This is the fourth part of our tutorial series by Intern Sina on creating an AIR application for free on a PC using FlashDevelop, and deploying it as a native app on an iOS device like the Apple iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch.

Jump to other parts in the series:

• Part 1 – Sign up for an Apple iOS Developer Account
• Part 2 – Obtain your Signing Certificate & Mobile Provisioning Profile, and create your App ID
• Part 3 -Use FlashDevelop to build your mobile AIR app

In this section of the tutorial, the rubber meets the road. You’ll make all the finicky adjustments to FlashDevelop and the AIR bundling files to get your Hello Planet app up and running on your testing device.

Point FlashDevelop to the Merged SDK Folder

Now that your (cr)app is successfully up and running, you have to make a few tweaks and adjustments to FlashDevelop. You’ll start by telling FlashDevelop all about that merged SDK folder you created in Part 3.

1. In the Project panel on the right, you’ll see a file called AIR_iOS_readme.txt. Double click that file to open it.

   This txt file lists a number of settings needed to get your ipa file working. The ipa file is the Holy Grail- the native app file that you’ll send to your testing device to see everything working properly. A window pops up with a bunch of options.

2. Click the Project Properties button at the top of the Properties Panel (alternately, you can use the menus to navigate to Project>Properties).

   

3. Change the version of your AIR SDK from 2.7 to 3.0 because (at the time of this writing), that is the latest version.

   

4. Click on the SDK tab, and click Manage.

   

5. On the next screen you will see list of installed Flex SDKs. Click the ellipsis (…) button at the end of that line. An InstalledSDK Collection Editor window pops up.

   

6. You’re going to point FlashDevelop to the location of our recently-downloaded Flex SDK (the same folder that contains both the Flex SDK and AIR SDK that you created earlier in this tutorial). First click the Add button, and then click on the Path line to get another ellipsis. Click on THAT ellipsis to browse your computer.

   

7. Once you have clicked the ellipsis button, a Windows File Browser appears. Navigate to the merged SDK directory. Select that folder and click OK.

   

8. Click OK again to exit the InstalledSDK Collection Editor window.
9. Click Close.
10. In the drop-down menu, you should see the Default option. Click on the drop-down list and choose the SDK location you just told FlashDevelop about.

    

11. Click Apply.
12. Click OK. Voila! Your SDK is now setup for your FlashDevelop Project.

    Let’s just test it out quickly to see if it works. The code you pasted in the previous tutorial prints out the words “Hello Planet” within your app. Well, I’m going to change mine to say “Sina is Cool”, just because I can, and also because I AM COOL. (You may be tempted to replace “Sina” with your own name. Please don’t, because uh … your code won’t work.)

    Your resulting app should look like this:

    

    A beautiful sight, isn’t it?

    (At this point, Sina actually is pretty damned cool. – Ed.)

Delete the Extra Icons Folder

Now you have FlashDevelop set up to create mobile-formatted AIR apps. Your app compiles, and you have your Mobile Provisioning Profile and your .p12 Signing Certificate waiting in the wings. All you need to do is combine all these amazing files together to create the Holy Grail .ipa file.

An .ipa file is like the program file – the Windows executable (.exe) – that you need to test your iPhone/iPad App on a device, and ultimately upload it to the Apple App Store.

The creators of FlashDevelop 4 made a minor error when they created the Mobile App template: the template generates a duplicate icons folder that will cause a conflict when you try to bundle your .ipa file. You need to get rid of this extra folder to make sure your .ipa file to builds properly.

1. Look in the right sidebar that lists your files and folders. You’ll see a folder called bin. (This is one of the folders that FlashDevelop created for you automatically when you created your project.)
2. Click on the little plus sign beside the bin folder to expand it. You will see a folder called icons tucked inside. Right-click the icons folder and click Delete. Problem solved.

   

Integrate Your Cert Files

The book includes interviews from the developers of these fine titles:

• Canabalt
• Sword and Sworcery EP
• Infinity Blade
• Angry Birds
• Words with Friends
• Plants vs. Zombies

It really is a remarkable collection of stories, and a very current must-read book for you if you’re currently embroiled in, or are considering, iOS development.

Ponycorns started life as an online Flash game, but now enjoys success on mobile platforms. For a lesson on how to port your Flash games to iOS, check out Flash to iOS: A Step-by-Step Tutorial right here at Untold Entertainment.

The wonderful announcement came amid some grumbling and criticism from certain elements of the indie game dev community, who called foul because we’ve been selling merchandise to happy Ponycorns fans across the globe (GET YOURS TODAY!). Macaulay Culkin’s name was actually invoked (referencing the way his parents hoarded all the acting money he made as a kid).

Rest assured, friends, that not only has Cassie earned more money through donations to her college fund than Untold Entertainment has made on Ponycorns altogether, but she also has a legally defined percentage stake in the project. By the time we make Ponycorns 7: Ponycorn Harder, Cassie will be drying her tears on a fat stack of trust fund cash. And as any of the hundreds of people who attended TOJam can attest, she had a great time working on the game.

As IGF (Independent Games Festival) adjudication continues, what’s more important is that Ponycorns rightly sweeps the entire awards show, winning not only the Moustache Craft honorarium, but also the Glorm Juerven Award for Most Obvious Weak Spot on a Mid-Level Boss. Even a single nomination means that i can justify bringing Cass to GDC, as the youngest ever game developer honoured by the IGF. Once Ponycorns pulls in an appalling number of nominations, we’ll happily suffer an angry Twitter onslaught from disgruntled indies.

• #ifMiyamotoWentIndie Link would just … you know … wander around. No enemies, no struggle … just piano.
• #ifMiyamotoWentIndie Every game stars Luigi.
• #ifMiyamotoWentIndie Mario would walk RIGHT to LEFT. Doesn’t that BLOW your MIND??
• #ifMiyamotoWentIndie He’d crash on someone’s couch at #GDC, lobby-surf for the first few days, and only spring for an Expo pass.
• #ifMiyamotoWentIndie The smashable barrels in Donkey Kong would be labeled “hope”, “ambition”, “faith” and “mother”.
• #ifMiyamotoWentIndie After your first crash in ExciteBike, the rest of the game would be about your slow, painful road to rehabilitation.
• #ifMiyamotoWentIndie A Star Fox game would last five minutes, and involve a sub-plot about a stillborn son.
• #ifMiyamotoWentIndie Ocarina of Time would pale in comparison to the series’ crown jewel, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link.
• #ifMiyamotoWentIndie He’d be making this really awesome MMO but, you know – it’s not ready yet.
• #ifMiyamotoWentIndie He’d make a twin-stick tower defense platformer for XBLiG using copyrighted spritesheets from an old Genesis import.
• #ifMiyamotoWentIndie He’d show upto #IndieCade and give a meandering talk using words he remembered from his first-year Psych class.
• #ifMiyamotoWentIndie Kid Icarus would say “fuck” a lot.
• #ifMiyamotoWentIndie He’d accept his #IGF award by French-kissing Cactus and kicking over an amp on his way off the stage.
• #ifMiyamotoWentIndie The hookshot would be a metaphor for how we all need to cling to something.
• #ifMiyamotoWentIndie Nintendogs would be essentially the same, except you could REVERSE TIME.
• #ifMiyamotoWentIndie He’d release Stage Debut, and it would sweep the #IGF.
• #ifMiyamotoWentIndie Samus Aran would take off her codpiece and reveal that she’s a DUDE.
• #ifMiyamotoWentIndie Mario Extreme Unicycling.
• #ifMiyamotoWentIndie Mario Power Hackey Sack.
• #ifMiyamotoWentIndie He’d spent most of his afternoons in the “Mushroom Kingdom”.
• #ifMiyamotoWentIndie You’d be able to fly one beta mission in Starfox, and he’d charge twenty bucks for it. And then make 4 million dollars.
• #ifMiyamotoWentIndie He’d give you naming rights to the monkey at the top of the level if you bid more than $1000 on Kickstarter.
• #ifMiyamotoWentIndie Every Zelda game ever made would show up in a Steam sale for a dollar nintey-five.
• #ifMiyamotoWentIndie You’d take Super Mario down into a water level from which you’d never be able to escape.
• #ifMiyamotoWentIndie He’d grow his hair out, take up smoking, and start calling himself “the Moto.” But, you know. Whatever.
• #ifMiyamotoWentIndie Plaid goombas.

