Tilegame level editor in Flex

In my spare time I’ve been working on a tile-based level editor. It is still in development, but has the basics covered. The idea is to make it available for free when it is done. It will be a standalone Air application (so it can save files to the disk) and hopefully will become a full game development tool. Here a video of the basic features currently available, if you are interested to beta test the app when it is done leave a message with your email so I can contact you when the beta is ready.

I got inspired making this editor when I was reading this tile game tutorial by Mattias Stridsman. I wrote a tilescrolling script based on this tutorial that will be used for previewing and testing the levels within the editor. In my opinion this way of making game levels is more versatile than using grid based tile levels where each tile needs to be defined, where in Mattias’s example you cluster tiles in one rectangle so that you only describe the position, dimensions and graphic of the tile.

The artwork used in the video is by David Baumgart

Videoclip Ambacht

Last weekend we shot footage for the videoclip of Ambacht, the band I mentioned in one of my earlier posts. For the shoot we hired a Sony EX-1 HD camera and shot the clip on 720p and overcranked allot of the footage to get a nice dramatic effect. Fun thing here was that the performers had to sing at a higher speed, 200% was a bit too much so we pitched the song to 150% and speeded up the lipsync footage to 66% to get it sync.

Some weeks earlier we also made a DIY dolly with rails to get some nice pans. Thought it is not completely a perfect smooth motion we did get a perfect image after applying Final Cut Pro’s smoothcam filter.

See here an example:

Here a picture of the dolly:

Though we had allot of rain during the shoot we still managed to get all the footage and I also got burned by the moments of sun between the showers.

The clip is currently in edit, I’ll post the result here when its done.

Set pictures by Camilla van der Weegen

ClickTag script for designers

For some reason I’ve been getting lots of calls and mails from friends and clients about clickTag’s and how they work. I noticed that allot of people have trouble understanding the concept of it. I get requests for a clicktag implementation and then 1 day later they send you the link it needs to refer to to be embedded in the flash file…
Then you have the 3rd party that has to place the banner on some site and who claims that the clickTag doesn’t work, then after looking at the html you see that the flashvar set is “clickTAG”, “clicktag” or “clickTag”. Because allot of people involved in this banner terror have no programming or scripting experience they don’t know that upper and lower case have a different interpretation. Then if they do get it they sometimes get misinformed by the documentation. I’ve seen multiple documents that were composed from different sources that use “clickTAG” in the HTML example then “_root.clickTag” in actionscript.. so no wonder that it doesn’t work.

I grew a bit tired of these endless discussions with people that don’t understand how it works so I wrote a small script that pleases all people involved.

The script allowes you to set a backupLink for the banner so if no link is placed in a clickTag it still redirects you to the embedded link. This you can use to please you partner company that keeps sending you links while you only need to place a clickTag.

Then we have the different notations “clickTag”, “clickTAG” and “clicktag”, the scripts runs trough all the options and uses one as soon if it finds a link in one of these variables.

Another extra thing I added is an optional flashVar that can be placed to set the target of the link, by default this is a new window (”_blank”) but ofcourse can also be set to “_self” or a different target.

So how do you use this?

Well you download the clickTag.as file, create a new layer in your Flash document on root level and paste the following code as frame action:

var backupLink:String = "http://www.somelink.com/page.html";
#include "clickTag.as"

Replace the backupLink with your own link. Then you create your button that needs to activate the link and give it the instance name “hitZone” (case sensitive).

Source files

Athlon Carlease Game

Together with MediaRijk I developed a racegame for Athlon Car Lease. The goal of the game is to finish the track as fast as possible and try to maintain your tires air pressure. Make sure you give it a try, and who knows, maybe you will win a trip!

Click the image to play the game

Ambacht Album Cover

This is the cover for the new album of Ambacht, a dutch band that are good friends of me. They have been working for months now partly living in the studio and are almost done with their new albm. Me togehter with Tom Albinus and Camilla van der Weegen joined them to do a photo shoot for the this allbum. The result can be viewed below:

Front cover:

Centerfold:

Director: Eric Weterings
Photography: Tom Albinus, Boy Carper, Camilla van der Weegen
Post-production: Tom Albinus, Boy Carper

Alpha blending CSS TextFields in ActionScript 3

The problem I encountered with CSS driven TextFields in AS3 was that I was no longer able to use “embedfonts = true” to be able to set the TextField alpha. To solve this issue you can use blendModes on the TextField object, as in the following:

myTxtField.blendMode = BlendMode.LAYER;
myTxtField.alpha = 0,5;

This also works with a mask over a textfield.

Example

Source file

Do realise that using blendmodes you increase the clients CPU load.

Arch.Maaik game

Last saturday we launched the Arch.Maaik game at his 5 year anniversary. The game is currently being prepared for online use and will be here in a few weeks.

The game was realised together with Matt Baay (in-game gfx) and Eric Weterings (intro animation & sound).

WNF Rangergame

Last month in cooperation with MediaRijk we developed a topview game for WWF that was part of the tv show and can be played online on the Jetix site.

Click the image to play the game.

You can watch the broadcasts on Jetix each sunday starting March 1st at 10:40.

Here the jetix mini site.

Toybot office

So it finally happened, I’m going to do Toybot full time. I quitted my job, and start working 5 days a week freelance. I’m sharing my office with Jaap Oostinjen, a friend of me who is specialised in front-end web development.

My main focus for the moment will be webgame development, and researching some interesting technology surrounding webgames. Like multiplayer games, aternative game input (wiiMote, webcam motion detection, dance mat).

I’m really looking forward to start developing, keep in touch to follow future development.

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Dance4life Live Video Player

At work we are working on a viral campaign for Dance4life. The idea is that you embed a flash movie on you community site or regular site and get as many people as possible to see it. The player has a countdown (which is synced by a FMS Application trough an empty video stream) and will automaticaly connect to the live stream as soon as this time is reached.

Click the image for flash movie: