Finally, I managed to release Phlocks - Physical blocks. It is a casual flash puzzle game using the Box2D physics engine. I started playing with the engine in the beginning of this year. End of January I came up with the first version of the game.
This weekend finally, I found some time to pick up that project again and finish it. Ok, try it out yourselves at the following little sub-page:
For a private site-project I did a very simple countdown timer in pure actionscript3.0. The timer extends a textfield and updates itself every seconds. Since it is very simple it should be easy to extend it in various ways. Right now it shows the remaining time in the following format:
DAYS:HOURS:MINUTES:SECONDS
The code itself is very basic - nothing really special. Only one thing really confused me. Have a look at line number 20. The second parameter of Date-constructor specifies the month. There is something special about it - months are enumerated from 0 to 11 whereas days for example are enumerated from 1 to 31. This is something I find very confusing and strange. So keep this in mind when you are using the Date object in actionscript.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 | package { import flash.display.Sprite; import flash.events.DataEvent; import flash.events.Event; import flash.text.TextField; import flash.text.TextFormat; import flash.utils.Timer; import flash.events.TimerEvent; /** * Little countdown timer extending a normal textfield * * @author benny!weltenkonstrukteur.de */ public class Countdown extends Sprite { // CONFIG THIS VALUE TO THE DESTINATION DATE // FORMAT YYYY:MM:DD:HH::MM:SS::MSMS // MONTH STARTS WITH ZERO private static var DEST_DATE:Date = new Date(2009, 05, 15, 20, 42, 0, 0); // Member variables private var cntTxt:TextField = null; private var cntTime:uint = 0; private var cntTimer:Timer = null; /** * Constructor */ public function Countdown() { this.init(); cntTimer.start(); } /** * Inits all stuff on startup */ private function init():void { // Setup the text format var tf:TextFormat = new TextFormat(); tf.font = 'Courier New'; tf.size = 24; tf.color = 0x33ff33; tf.bold = true; // Setup text field cntTxt = new TextField();; cntTxt.width = stage.stageWidth; cntTxt.defaultTextFormat = tf; // Setup timer cntTimer = new Timer(1000); cntTimer.addEventListener(TimerEvent.TIMER, onTimer); // Add text field to stage addChild(cntTxt); } /** * Handler for timer event * @param e, TimerEvent */ private function onTimer(e:TimerEvent):void { // Calculate the remaining time var asec:int = Math.round((DEST_DATE.getTime() - new Date().getTime()) / 1000); trace(asec); // If countdown is passed if ( asec < 0 ) { // Show zeros instead cntTxt.text = "000:00:00:00"; } // Otherwise else { // Calculate time parts var secs:uint = asec % 60; var amin:uint = Math.round(asec / 60); var mins:uint = amin % 60; var ahr:uint = Math.round(amin / 60); var hrs:uint = ahr % 24; var days:uint = Math.round(ahr / 24); var strSecs:String, strMins:String, strHrs:String, strDays:String; // Format with inital 0 ( secs < 10 ) ? strSecs = "0" + secs.toString() : strSecs = secs.toString(); ( mins < 10 ) ? strMins = "0" + mins.toString() : strMins = mins.toString(); ( hrs < 10 ) ? strHrs = "0" + hrs.toString() : strHrs = hrs.toString(); if ( days < 10 ) { strDays = "00" + days.toString(); } else if ( days > 10 && days < 100 ) { strDays = "0" + days.toString(); } else { strDays = days.toString(); } // Update time cntTxt.text = strDays + ":" + strHrs + ":" + strMins + ":" +strSecs; } } } } |
In the last two days I played around with Box2D. Box2D is an open source 2D physics engine for games. In addition there exists an actionscript port for the Flash platform. Studying various examples on the internet and the wonderful tutorials of Emanuele Feronato I came up with the following little game. It is still in beta phase and there are plenty of things which needs to be added and polished.
Note: Link to the game is deactivated. The final game is in progress. Beta is closed.
Anyway, maybe you want to have a try on it. The logic is very easy. The aim of the game is to drop as many blocks as possible on the green bar. Move your mouse to determine the x-position of the block to drop. Press left button to drop it. On the upper right you see the percentage of wind and the direction in which the wind is blowing. That wind effects the following blocks.
Here is a little list of things that are still to do:
Please let me know if you have any more ideas or if you find any bugs. By the way, my current highscore is 22 blocks 
One oldschool demoscene effect I still love is the so called Rotozoomer. Rotozoomer by its name rotates and zooms an image in and out. The effect is really stunning and it is well known among oldschool amiga sceners. Reading the very good tutorial about Actionscript’s Transformation Matrix class by senocular.com inspired me to have a try to do a rotozoomer in pure ActionScript3.0.
If you cross-read to senocular’s tutorial and my source code you see how easy the pixel tranformation matrix work to come up with the effect.
The flash movie requires at least Flash Player9.0 - just press on the screenshot to run it. The fantastic “bunny” image was made by the artist called made.
Finally, here is the source code. I tried to comment it as best as I can. Have fun with it.
package { import flash.display.Bitmap; import flash.display.BitmapData; import flash.display.SimpleButton; import flash.display.Sprite; import flash.events.Event; import flash.geom.Matrix; import flash.events.MouseEvent; import flash.net.*; /** * Simple rotozoomer in actionscript3.0 * * @author benny!weltenkonstrukteur.de */ public class RotoZoom2 extends Sprite { // Declaring class constants private const ZOOM_MAX:Number = 3; private const ZOOM_MIN:Number = -2.0; private const ZOOM_DELTA:Number = 0.015; private const ROTATE_DELTA:Number = 0.05; /// Initialisate private class members private var angle:Number = 0, zoom:Number = ZOOM_MIN, isZoomIncreasing:Boolean = true; private var logo:Bitmap = null, logoBitmapData:BitmapData; private var sw:uint, sh:uint; // Declare embedded assets [Embed(source = "made-bunny.png")] private var LogoBitmap:Class; /** * Constructor */ public function RotoZoom2() { init(); addEventListener("enterFrame", loop); } /** * Initialize needed sprites and bitmaps */ private function init():void { // Create logo bitmap and retrieving the bitmapData logo = new LogoBitmap(); logoBitmapData = logo.bitmapData; // Setting canvas dimensions sw = stage.stageWidth; sh = stage.stageHeight; } /** * Calcualte roto matrix and draws the scene * @param ev, onEnter event */ private function loop(ev:Event):void { // If we want to zoom in if ( isZoomIncreasing ) { // Add increase value to zoom zoom = zoom + ZOOM_DELTA; } else { // Otherwise decrement value from zoom zoom = zoom - ZOOM_DELTA; } // Calculate new rotation angle angle = angle + ROTATE_DELTA; // If angle is greater than 360 if ( angle > 360 ) { // Reset it to zero angle = 0; } // If zoom is higher than maximum value if ( zoom > ZOOM_MAX ) { // Change to zoom out isZoomIncreasing = false; zoom = ZOOM_MAX; } // If zoom is less than minimum value else if ( zoom < ZOOM_MIN ) { // Change to zoom in isZoomIncreasing = true; zoom = ZOOM_MIN; } // Calculate matrix for rotation an zooming var rotoMatrix:Matrix = new Matrix(Math.cos(angle) * zoom, Math.sin(angle), -Math.sin(angle), Math.cos(angle) * zoom, 0, 0); // Fill scene with bitmap using the rotoMatrix graphics.clear(); graphics.beginBitmapFill(logoBitmapData, rotoMatrix,true, true); graphics.drawRect(0, 0, sw, sh); graphics.endFill(); // Set it free for gargabe collection rotoMatrix = null; } } }