This is the third part of our tutorial series by Intern Sina on creating an AIR application for free on a PC using FlashDevelop, and deploying it as a native app on an iOS device like the Apple iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch.

Jump to other parts in the series:

• Part 1 – Sign up for an Apple iOS Developer Account
• Part 2 – Obtain your Signing Certificate & Mobile Provisioning Profile, and create your App ID
• Part 4 – Modify your project settings and test your app on an Apple device

Luke Loses His Hand

Part 2 of this tutorial was like The Empire Strikes Back. It was the crisis moment in the story of deploying a Flash project to the Apple iOS platform. It was dark, it was difficult, and Han Solo wound up frozen in carbonite. Part 3 is redemptive: with all that command line and certificate red tape out of the way, you can finally build our AS3 app using FlashDevelop. Watch closely, friends: you may spot some ewoks.

Install Flash Develop

As I mentioned earlier in the series, FlashDevelop is a FREE, PC-only coding environment that is used throughout the industry and loved by many. If you haven’t installed it, head here to download the latest version.

FlashDevelop is an IDE (Integrated Development Environment) where you can create many different types of applications from scratch. The most amazing thing about FlashDevelop is that you don’t actually need to buy Adobe’s Flash Professional software to create Flash (swf) content. FlashDevelop has amazing, time-saving features like importing code libraries on the fly, and numerous awesome templates. At the time of this writing, the latest edition of FlashDevelop is 4.0.0. This version of FlashDevelop contains a template for Mobile AIR applications which you can use for iOS and Android development. In this tutorial, you’ll use the iOS version of the template.

Create a Merged SDK Folder

There are two SDKs (Software Development Kits) you’ll need to deploy Flash content to the iOS platform: Flex and AIR. Depending on the version of FlashDevelop you install, these two SDKs may already be included in the download. You’re going to download them both anew and put them in a single folder. That way, if you mess anything up, you can take off and nuke the site from orbit instead of messing up your main FD install. It’s the only way.

1. Download the latest AIR SDK (which, at the time of this writing, was v3.0)
2. Download the Flex SDK.
3. These two packages download as .zip files. Extract them wherever you like on your computer – just make sure you know where you put them.
4. Once you have both SDK’s extracted to separate folders, copy everything in the AIR SDK folder into the Flex SDK folder. Windows will ask you if you want to overwrite certain files. Say “yes” to everything.

   

   You now have a folder with the Flex SDK and the AIR SDK merged into one. This is a Good Thing™.

Point FlashDevelop to the Flex SDK

In order to compile (build and execute) your app, you have to point FlashDevelop to the merged SDK folder that you just created.

1. Open up FlashDevelop and hit F10 or go to Tools->Program Settings in the menus.

   

2. In the Program Settings menu, click on AS3 Context.
3. Find the Language section, and the Flex SDK Location line within it.

   

4. Click the ellipsis button at the end of that line, and navigate to the merged SDK folder.
5. Click Close to commit the change.

Set Up Your Mobile AIR Application

Once you have downloaded and installed FlashDevelop, open it up and you should see it in all its glory:

To begin with, you’ll need to create a new FlashDevelop project, which is a group of folders governed by a file filled with metadata about your project.

1. Create a new project by clicking Project -> New Project in the menu.
2. Now you will see a screen with a multitude of options. These are all project starter templates that FlashDevelop has for you to use. The one you want is the AIR Mobile AS3 App. Select this template, choose a location on your hard drive to save it, give a name to your project, and hit OK.

   Note: A package name is not required but the option is there if you’d like to use it.

   

   After you hit OK, FlashDevelop creates a number of folders and files for you, including:

   • The .as3proj file, which is a FlashDevelop project file filled with metadata that keeps track of various aspects of your project.
   • The bin folder. This is where your finished files end up.
   • The lib folder, where you can put your “construction” files and artwork.
   • The src folder, which contains your .as AS3 code files.
3. Once you’ve created your project file, FlashDevelop starts you off with a blank screen. To open up your code, click on the src folder in the Project sidebar on the right. (The Project sidebar lists your computer’s actual directory structure so that you can access your Actionscript files quickly and easily.)
4. Inside the src folder, double click the Main.as file to open it. This is your project’s point of entry, where you can start writing the code for your app.

   

5. Push the F5 key on your keyboard, or the click the little play button at the top-middle of FlashDevelop to compile and run your project.

   

   The first compile will take little bit of time, but any compile after that should be quick, because the compiler builds on an as-needed basis, compiling only your most recent changes (as opposed to Flash Professional, which compiles your ENTIRE project every single time. Bleh!). Once you run your new project, the FlashPlayer should pop up and you should see a blank screen. Luckily, this is exactly what we want. As of right now, this is your App.

   

Hello, Planet

This is nice and all, but let’s try to the write a simple message on screen so that when we are testing, we know it actually works. Let’s write “Hello Planet” on-screen.

1. Just below the green commented line where it says //entry point in your Main.as file, copy and paste these lines into your code:

   var tf:TextField = new TextField();  
   var format:TextFormat = new TextFormat();  
   format.font = "_sans";  
   format.size = 48;  
   tf.defaultTextFormat = format;  
   tf.text = "Hello Planet";  
   tf.width = stage.stageWidth - 20;  
   tf.x = 10;  
   tf.y = 10;  
   addChild(tf);

   

2. Click the compile button (or press F5). Did it screw up? Good. There are a couple more things you have to do before you are ready to compile without errors.
3. In your code, click to place your cursor carat on the word Textfield and hit Ctrl+Shift+1 on your keyboard. The word turns blue. If you scroll to the top of the class, you’ll notice that there is an extra import line at the top of your code. CTRL+SHIFT+1 is a special feature of FlashDevelop that does code completion. In this instance, CTRL+SHIFT+1 automatically handles your import statements for you. You need to import the TextField code with this statement if you want your TextField to work.
4. Use CTRL+SHIFT+1 on the TextFormat word and you should see this:

   

5. Now click Compile (or press F5).

   

   Thar she blows!

   (It works, but it’s no Angry Birds. – Ed.)

Bust Out the Hardware

This is moving along nicely. You:

• Installed FlashDevelop, a free and open-source IDE for creating Flash and AIR content
• Downloaded and sunk the latest AIR SDK and Flex SDK into a single, merged folder
• Pointed FlashDevelop to the Flex SDK to use its superior compiler
• Created a new FlashDevelop project using the Mobile AIR application template
• Wrote and compiled a new Hello Planet AIR app that you can deploy to a testing device

In the next part of the tutorial, you’ll fine-tune FlashDevelop and modify a number of settings and batch files to create the magical, mystical .ipa file, and you’ll see that file running on your testing device.

Continue to Part 4

The presentation i gave at Screens, titled Ponycorns: Catching Lightning in a Jar, was the third-highest rated talk at the conference. Here are the ratings and comments from the feedback forms that the attendees filled out:

Was the speaker knowledgeable on the topic presented? 9.68
Did the session meet your expectations? 9.59
Did the speaker present the material in a clear and well-organized way? 9.77
Please rate the overall effectiveness of the speaker. 9.77
This session will affect the way I work 8.18
Overall average 9.40

Attendee comments:

• Funny and Entertaining REAL
• Awesome Story
• Inspiring
• Hilarious Magical, Thank You.
• Funny and fun. Great way to end the conference.
• Inspirational! Thanks!
• Excellent way to close out!!
• Very enthusiastic. Great end to the event.
• Hilarious, entertaining. A great story.
• AMAZING!
• Hysterical with creative, fun and useful
• Interesting.
• PONYCORNS!

Huge thanks to the conference organizers and to everyone who came to hear me speak. i’ve submitted bids in to tell the Ponycorns story to attendees at GDC 2012 and the Flash Gaming Summit next year, and this can only help. Fingers crossed!

Wanna know who else made the list? Legendary Civilization game developer Sid Meier, who keynoted last year’s Game Developers Conference.

i Got All the Awards

Sissy’s Magical Ponycorn Adventure is an entrant in this year’s Independent Games Festival, so she has a real shot at winding up at GDC herself to accept all the awards, including Most Prodigious Use of Invisible Walls and the Hervé Velasquez Memorial Award for Digital Inclination. It’s very possible that if Ponycorns is nominated, Cassie can actually meet Sid at GDC 2012. That’s incredible! Wouldn’t you have wanted that opportunity at five years old? IGF judges: you can make this happen.

