I love using the Tiled map editor and feel that it has a ton of great features that every game developer should take advantage of. It has custom objects, multiple tilesets, tile/map/object properties, and a new image object. But how do you go about using it in your Flash project? Well there’s a great resource for this written by Thomas Jahn but it’s written in AS3 and can’t be used with HaxePunk.

Long story short, I have converted this file parser to HaXe and it can be used by passing a string or Xml type to it. As usual you can grab the source code over at GitHub. Enjoy!

I used to use HaXe for Flash development before the Flex SDK was released a few years ago. Recently I downloaded the latest version of HaXe and remembered why I liked developing in the language, multiple code targets. So I decided to take the most recent FlashPunk release and port it to HaXe just for the fun of it, and probably for my own use. As an added bonus I’m finding that it even manages to squeeze some extra performance out of the Flash player that normal AS3 just can’t provide.

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For those who are developing games and have a playable demo I highly suggest watching this video. It goes into detail about how to properly playtest and gives some great tips along the way. This is an absolute must see for developers who haven’t play tested before. Even if your game is super simple you’ll be surprised at how much you can learn by letting someone else play your game.

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I noticed several people looking for Flashpunk physics from one of my earlier posts so I figured I’d share what I have with everyone. The class I’ve created will give you something similar to what Flixel has for physics although there are differences between the two and I’m not using any code from Flixel. So for those who are interested in some basic physics for Flashpunk then read on.

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Several of the games I’m working on require the use of finite state machines for believable AI. For example, the game Pounce is using an FSM for the mice characters as they scurry around the level. Using them in games makes the AI characters seem more believable and help them react to many different situations. In fact they are used frequently in AAA game titles for bots and other autonomous characters. So just how do we implement them in our own games?

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If you are a programmer you probably already have a good understanding about version control (also know as source code management) and have probably used something like Subversion, Perforce, ClearCase, Visual SourceSafe or something of that nature. Each of those run on a server and allow multiple programmers to check out and check in changes to ease code merging and branching. In my experience there is usually at least one person who has to make sure the software plays nice and when merges don’t go well that person is responsible to manually make the changes so that everyone’s code works as expected.

I used to use Subversion for all my personal projects but I couldn’t stand setting up a server and how awful the code merging was when I wanted to merge a test branch. It always bothered me that merging wasn’t based on the actual data in a file and more on the line numbers. If you make two changes on line 153 and try to merge the file together it will ask you which one to keep or else you have to manually fix it before changing. All these frustrations lead me to take a leap into the DVCS world by using a tool called Mercurial in my workflow.
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I’m working on yet another prototype game and I feel like this one is already nearing completion. Pounce is a casual game that lets you catch mice by enticing the cat character with a toy. There isn’t any way to die and the levels are easy for most people to pick up.

My original goal was to make a game that anyone could play. This meant that the gameplay had to be simple but with enough twists to keep people interested. So I decided to use a cat for the protagonist and have the goal of catching mice in each level.

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In order to become a part of a European guild one would have to first advance from apprentice to journeyman and then attempt to become a master. This was done by producing a sum of money and a masterpiece before the guild members would allow them to join. If the applicant was rejected they would have to remain a journeyman for the rest of their life.

While we don’t have many game development guilds that I know of I still think it is important to understand what it takes to be a master. In an earlier article I emphasized that to become good at what you do you need to practice. You’ll notice that a person does not instantly get to apply for the master position, they must first become a journeyman through many years of practicing their craft and hard work. Only after achieving the rank of journeyman will someone be able to be a master craftsman.

Although this does not mean you have to be good at everything. Even among craftsmen there are areas of expertise which would be the same as in game development. We have artists, programmers, musicians, producers, etc… that all work on the same goal but have very different roles. So what does it take to become a master in your area? I think it boils down to the following things.

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Today I revisited the world of Spelunk and added a few new mechanics to the game. The first was a pretty generic wall jump which is found in a lot of games. I also added different climbable surfaces, beyond ladders, including chain walls, and a soft wall that requires a special climbing pick.

The entire game hinges on fun mechanics and exploration more than story. I’ve been trying to come up with some unique ideas as well as providing the player with the traditional Metroidvania style gameplay. The biggest thing that is missing from the game at this point is consumable items. Think back to Super Metroid where you collected missile, energy, and bomb tanks to increase the capacity of the respective items. I need something along the lines of these types of things to add to Spelunk.

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The past couple of weeks I’ve been writing Flash games in Actionscript and using two different frameworks to aid my development, Flixel and FlashPunk. I started using Flixel first since several games I’ve played have used it and it looked simple to get started with. FlashPunk was something I started using the last week and a half for the Vanished game prototype I shared this week.

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