graphics cards I have owned have been XFX. While on graphics cards consider the chip manufacturers ATI NVIDIA and Intel(Not really a player in my opinion) I always buy NVIDIA the drivers are nicer the additional software is nicer and I like the development tools they give.

Moving onto motherboard, motherboards I tend to always go with Gigabyte or Asus, both providing good build quality and a variety of good quality accessories ok, when it comes to motherboards its more important to consider the accessories as this can pad up the price on a board but still the affiliates I develop tend to rule my judgements on purchases.

Long ago there were big issues with AMD and over heating now im not entirely sure if this problem has been overcome but I am pretty sure that the issue is long in the past yet I still favour Intel having bought only Intel chips for years.

Maybe next pc its worth taking a gamble and trying something new, does everyone have these weird obsessions?

I ordered Fable 2 Game of the year edition, from GameStation for the great price of £16 although having played it through before I wanted to experience the addons and replay the game a bit with Nettles. I have heard the Coop experience is terrible but I never tried it. Sadly the rumours are true and it works badly often camera being stuck on the person whos slow behind the corner at the top of the cliff. It reminds me of another game that did a similar style of camera but in that game it was much more 2D terrain and had the camera much further back that ment it worked a lot better.

I still think Fable 2 is a good game but there are a lot of  little bits that just don't work or seem a bit rushed. Although this wont put me off buying Fable 3 think I might actually get that around launch