Cassie’s game enjoyed international fame and critical acclaim after delighting fans the world over. Sissy’s Magical Ponycorn Adventure has been featured in digital and print publications as far away as Spain, Japan, and Russia. The game was a finalist in the 2011 IndieCade Festival, and many games journalists have hailed it as an early contender for Game of the Year 2011 since its release in March .

We didn’t actually ask anyone for money, as i’m plagued with conspiracy theories about the efficacy of cancer research and the heaps and gobs of money people are throwing at it with no cure, vaccine, or pissed-off mascot in sight. i will, however, wear my moustache proudly for the sake of awareness, and will pass on any tidbits about dickrot or ballsarrhea that i find interesting.

For example, the news that wifi scrambled your man-juice was particularly salient.

Anyway, this audacious display of facial hair reaffirms the eternal question: Don’t you wish your video game vendor was hot like me?

Further reading:

• Movember 2010 – “The Blustery Day”

This is the second part of our tutorial series by Intern Sina on creating an AIR application for free on a PC using FlashDevelop, and deploying it as a native app on an iOS device like the Apple iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch.

Jump to other parts in the series:

• Part 1 – Sign up for an Apple iOS Developer Account
• Part 3 -Use FlashDevelop to build your mobile AIR app
• Part 4 – Modify your project settings and test your app on an Apple device

Drudgery

Without a doubt, this section of our tutorial series on bundling your Adobe AIR App for Apple’s iOS platform is the pits. You have to use a complicated command line interpreter, you have to juggle what may feel like a million different certificates and profiles, and you have to jump through a dizzying array of hoops just to get everything set up … and you’re not even going to start building your app at all! But trust me: once you’ve cleared these hurdles, the rest of the process is gravy.

The first goal of this tutorial is to create a signing certificate, which is used very much like a hot brand on cattle. It’s the digital signature of you or your company that identifies an app as your own. We need to use a program called OpenSSL to create this signing certificate.

Install Open SSL

In order to turn your future AIR project into a native app, you need to create two important files: a Signing Certificate and a Mobile Provisioning Profile. If you are working on a Mac, you actually use a program called Keychain to do some fancy voodoo magic and get the certificate you need. We are working on a PC and we do not have that luxury, so there are a couple of confusing steps that we must go through.

The first thing you have to do is go to http://www.slproweb.com/products/Win32OpenSSL.html. Scroll down, and then download the Visual C++ 2008 Redistributables and install the resulting file. Next, download the Win32 OpenSSL v1.0a Light file and install that after you have installed the first package. These two files will help you create the Signing Certificate Request you so richly deserve.

Be sure to keep track of where you installed those last two elements. Next, visit this site:

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/as3/iphone/index.html.

These are Adobe’s help files for generating your signing certificate and then converting that certificate into a .P12 file. If you get lost in this tutorial, that page will be your safety net.

On that Adobe support page, you will see some instructions for Mac machines. Ignore them. Scroll down to the Windows instructions and give them a once-over.

The instructions say that you have to install Open SSL. You’ve already done that. Open a command prompt window. You can do this by going to your Start button and typing in cmd in the search field. (You can also hold the Windows key on your keyboard and hit the “R” key (for “Run”), then type cmd and hit Enter.)

Once you are in the command prompt, travel your way to your Open SSL bin folder. Depending on where you installed it you will have to travel to a different path than in this example. (For your sake, i hope you installed Open SSL in a location that you can remember!)

If this is your first time using the command prompt, here’s a quick primer on the commands that will help you get around:

• cd This command means “Change Directory”. If you are in a directory and you want to go into one of its sub-directories, use this command plus the directory name (example: cd directoryName)
• cd.. This command will pull you up one level in your directory structure
• dir Type this command to see a list of all of the files and folders within your current directory
• dir /w The /w (wide) switch spreads a directory listing across multiple columns. This is useful for seeing all the folder names at a glance, instead of in one big long scrolling list.

You may have some problems getting some of the following commands to work. A fine commenter (and Ontario resident!) named Dan Zen mentioned on the Adobe guide’s comments section that you may need to input set RANDFILE=.rnd in your command prompt before the following commands will work properly.

Generate a Signing Certificate Request File

With all of that taken care of, you can start inputting some commands to create your Signing Certificate Request file. Once you have that file, you’ll use it to ask Apple for your proper Signing Certificate file that you’ll use to identify your app.

1. Punch this command into your command line interpreter and hit the ENTER key when you’re finished:

   openssl genrsa -out mykey.key 2048

   You should see this response:

   

2. Next, type (or highlight the line, right-click, choose “Copy”, and right-click/”Paste” in the command line interpreter):

   openssl req -new -key mykey.key -out CertificateSigningRequest.certSigningRequest  -subj "/emailAddress=yourAddress@example.com, CN=John Doe, C=US"

3. Now, before you hit ENTER you’ll want to edit a couple of things. First, replace “John Doe” with your own name or company name. Then replace the “yourAddress@example.com” email with your own email. Then press ENTER.

   You should get a message similar to this:

   

   You just generated the Signing Certificate Request file that you’ll use to ask Apple for your Signing Certificate. The Signing Certificate Request file is located in the bin folder of your Open SSL install. It has a .certSigningRequest file extension and should look like this:

   

Obtain a Signing Certificate for Development

You have to upload your Signing Certificate Request file to the Apple Provisioning Portal to get your signing certificate.

Note: There have been instances where this upload does not work with Google Chrome. Just to be safe, use another browser like Firefox.

1. Navigate to the iOS Provisioning Portal after logging in with your developer account and click on Certificates.

   

2. Click Request Certificate.

   

   Note: If you are a team member and/or you have not paid the annual developer fee of $99 dollars, then you cannot request a Signing Certificate. Only the Team Admin – the person who has paid the development fee – will be able make this request.

   On the next screen, you will upload the Signing Certificate Request file that you generated in the previous section.

   

3. Click the Browse button and navigate to the bin folder located within your OpenSSL folder.
4. Once you have selected the Signing Certificate Request file, click Submit. Your next screen should show this:

   

5. Just hit Refresh a couple of times on your browser and you should eventually see this:

   

6. It’s your Signing Certificate! Go ahead and download it. Just to make things easier, you can save that certificate in the bin folder in the Open SSL folder, where your Certificate Signing Request file is sitting.

Convert the Signing Certificate to a .p12 File

Are you having fun yet? Yeah, me neither. We are making good progress though. The next step is converting that Signing Certificate to a p12 certificate, because Apple loves certificates.

1. From the Adobe help page, visit the link describing the process of converting a developer certificate to a p12 file. You get a list of more commands that you’ll have to punch into your trusty old command prompt.

   

2. Copy the first command (highlight the text, right-click and select “Copy” from the context menu):

   openssl x509 -in developer_identity.cer -inform DER -out developer_identity.pem -outform PEM

3. Open up your command prompt as I showed earlier, and navigate to the bin folder of your Open SSL directory.
4. Once you’re there, paste in the first command (right-click and select “Paste” from the context menu), and press ENTER.
5. Skip ahead to Step 3 of the Adobe help guide and copy that command. (The command in Step 2 is for Macs only.)

   openssl pkcs12 -export -inkey mykey.key -in developer_identity.pem -out iphone_dev.p12

6. Once you punch in the command, enter a password and then verify that password. Make sure the password is something that you will remember. (Save it in a .txt file in that folder if you’ve got a lousy memory like me – Ed.) When you are typing in your password, the command prompt does not give you the luxury of seeing dots or asterisks to indicate how many letters you are typing in. Rest assured that the command is accepting your input.

   Note: You may get an error mentioning a “random state”. Just type in the command set RANDFILE=.rnd and it should fix the problem for you.

7. Go into the bin folder in your Open SSL directory and you should see your .p12 file. Hooray!

   

Create an App ID

Now that you have the precious file you need, it’s finally time to create your Mobile Provisioning Profile. You’ll start by setting up a unique ID for the app you’re creating.

1. Navigate back to the Provisioning Portal in your web browser to create an App ID for your app. Log in, click on Provisioning Portal, and click on App IDs.

   

2. Click New App ID.

   Note: If you have not paid the developer fee, or if you are just a team member of the Team Admin, you will not see this option. Ask your Team Admin to complete this step.

