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BIG changes to this website

Terry — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 10:16:29 +0000

I’ve made a major theme change to the website today, steering the site in a more game focused direction. I may caused a few errors here and there and I will be tweaking it a bit over the coming weeks. Sorry if I’ve broken anything, or something gone from it’s usual place. Please leave me a comment in the form below letting me know what’s wrong and I’ll get to it as soon as I can.

I also intend to remove a lot of the content that was non-gaming related from the site. Some will be going over to my blog http://pixelpaton.com. I Hope you like the new direction I’ve taken with the site.

Cheers!

Terry Paton

The Essential Guide To Flash Games

Terry — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 21:00:05 +0000

This is a book I was given the opportunity to review written by Jeff Fulton and Steve Fulton. http://www.8bitrocket.com/book/

As I read through this I found I actually knew and used the same techniques the guys laid out there, which I found refreshing as it also meant that I had also come to the same solutions as they had. At the time of writing this I have made 95 personal games, so I can vouch for the techniques used!

The writing style and code examples are clear, well explained easy to understand. The examples give a great understanding for how game engines work. Once you’ve gone through the various chapters and the game tutorials you should come out the other end knowing how to make a variety of game engines and have enough insight to develop ones they didn’t cover. The book covers a broad variety of game types, from simple through to the fairly complex. Helping you the whole way through in understanding what each section of code does.
I just want to highlight – don’t be put off by the look of the games, the authors have made the focus of the book how to code games, not how to design graphics.

If your new to game development, struggling with understanding how to setup a game framework or want to learn how to make an actionsctipt 3 game (if you have actionscript 3 experience already) … I recommend this book!

Here’s some thoughts I had while reading …

The book is very clear on what it is for, and it achieves this

It’s not meant for beginners to coding, you need a reasonable understanding of Actionscript – especially Actionscript 3. It’s for intermediate coders and up.

Intended to give an understanding of the structure of how a game is put together

Clearly breaks down the structure of a game objects needed, what type of variables you’ll need, state machine breakdown

Uses techniques similar to mine, which are tried and tested. I found this

Although the games look graphically simplistic, they cover the essentials in making powerful game engines and could be easily extended

The book points out the flaws with the code examples given, which is refreshing – they clearly show the potential of each game engine and it’s pitfalls

Even with their examples given the authors clearly state that theirs is but one solution and should be used as a method of learning and developing further

As the book covers OOP programming, if your not familiar with it, you may struggle a little

It’s great to see two coding styles supported – Flash Develop and Flash IDE – I’ve been a big fan of Flash Develop (though now I use FDT & Flash Builder)

The book features 10 casual flash games, with full source code.
The following are links to playable versions of the games you’ll learn to make …

Here’s a link to the site featuring the book – http://www.8bitrocket.com/book/
And you can order the book here – http://friendsofed.com/book.html?isbn=1430226145

Here’s a couple of screenshots of a couple of the games featured in the book –

Online Bingo Rules

Terry — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 23:25:28 +0000

Reading the Rules in Online Bingo

When it comes to instructions, there are two kinds of people in this world: those who like to learn about the rules and those who like to delve straight in. While the adventure and ambition of the latter is to be applauded and revered, the studied reticence of the former can yield its own benefits. This is certainly the case for online bingo, where the terms and conditions are just as important as any other game.

Often, the desire to dive in head first is a throwback to our childhood. Kids like nothing more than to get hold of something and twirl and tweak, entering on a journey of discovery until the answer of how to play is reached. This reckless abandonment is fine (assuming that it is not at the mercy of something dangerous) until real money comes into play.

When entering into any kind of contract – online bingo included – a variety of information will be required. If playing online for money, bank details will need to be added along with contact details. Players will also be asked if they have read the terms and conditions, and a staggering 75% of people tick this box without reading these conditions first, either not believing or not realising that by ticking this box they are legally confirming that they understand their obligations on behalf of this contract. The simple fact is that if this box has been checked and a problem later arises, the online bingo company is well within its rights to stick to the letter of the terms and conditions.

Although disputes themselves are few and far between – of those 75% who do not read the terms and conditions only 6% go on to make a complaint (around 4% of the total number of players) – the most common is regarding withdrawing funds. When players sign up to bingo sites, they often do so upon the basis of a promotion whereby the bingo provider will double or even treble the initial deposit in the form of a deposit bonus.

With such funds at stake, looking at it from the provider’s point of view reveals a fact glaringly obvious – if the site was simply giving away this money to every player without condition and the player were to withdraw this bonus and his initial deposit, the site would very quickly be out of business. Most providers counter this by including a play-though clause in the conditions, meaning that players must play through their initial amount a certain number of times before they are permitted to make a deposit.

Naturally, all of these points are clearly explained in the terms and conditions and, when big money is at stake, it is always worth finding out exactly where you stand.

Mech fish 2

Terry — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 22:55:12 +0000

A mechanical fish I drew around 1991.

Panoramic Photos from India – Part 3

Terry — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 04:20:36 +0000

Part 3 of our panoramic photos … While we visited India on our honeymoon my wife and I took a lot of photos, a LOT of photos. Some of what we took was to stitch together later in Photoshop (using the super easy ‘photomerge’ feature).
The original photos are HUGE, so in order to copyright I’ve reduced these in size. Also I haven’t bothered to crop the photos down from the mess that photoshop sometimes creates, I kinda prefer them this way

Here’s the last 9 photos in no particular order …

Updated Body Defence

Terry — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 04:12:52 +0000

It had taken me a little while to get around to doing this, but I finally was able to spend some time making Body defence a little more playable. I increased the amount you earn from killing enemies, tweaked the firepower of the weapons and also reduced the amount of rounds per level as there were way too many, it was getting tedious to play. Shorting the levels made it much quicker and punchier. You can play the game here – http://www.terrypaton.com/body-defence/

Panoramic Photos from India – Part 2

Terry — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 07:13:27 +0000

Part 2 of our panoramic photos … While we visited India on our honeymoon my wife and I took a lot of photos, a LOT of photos. Some of what we took was to stitch together later in Photoshop (using the super easy ‘photomerge’ feature).
The original photos are HUGE, so in order to copyright I’ve reduced these in size. Also I haven’t bothered to crop the photos down from the mess that photoshop sometimes creates, I kinda prefer them this way

Here’s 6 more photos not in any particular order …

Udaipur …

Panoramic Photos from India – Part 1

Terry — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 02:37:43 +0000

While we visited India on our honeymoon my wife and I took a lot of photos, a LOT of photos. Some of what we took was to stitch together later in Photoshop (using the super easy ‘photomerge’ feature).
The original photos are HUGE, so in order to copyright I’ve reduced these in size. Also I haven’t bothered to crop the photos down from the mess that photoshop sometimes creates, I kinda prefer them this way

Here’s 6 photos not in any particular order …

Taken in Udaipur …

Taken in Pushkar …

3 Sydney Panoramic photos

Terry — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 00:01:58 +0000

Here’s 3 Panoramic photos I took here in Sydney yesterday. The originals are huge, but the quality is average, I took these with my Canon IXUS 85IS and used Photoshop to stitch them together.

They are up on my flickr account so you can click the photos to go through and find the very high res versions if you want.

Tiny orb weave spider

Terry — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 05:24:10 +0000

It doesn’t look so tiny in a macro shot …