   

3. On the next screen you’ll start by writing a Description for your app, which can be anything you want. (This is what the player will see when he sees your app in the App Store. Obviously, there’s a whole marketing concern here that’s outside the scope of this tutorial. Since we’re just building a test app, i recommend you punch SOME CRAZY NONSENSE in there for your description. Take THAT, marketing. -Ed)

   Within the Bundle Seed ID (App ID Prefix) you will have various options, depending on your account status. If you are the Team Admin, you’ll have a “Generate New” option. Team Members will only see a “Use Team ID” option. (If this is not your first App, you could also choose the Bundle Seed IDs for previous project). Either way, leave it at the default.

   The Bundle Identifier lets you create a specific package for your App. The standard way to make this package is to reverse the name of your website domain. I used com.sina.ipadtest. (Our team uses com.untoldentertainment.whatever – Ed.)

   Alternately, you can use a generic Bundle Identifier by just putting an “*” in the field.

   Note: There have been cases where the asterisk does not work for some people. It is a safe bet you make a specific namespace like the examples above.

   

4. Click Submit.

   Voila – you have now created your App ID! On the next screen you will see all of the app profiles you’ve created.

   

Create a Mobile Provisioning Profile

Now that you have an App ID, you can now create your Mobile Provisioning Profile. This is the crowning touch to everything we’ve done in this tutorial so far. The Mobile Provisioning Profile glues your developer(s), your Signing Certificate, your app ID and your testing device together. Once you have this file, you’ll be able to test an app on your device.

1. Within the Provisioning Portal website, click Provisioning in the sidebar.

   

2. Click on New Profile.

   Note: You only see this option if you are the fee-paying Team Admin.

   

3. Give your provisioning profile a Profile Name.

   

4. Choose the Signing Certificate(s) that you want to use with this profile.
5. Use the drop-down list to indicate the app for which you’re creating this profile.
6. Finally, indicate the testing device you want to test it on.
7. Click Submit.

You’ll be taken to a screen that says your Mobile Provisioning Profile is pending. Just click your browser’s refresh button a couple of times until the Downloadbutton appears, and download your precious, hard-fought profile. Make sure to save it in a location you’re likely to remember.

Are We There Yet?

That was a big pile of hoops to jump through just to test an app on your device, and we haven’t even begun building the app yet! Here’s what you just accomplished:

1. You used the command line and OpenSSL to create a Certificate Signing Request file.
2. You sent that file to Apple. Apple responded by enabling you to download your Signing Certificate file. This file identifies you as the developer of your app.
3. You converted your Signing Certificate to the .p12 format.
4. You created an ID for your app.
5. You created your Mobile Provisioning Profile, the glue that holds all these elements together and enables you to test your app on an iOS device.

The good news is that you DO NOT need to repeat the steps to create your Signing Certificate for additional apps. Now that you have that file, you’ll use it to sign all of your iOS apps from here on in. Similarly, you won’t have to re-enter your developer ID or device ID for future projects (unless, of course, you gain a new team member or device). The App ID and Mobile Provisioning Profile are the two pieces that are unique to your app – you WILL need to repeat those steps for additional projects.

The next part of this tutorial series will cover the process of creating your actual Adobe AIR app using FlashDevelop, bundling it up with this mess of certificates and profiles you just built, and deploying the app to your testing device.

Continue to Part 3

I Fold

It was a stretch for me to arrive at Gamercamp for 9:30. It’s a good day when i can drag myself to the bathroom of my own house by 9:30. i’m not an early riser. But when i saw that the conference’s keynote speaker was Seth Cooper, who worked on FoldIt, i knew i’d have to strain myself and make it there on time. i’m a big fan of using games to do useful things. (Note: that’s NOT the same as “gamification”, which is an attempt to make mundane things more interesting using trophies and leaderboards.)

FoldIt is a game out of Cornell and the University of Washington’s Center for Game Science. It uses crowdsourcing (lots of people doing stuff for you, like the Egyptian pyramids) to solve scientific puzzles by squishing 3D protein models down to more efficient forms. This is a task where humans can produce better solutions than computers, because we have better spatial reasoning than our future Robot Masters (blessings and peace be upon them). i’ve known about FoldIt for a while now, but whenever i see it being played, i can’t for the life of me figure out what in the Hell is going on.

Cooper said the possible applications of crowd-sourced FoldIt research included curing diseases and discovering alternatives to plastic. Indeed, the big story recently was that FoldIt players solved in three weeks a problem that had scientists scratching their heads for ten years – something to do with AIDS research and monkeys. The other two Center for Game Science initiatives Seth talked about were Photocity, where people taking pictures of real-life buildings can contribute to point cloud models (the hope being that some day, we’ll have an insanely detailed 3D model of our planet), and Refraction, part of an initiative to use A|B game testing to discover the best way to teach fractional mathematics to young students. (Photocity was a bit of a bust for me … the resulting point cloud model of four buildings was largely unimpressive and missing huge chunks of geometry, and it took 3 weeks and 40 000 pictures to produce. A skilled 3D artists could have produced a far more complete set of models in less time. So i was left wondering whether the initiative was such a hot idea.)

i found the talk was decent, but a little self-serving. Cooper covered only UW/Cornell-produced projects, without ever talking about the myriad other projects that use game crowdsourcing to solve problems. In future iterations, Seth could give a nod to Google Image Labeler and reCAPTCHA to level out his talk.

Seth was shooed off the stage without taking questions in an effort to keeping the morning moving; i had a question for him that would’ve made me look like a complete tool (but what else is new?). With the proliferation of so-called slot machine games on Facebook, and companies turning huge profits “gamifying” mundane experiences, there’s a lot of talk about reward systems. Folks like Chris Hecker and Jesse Schell debate about extrinsic vs. intrinsic motivation in games, and about the things that successfully motivate us; at least one study shows that for high-level knowledge work, monetary rewards just don’t cut it.

Using FoldIt results to develop an alternative to plastic, or to develop an AIDS vaccine (note: not a cure, because there’s no business model in a cure) are multi-bazillion dollar propositions. Everyone roots for initiatives like FoldIt when they think it boils down to the goodness of people’s hearts, but as soon as someone starts cranking some serious coin based on results garnered from these crowdsourced games, the participants will want to see their work rewarded financially. Just look at the story of Box2D creator Erin Catto, and wealthier-than-God publisher Rovio of Angry Birds fame.

The Remains of the Day

Most of the rest of the morning’s presentations were a joy. Jim McGinley gave the talk he’s been dreaming of, “Digging Through the Trash”, where he discusses game ideas that could be salvaged by modern game developers from the Radio Shack TRS-80 (AKA the “Trash-80″).

i loved the talk, and i really want to see more talks like it. i feel i have a distinct advantage over today’s younger crop of game developers because of my history playing ColecoVision, Intellivision and Atari 2600 games back in the day, because they were such simple games with simple mechanics that cut to the chase, and got to the fun FAST. One of my former students couldn’t even pronounce “ColecoVision” this afternoon. i firmly believe these kids should be made to sit in a room with guys like me and Jimmy, and forced to study classic home console games. Then we can pull our pants up to our nipples and tell them what’s wrong with the government.

Young Folks

i wasn’t all that enamoured with graphic designer Cory Schmitz’s presentation. It had a little too much pretentious hipster “Scene Kid” stuff going on in it for my liking, as Cory tore down design choices for various movie posters and video game box covers, providing examples of compositions that would have made them “better”. All of his examples had a real design smell to them, and he seemed a little too green to present his preferences as subjectively better, rather than objectively better. (If it doesn’t have a stark palette, odd angles, and gobs of negative space, it’s crap.) Still, there were a lot of art students in the audience, and they may have appreciated his talk.

There was a presentation by some industry up-and-comers about what they’re working on. While these mini-talks themselves tended to be rough, i enjoyed the effort as a whole, because it gave some of the student- and grad-level Toronto developers an opportunity to polish their public speaking skills. It’s an opportunity Prez Lesley Phord-Toy and i have been trying to give people throughout the year through the IGDA Toronto Chapter events like Straight Out TOJam and the Open Mic Night.

Building a Game (sorta) in Three Hours (ish)

The afternoon was a mish-mash of various workshops, including board game development, “physical” game design, playtesting sessions, and the Iron Game Developer Challenge. When i heard that Michael Todd dropped out due to ninja training or whatever, i jumped in and took his place. i wound up using UGAGS (the Untold Graphic Adventure Game System), the same engine that powers Sissy’s Magical Ponycorn Adventure and Spellirium, to produce Frankentoy in just over three hours :

As with Iron Chef, the Iron Game Developer Challenge had a secret ingredient that we had to incorporate into our games: bug-eyed plastic wind-up chattering teeth, which rank on the Creighton Terrifying Toy Spectrum somewhere between Cymbal-Smashing-Chimp-On-A-Tricycle, and this little nightmare:

The game is called “Frankentoy” and it has a Tim Burton-esque aesthetic, likely because Burton’s first film was Frankenweenie, and with very little time on the clock, i was lazily free-associating. The game is based (only partially) on a true story – my mom, a single parent, used to leave me alone in toy and book stores all the time, and would occasionally not make it back in time to pick me up until after closing time. Terrifying.

We developed UGAGS to help us create graphic adventure games quickly, but it feels like three hours was a little nuts. i hadn’t even played the game by the time the buzzer went off, and it’s plagued by some bona fide jankiness. i have no idea why the kid walks backwards. i probably should have spent less time shooting Jon Remedios in the head with Nerf bullets. But whatever. Let’s see YOU make a game.

This is the first part of our tutorial series by Intern Sina on creating an AIR application for free on a PC using FlashDevelop, and deploying it as a native app on an iOS device like the Apple iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch.

Jump to other parts in the series:

• Part 2 – Obtain your Signing Certificate & Mobile Provisioning Profile, and create your App ID
• Part 3 -Use FlashDevelop to build your mobile AIR app
• Part 4 – Modify your project settings and test your app on an Apple device

Dead Wrong

There’s a lot of FUD floating around about Flash these days. Ever since Steve Jobs took to the mic and sounded the death knell of at least the perception of Flash, there’s been heaping gobs of misinformation about what you can and can’t, should and shouldn’t do with Flash. i chalk it up to the fact that death is news. It’s BIG news when Michael Jackson dies, BIG news when Steve Jobs dies, and equally big news if you can be among the first to report on the death of a technology or company – RIM, Flash, Palm, HP – take your pick. If it bleeds, it leads.

This hyperbolic and sensational misreporting is particularly damaging for those of us who have made our living developing with Flash and Actionscript. Back in 2000, when i first got into Flash, i chose it because the alternative was HTML. HTML appeared and performed completely differently depending on a number of different factors:

1. The platform (Mac, PC or Linux)
2. The screen resolution (640×480, 800×600, 1024×768, etc)
3. The browser (Netscape, Internet Explorer, Safari)
4. The browser version (HTML could render completely differently from IE6 to IE7)

Meanwhile with Flash, i could build something inside the little Flash Player box, and it would look and behave reasonably identically across platforms, resolutions, browsers, and browser versions. (Subsequent versions of the Flash player complicated things a smidge, but we were still WORLDS away from the pain of HTML). What’s more, as a visual person, i could actually lay things out within the tool, instead of coding them abstractly and waiting to see how the browser would render them. If i wanted something to appear over there, i picked it up and put it over there. No futzing around with padding or align tags for hours.

The push towards HTML5 doesn’t scare me – more accurately, it makes me feel ill. It’s a step backwards. Without proper tooling, i see myself banging my head against the wall picturing absolutely everything in codespace (rather than concretely laid out in front of me in designspace), and programming all kinds of exception cases so that my content performs properly depending on platform, browser and version. You know what? No thanks.

Prying Flash from my Cold, Dead Hands

As long as the tools for other technologies stink, and as long as i can keep making and monetizing projects in Flash, i’m going to stay the course until there’s a compelling technological /creative/workflow reason to make a jump. Untold Entertainment has deployed two games written in Actionscript (Sissy’s Magical Ponycorn Adventure and Heads) across two different mobile platforms (Apple iPad and the BlackBerry Playbook), and we’re just getting warmed up.

Here are the facts, at the time of this writing:

1. No one really wants to play a game in a browser on a phone. Native apps are where it’s at.
2. Yes, you CAN put Flash- and Actionscript-created content on an iPhone, in native app format.
3. You can even do it without having to buy Flash Professional or Creative Suite.
4. You can develop entirely on a PC until the very last step (uploading content to the App Store).
5. Untold Entertainment is about to show you how.

What You’ll Need

While buying Adobe’s tools is optional, you’ll still need to spend a bit of money (or mug the right people) to pull this off. Here’s what you’ll need:

1. An Apple Developer account, which is $99 USD/year. Once you start down this path, you’re in it for the long haul … if you let your developer account lapse, they pull all your products off the store. For realsies.
2. A Mac (not free) running the latest version of Xcode (free).
3. An iOS device (optional, but obviously recommended).
4. FlashDevelop v4 or better (free, PC-only)

Introducing Sina

Sina Kashanizadeh is a Sheridan College computer programming student and an intern here at Untold Entertainment. He’s done all the legwork in this process, and has written this step-by-step guiding on porting your Actionscript projects to iOS. Take it away, Sina!

Flash on iOS? So You Want to Be a Hero…

With the mobile world expanding at a crazy rate you may have had the crazy idea to try making an App yourself and putting it on the iPhone. Well, you’re a brave soul, because it can be a confusing task. This is why I have scoured the internet and composed a step by step tutorial of this process. This tutorial would not have been possible without the fantastic people that maintain FlashDevelop and the wonderful community behind it. I would also like to thank Lee Brimelow and Adobe for putting out some great tutorial videos that helped me out a lot. Last but not least, I would like to thank CodeandVisual.com for putting up a fantastic comprehensive guide that inspired me to move forward whenever I had trouble writing this tutorial.

I just want to be clear that this tutorial is not the “be-all, end-all” of this process. There are many different ways of transferring your Flash App to iOS, and the problems I cover are specific to my method. Also, the process I cover is PC-specific.

Getting Started

Before we begin, I would like to recommend a very good video resource by Adobe Evangelist Lee Brimelow, in which he explains the basics of adding an app to the App Store when using Flash. If you do not know how this process works, I highly recommend this video, as it breaks down the somewhat painful process of adding an AIR App to the App Store when using a PC (thanks again, Lee!). The good news is that if you go through this once, you’ll understand the ins and outs of the process. You only have to do the most painful parts once.

The video covers a myriad of stuff but the basics boil down to this: Your end goal is to create an .ipa file, which is what you’ll upload to the App Store. To do this you will require:

• An App
• An iOS developer ID from Apple ($)
• An iPad or iPhone ($)
• A Mac ($, but required for one step only … borrow one from a friend!)
• A Signing Certificate
• A Mobile Provisioning Profile
• YOUR SOUL

Sounds like fun? Well it isn’t, but let’s get cracking anyway!

Any Club that would Have Me as a Member

As I mentioned above, you’ll need a developer ID from Apple. Head over to the iOS Dev Center and register for “free”.

Go through the steps of signing up and the email verification and you will acquire an Apple ID. Now, the unfortunate thing is that you get the Apple ID for free, but if you want to develop anything with it on a device – even a silly test app that you will never release – you will have to pay $99 a year. You’d better be positive that your Angry Birds clone will be worth at least a hundred bucks a year in revenue. You can sign up for a free student account, but again you can’t really do anything with it unless you drop some cash. If you are helping someone develop an App for the iPhone/iPad and they are paying the developer fee, they can add you as a partner to their project.

Adding a Device to Your Developer Account

If you want to test and ultimately launch this App, you will need an Apple device such as an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad. You will also need to register your Apple device with your Apple ID. Follow these steps:

1. Go into the iOS Developer website and log in with your new account info. Here, you will see the iOS Provisioning Portal. Click on it to see further options.

   

2. click Devices in the sidebar.

   

3. Click Add Devices.Note: if you are a partner developer with a team member profile, you will not be able to add a device. The option will only appear for the master account holder.

   

4. On this screen, you can add up to 100 devices to your account. Start off by adding your Device Name. Nothing fancy here – just enter something that will help you identify it – ie “Sina’s iPad”, or “iPhone what i stole from that guy that one time”.
5. Enter the Device ID (40 hex characters). This is the serial number that is associated with the device that you are trying to register. To find this Device ID, open iTunes while your device is connected. On the main screen, you will see all the information about your device, including a field called Serial Number. It doesn’t look clickable, but click on that field anyway and the number changes to a hex code. That’s your device ID.

   

6. Once you’ve filled in those details, click Submit and the device will be added to your Developer account. Now you can build an Adobe AIR application and test it on your device.The next tutorial will take you through the process of requesting and creating a Signing Certificate, converting that certificate to the p12 format that Apple requires, and generating a Mobile Provisioning Profile for your new app.

   Continue to Part 2

Our Arrival in LA-LA Land

IndieCade takes place in Culver City, a close suburb of Los Angeles California, the Most Horrible Place on Earth. i don’t care for it. Ever since getting dumped out of a cab at two in the morning somewhere in LA, and asking some nearby police officers to help point me towards my hotel, and being denied, i don’t much enjoy traveling there. Culver feels a little bit smaller and a little bit homier than LA proper, but it’s still carved up by vicious six-lane mini-highways threatening to Frogger you at every crossing.

i traveled to IndieCade with fellow indie game developer Michael Todd (@thegamedesigner), whose antics i hope you’ve been reading about on my Twitter account (@untoldent). In case you missed it, here’s a taste:

Good times.

Despite the chaos, Michael Todd managed to spot someone on the plane who was going to IndieCade as well, zeroing in on a guy who was playing SpaceChem on an iPad. That’s how we made friends with Matt from NVIDIA, who agreed to split a cab to Culver with us.

We stayed at the historic Culver Hotel, an early 20th century joint situated just up the street from the former MGM (now Sony) studios. Apparently Judy Garland, Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr and Jack Haley used to whoop it up there while filming Showgirls.

Travel-weary and hungry, our first order of bidness was to beeline for the nearby In-N-Out Burger, which certain folks on Twitter can’t stop raving about. My hopes were high for what many were calling the best fast food burger in existence. My concierge told me to order a “double double, animal-style” from the secret menu. This being LA, i made absolutely sure that we were both referring to a burger.

Of course, no Earthly burger could live up to that amount of hype. You couldn’t find a more pedestrian burger. And American cheese sucks. i took special note of the burger wrapper:

If the very best thing you can say about a burger is that it’s been wrapped in paper since 1948, you’ve got yourself a shitty burger. Here’s a list of other bullet points the restaurant could have printed on the wrapper:

Since 1948, In-N-Out Burgers have been

• round
• legal in 48 states
• made from 100% stuff
• found only at In-N-Out
• edible

Aim high, burger joint. Aim high.

Spectacles, Testicles …

The night we arrived, IndieCade held its big awards show. It was much bigger than i expected it would be. The invite suggested we come dressed in “cocktail” attire. This was the best i could muster:

Many of the other indies, being primal savages, managed to squeeze themselves into pants for the event (which is more than i think most of us hoped for). At the awards show, we were met with a bona fide red carpet entrance.

You never really get to see a red carpet photo from the perspective of its intimidated subjects, so here you go:

Inside, the place was lit up like a Christmas tree. A … Chinese-lanterned Chinese Christmas tree from China.

IndieCade assembled a list of Hollywood actors from geek-related movies and shows to present the awards, which must have seemed like a good idea at the time. Freaks and Geeks actor Samm Levine (famous also for his leading role in Showgirls) brought his A-material, including “programmers never shower” and “gamers live in their moms’ basements and masturbate a lot”. i mean, granted, but i’m sure there were one or two folks in the audience who resented being lumped in with the rest of us.

At one point, two young starlets joked that they should start making out at the podium. i could feel the room bristle uncomfortably. Know your audience, kids.

Ponycorns got a few unexpected shout-outs from the mic, and was nominated for the Community Impact award, but ultimately lost to Johann Sebastian Joust. But it’s an honour just to lose bitterly.

As the party drew on tipsily into the wee hours, more than a few people asked me where my daughter – my five-year-old daughter – was. i had no response. My Twitter pal Ian Bogost cooked up an appropriate comeback:

“Fuck if I know. She got trashed and went home with some 8 year old.”

The Lay of the Land

Aside from the Santa Monica-staged awards ceremony, IndieCade took place within a 3-block radius of our hotel. In the parking lot across the street, they’d erected some neat puzzle buildings designed by a local artist, whose nearby gallery hosted some of the finalists.

One of the venues was the Ivy Substation, a local theatre:

The park on the way to the Ivy had a really kickass climbing tree, if you’re into that sort of thing. i mention it in the off chance that you are:

Most of the finalists’ games were on display at a nearby firehall which, to my surprise, continued to operate throughout the weekend.

Alienware donated the equipment for the showcase. Somewhat unfairly, certain developers were assigned desktop machines with proper monitors, while others of us were assigned little 14 inch laptops. Ponycorns was squished on to one of these diminutive little screens, and shared a cramped table with an interactive geology textbook. “HELL naw,” said i, and grabbed an extra table. Then i proceeded to pimp my table out, Untold Entertainment style:

After the first day, the IndieCade organizers shut down my merch sales, claiming that i couldn’t sell anything because the firehall was a public place and i didn’t have a vendor’s permit. At first, i was asked to remove the two price tags from the shirts and plushies, and was later asked to remove the T-shirt rack entirely. It was kind of a bummer, but one day of T-shirt sales was enough to pay for my cab rides and meals at the event. i can’t help but think that if i had produced a valid vendor’s license for the organizers, they still would have asked me to shut down my merch sales … but that’s just conjecture on my part.

Patty Wagon

i was asked to speak on a Family Friendly Games panel on Sunday, which was a real thrill. Soon after, some of us piled into a car with my friend Joel from Riot Games (@lowpolycount) to hit up the rarified East coast burger joint Five Guys.

Everywhere you go in California, there are these vague “shit be causin’ cancer” signs:

Conferences are exhausting, and IndieCade was no exception. After being on my feet for twelve hours on the concrete firehall floor, i was wiped. Thank goodness – three tall, frosty glasses of Cherry Coke came to my rescue.

Kids Play the Darndest Things

On Saturday and Sunday, the firehall was open to the public to just wander in, try out the games, and meet their creators. This was, by far, my favourite aspect of the festival. i just loved talking to Joe and Jane Community Member, and it was especially exciting whenever a little kid played the game:

Next to our booth was Johann Sebastian Joust, the game that edged us out in our award category. It drew large crowds with lots of clapping and laughter.

Each player gets a Playstation Move controller. The players must move around the arena in time to the Bach soundtrack – if you move too quickly, you’re out. So the game is all about swatting someone else’s remote to make it move too quickly and knock that player out of the game. It’s a neat idea, and people loved it.

i met a fellow wearing a paper tie whose father was the subject of Deepak Fights Robots, a Pac Man/Bubble Bobble mash-up that took home the award for best game design.

That’s a Rap

The festival concluded with the Audience and Developer’s Choice Awards. A stunned Jim and emilie McGinley accepted their Audience Choice award, but not before the crowd tried a few rounds of Local No. 12′s the MetaGame.

In the MetaGame, each player gets a deck of cards. Most cards depict video games, while some cards pose a comparison question, like “Which game is a better waste of ten minutes?” or “Which game deserves to be locked in a vault for 1000 years?” The challenger chooses a discussion card, and both players throw down a game card. Then they debate. It’s all very Socratic.

i squared off against Myles Nye here on the left, who wound up trouncing all comers. He later brought down the house while defending Parappa the Rapper by freestyle rapping his rebuttal.

IndieCade 2011 was capped with a backyard barbecue at Robin Hunicke’s house. Robin is a producer at That Game Company (Flow, Flower, and the upcoming Flowest: Flow Harder).

i sat down next to Richard to reclaim my key drive, which Phil had borrowed to transfer some music. He introduced himself, and then said “i loved Ponycorns.” i had to admit that i got stuck somewhat early in his game when i was shot repeatedly in the face. He assured me i could play Uncharted 2 without missing important plot details.

Richard is a very nice guy. Very British. This is confusing, because his last name is “Lemarchand”. He makes frequent, almost self-conscious references to Dr. Who. i have a sneaking suspicion he’s an imposter – a Frenchman posing as an Englishman for some bizarre reason. You can’t fool me, Lemarchand. Blood will out.

The Voyage Home

It was an exhausting five days. By the end of it, Michael Todd had learned that hotels not only charge exorbitant amounts for in-room phone calls, but also for in-room death threats.

The lower-case “e” looks like a “g”, but we’re working on it. First things first, we have to educate her as to the proper colour of an enderman’s eyes. Priorities – you know.

What’s New in Version 2?

Absolutely nothing! The Unity 3.x version is identical to the first edition, save for the fancy new cover by UbiSoft Toronto game artist Dan Cox. The occasional errata from the first edition have been corrected, and the screenshots have been updated so that they match Unity’s subtle interface changes. i’ve included two new spaceship models by Dan in Chapter 11 (the same ones you see on the cover), which i’ll make available to owners of all versions.

The first chapter was updated to discuss the BootCamp demo instead of the original Island Demo, which stopped working reliably as of version 3. Then, just as we were ready to release the book, Unity launched v3.4, which included yet another demo and more subtle UI changes. So Unity 3.x Game Development by Example has been lovingly (?) re-written TWICE to bring it in-line with what those nutty funsters at Unity have been up to.

Should i Buy It?

Yes you should.

i made the rather bold claim that the first edition of the book may very well cure cancer. i realize now that this was entirely irresponsible of me, and i regret my error in judgment. i can say now with all certainty that version two is guaranteed to cure cancer, or your money back. Please contact Pack Publishing for all refund inquiries, including a post mortem certificate from your next of kin.

Praise for Unity 3D Game Development by Example (from actual people)

“A great resource for learning Unity.” – Michael Todd, indie game developer

“Creighton’s book teaches both Unity and good design practices while staying hip, funny, and even controversial. A must read!” – Ryon Levitt, Game Designer

“I went from unemployed to working full-time in California!” – Mohammed Al-Sahaf, game school graduate

“I didn’t loose brain cells when I read this book.” – Brent Arnold, Mobile Developer

1. Ain’t no ladies in the games industry.
2. If there were, i wonder what kinds of games they’d make?
3. Let’s find out.

Mare is a lady, so her involvement is understandable. Jim Munroe, however, is definitely NOT a lady, as evidenced by the following diagram:

Jim is involved because of his work on the Artsy Games Incubator, a somewhat similar concept, where he led a group of non-programmers on an odyssey of game creation. One of the interesting things i learned when talking to Jim and crew about the Difference Engine: Ladies Edition is that it’s important to have only ladies in the room, because men – even only one man (see above) – can skew the dynamic in the room and tilt the power balance. Weird, huh?

EVEN WEIRDER is this photo from the article, where we can clearly see Jim, who is a man, in the room with the ladies. What i love about this photo is that the unshaven man-legs on the right likely belong to Jim, it actually looks he’s poking his head through that little cubby hole at the other end of the room, spying on the proceedings (perhaps because someone put a “GIRLZ ONLY” sign on the door?).

The other TIFF Nexus events this year include the Peripherals Intiative, which pairs game developers up with hardware hackers, and another mash-up involving “sequential artists”, as comic book folks sometimes call themselves just to make me giggle. Nexus kicked off last night at a swanky TIFF Bell Lightbox rooftop party in the midst of the film festival. Untold Entertainment was there. The tiny yorkshire pudding appetizers were to die for.

Check out our shrine to classic LucasArts adventure games, our fabulous social media pillows, and the industry’s most unfortunate plantlife in Gamezebo Cribs: Untold Entertainment Edition.

Where It’s At

What the article doesn’t mention is that the Untold offices are situated in a very special building. Untold is directly across the hall from Capybara Games, who recently hosted and teamed up with Craig D. Adams (AKA Superbrothers) to create the iOS hit Sword and Sworcery EP. Untold occasionally shares space with world-traveled indie dev Michael Todd, creator of such arty fare as Broken Brothers and Silent Skies. Two levels up on the sixth floor in the same building is Jon Mak’s Queasy Games. You’ll remember Jon’s Everyday Shooter; Queasy is hard at work on Sound Shapes for the Playstation Vita.

So if you want to wipe out a lot of Toronto indie talent, send your angry anthrax-laced letters to our building. But better yet, if you’d like to be involved in the perfect storm of creative energy swirling around downtown TO, give Untold Entertainment a call to partner with us on your next exciting project.

This is the story of how Izzy was two inches shy of the height cut-off, so we dropped Cassie off at the ball pit and took Izzy secretly to get a frozen yogurt cone to stop her from crying inconsolably. i was wearing my “I Am an Evil Lemon” shirt, one of the fine items we sell for fans of Sissy’s Magical Ponycorn Adventure. The cashier looked at it and said “cool shirt!” This was exciting to me. “Do you know what this is?” i asked. “No,” he said.

Oh. What a let-down.

i said “It’s from this game i made with my daughter.” His face brightened up. “You were on the news!” Then my face brightened up as well.

The World Over

What i found remarkable about the exchange was that he was a young guy, supposedly part of a generation that didn’t watch teevee any more – and especially not the 6 o’clock news (or the nation-wide morning show Canada AM).

But that didn’t beat my experience a week ago. We had rented a cottage in Haliburton, a patch of cottage country three hours Northwest of Toronto. The map to that area of Ontario has exactly one road running through it; the rest is very very green, and spotted with lakes. The village closest to the cottage was a place called Gooderham, which i hesitate to call a “one-horse town”, because i got the feeling they likely had to borrow a horse from the next town over. The only commercial buildings in Gooderham are a diner, a gas station, and a convenience store.

We went in to buy marshmallows, popsicles, and snow cone syrup – you know, all the camping staples – and i was wearing my Evil Lemon shirt. As with the IKEA story, the guy behind the cash register remarked at my shirt. “That’s a strange shirt,” he said. “Oh – it’s from this game i made with my daughter,” i replied.

And then, this guy who worked his parents’ convenience store in the middle of B.F. Nowhere in Ontario, three hours Northwest of Toronto, and three months after the fact, said “Oh – you were on the news!”

i’ve had people write to me to tell me how they’ve shared the game around. You’ll remember the teacher who dressed up as the Ponycorns game and went to an anime convention. At the cottage, we spent some time with an old friend of ours, who is also a teacher. Before school ended, he shared the game with his high school students, who went absolutely nuts for it. Come exam time, his students (unprovoked) doodled ponycorns fan-art on the backs of their papers:

Tiny Voice, Enormous Head

Many people ask me how Cassie is handling her notoriety. A few weeks back, we wanted to have brunch at a place downtown. The waitress politely told us it would be a five minute wait for a table. Cassie looked up at her and said, in a rehearsed manner, “Hi! My name’s Cassie. i’m five years old. i made a game called Sissy’s Magical Ponycorn Adventure, and almost everyone in the whole world has played it.” Then she waited, expectantly. This, of course, was all to my utter horror.

“Cassie … are you trying to get us a table more quickly?” i asked. Then, to salvage the situation with humour (as i am wont to do), i chuckled uncomfortably and said to Cassie (for the waitress’s benefit) “No, sweetie – this is how you do it: you say ‘DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM??’”

i’m not sure the waitress appreciated that approach either.

Every so often, i’ll catch Cassie smugly saying to her sister “i’m the famous girl”, and i’ll bark at her from another room “KNOCK IT OFF. You’re NOT famous.” She just continues colouring, and humming to herself contentedly.

We’re far from having created a monster, but my wife and i do have to issue occasional reminders about humility vs. conceitedness. We told Cass that “almost everyone in the world” had played her game, only to help frame it for her. She wouldn’t have appreciated the scope of the game’s virality if we had said “GREAT news, sweetie! Your game is huge in Michigan, and in select parts of Western Mexico!”

Still, the fact that folks remember us from the news remains a thrill. It’s a far cry from getting mobbed in a shopping mall by squealing preteen girls, but hey … we can’t all be Wilford Brimley.

This November, i’ll be talking about the whole roller coaster ride of creating a viral game, and the steps we took to maximize our exposure and reach during the peak of the craziness, at the Screens festival in Toronto for my presentation “Ponycorns: Catching Lightning in a Jar“.

When Untold Entertainment Inc. turned three last year, we were reeling from the fallout of the global economic collapse. It’s been a slow, difficult recovery, and we still have a lot of work left to do, but i’m happy to say we’ve nosed out of the tailspin. This was a landmark year for Untold; we are poised to have an absolutely incredible fifth year going forward. If last year was our Empire, this year is our Jedi. Bring on the Ewoks, baby.

Here’s a look at the Year That Was.

2010

August

Last fiscal ended on a dark note. We were struggling through Spellirium, our post-apocalyptic puzzle adventure game, as various production problems saw the budget sapped with very little to show for our efforts. The year ahead had us planning to complete service projects in the hope that we’d bank enough margin to continue working on the game.

September

My book was published! Unity 3D Game Development by Example: A Beginner’s Guide is a great introduction to game development, computer programming, and Unity 3D itself, which is a super-powerful game engine for creating on a wide variety of platforms. Thanks to you all for buying a copy, or for recommending the book to your friends.

Fall

We launched Jinx 3: Escape from Area Fitty-Two on YTV.com. Jinx 3 was the first game to use UGAGS, the Untold Graphic Adventure Game System. It supported multiple playable characters, an inventory system, a subtitle system, game variable control, and a “puppet” guidance system, which enables the developer to write commands to build in-game cutscenes. Jinx 3 was the first UGAGS game we developed, but the second one to launch, after Heads.

i spoke about UGAGS at Gamercamp Level 2.0, a Toronto convention celebrating the joy of video games.

October saw the publication of a now-infamous article about the Vortex Game Development Competition, where the previous year’s winners were revealed to have never worked on the winning game.

i experimented with a feature called Linkbait Tuesdays, where i used the Linkbait Generator to spit out randomized titles for blog posts. It wasn’t much appreciated by my readership, and didn’t appreciably increase blog traffic, so i killed the feature.

On Hallowe’en, we launched our second free games portal called ZombieGameWorld.com. If you know the song about the old woman who swallowed the fly, you’ll understand our challenge with these portals. We built WordGameWorld.com in order to attract a word game-playing audience, so that we could control the site’s ad inventory and find an audience for Spellirium. When the site suffered from flagging traffic, i decided to build a network of game portals; ZombieGameWorld.com was ostensibly created to help drive traffic to WordGameWorld.com, which should drive traffic to Spellirium.

To round out the fall, i grew a beard to win hockey tickets, despite not enjoying hockey. i spoke at an interactiveontario luncheon. And i wrote an article for Mochiland.com on the disgraceful refusal by contracting companies to credit their Flash game developers.

Winter

As the cold weather set in, i took a position at a private college teaching Unity 3D game development. i had hoped for a better experience than i had at Hervé Velasquez School for the Digitally Inclined, but no such luck: halfway through the course, which was dubbed Programming II (the students had supposedly been taught Flash/Actionscript for four months prior to my arrival), i had to dial everything back and re-teach programming basics to them. And by basics, i mean stuff like “What does the ‘=’ symbol do?” and “What is a variable?”

The class was only eight students, but i had no fewer than two of those students’ parents call or email me to ask why little Billy was getting low grades on tests. YaRly.

In this, i further proved the thesis in my contentious What’s Wrong with Ontario Colleges articles (Part 1 and Part 2). Helicopter parenting and failure aversion have created a generation of non-functional kids, which i later dubbed The Most Useless Generation. My diagnosis is that many college undergrads have escaped high school without ever understanding How to Be a Student (an article i wrote while teaching last winter, which i’ve only just posted now that i’ve put some distance between myself and the situation).

In the interest of helping young people be more successful, i offered My Prescription for (More) Successful Students, which my students all ignored, and i wrote a serious of articles called Understanding Programming to explain programming basics, which my students also ignored. Oh well. As the saying goes, you can lead a horse to water, but sometimes you just have a retarded horse.

2011

Spring

In 2011, we launched an exciting blog series called Pimp My Portal, detailing our struggles to drive traffic to ZombieGameWorld.com and WordGameWorld.com. The hook here was The World’s Most Meager Marketing Budget, a pot of just $100 that i spent on Fiverr.com to buy testimonial videos to promote the site, the rationale being that search loves video. The Old Lady who Swallowed the Fly reared her ugly head again, as i found that i had no audience to watch the videos to go to the portal to go to the OTHER portal to find out about Spellirium. The Pimp My Portal series is ongoing.

Around this time, we were commissioned by The Centre for Skills Development and Training to produce a series of games to help teach workplace skills to 15-30-year-olds. The resulting game, Summer in Smallywood, enabled us to make a number of improvements to UGAGS, including auto-save, debug tools, navigation meshes, saved game profiles, and threaded conversations. We’re looking forward to working further with The Centre in the coming year to expand our educational gaming experience.

In March, i admit i was feeling a little bit desperate and squirrely. Work was trickling into the shop in fits and starts, and i was really wondering whether renewing our lease would be wise. Wild-eyed and hungry at GDC, i was overcome with the need to let the world know i am here, like the tiny Whos living on a speck on a clover stalk, who ultimately issue a resounding YOPP! to show the jungle animals that they exist (and to keep from getting boiled in beezlenut oil).

To that end, i pulled some shenanigans at the conference, which came to be known as the famous GDC Coin Stunt. The resulting press on most major online games sites greased the wheels for what was to be our greatest victory yet.

Over the years, we’ve found it so difficult to drive enough steady Flash game development work that we haven’t been able to bank enough time or enough money to do our own thing. To date, the only chance we seem to get is TOJam, an annual weekend-long Toronto game jam, during which we always produce a complete and original game. Indeed, nearly every title in the Original Games section of our portfolio is a TOJam game, completed in one weekend by me alone.

This year, we used UGAGS to create Sissy’s Magical Ponycorn Adventure. i worked on the game with my 5-year-old daughter Cassandra. It was no accident that i was wearing my “I have all the coins” T-Shirt in the TOJam group photo this year. After the game went live, it went viral, initially being featured on many of the same sites that covered the coin stunt. In the few months since its launch, the ponycorns game has gone on to become an international sensation (i just granted an interview to a Japanese newspaper this week!).

With the ponycorns game, we took a very important step to improving our viability as a dev studio by launching the game on the Apple iPad and the BlackBerry Playbook. On the third day of its launch week, Sissy’s Magical Ponycorn Adventure was featured by Apple in its New & Noteworthy section.

Ponycorns also drove us to develop our first alternate revenue stream based on our original IP. We launched the Untold Booty merchandise store with a number of different ponycorns-based SKUs, and have been very happy with the results.

Throughout the year, i remained active with the IGDA Toronto Chapter, organizing some well-received events including the speed dating-style Game.Set.Match, the Open Mic Night rant session, Straight Outta TOJam: Pint-sized Postmortems, and the Fund in the Sun workshop.

Through the spring, we developed a great puzzle/platformer game called Spladder, which currently runs on a number of kids’ broadcaster sites – YTV.com. TVO.org and CBBC.co.uk among them.

We launched a new games portal called TowerDefenseGameWorld.com and filled it with free tower defense games, because it’s difficult to prove a theory about a network of games portals lending each other traffic if you only have two portals. We also gave a major upgrade to ZombieGameWorld.com by expanding it to feature zombie games and goodies on other platforms.

i know an old lady who swallowed a horse. She’s dead, of course.

Summer. Future.

We’ve come full circle. Spellirium remains unfinished, but we’re finally spending time on it again. We poked Kahoots with a stick to see if it was still twitching. Thankfully, it is! We’ve made some creative changes to it to spare a fellow indie game dev company some unpleasant legal strife; look forward to a Kahoots-related announcement in the coming months.

i’m writing the 3.x update to my Unity 3D book, which will be ready shortly (send me an email and i’ll add you to our notification list when the update is released).

Going forward, our plan is to leverage the success of the ponycorns game to make major in-roads into game development and education for kids (see our article on CBC.ca). i’m preparing a pilot project with Cassie’s elementary school this fall. We’re preparing the unstoppable UGAGS engine for a business-to-business, and then consumer, release – expect it to have a kid-friendly interface. We’re polling people for their interest in an iPhone/iPod version of the game (send us an email!). i’ll be delivering my conference session Ponycorns: Lightning in a Jar at the Screens festival this fall, and at other conventions throughout the year. Ponycorns is being translated into Japanese in anticipation of the Sense of Wonder Night at the Tokyo Games Show.

Untold Entertainment’s fifth year will be filled with low-life panda bears, daily word puzzles, gamesByKids, and more great articles about game development and education, peppered with rude jokes and stolen LOLcat pictures. Thanks so much for your support, everyone! i’m really looking forward to writing an amazing recap next year.

To celebrate, we’re showcasing the work of some dyed-in-the-wool ponycorn fans.

Ponycorns at Anime North

Mike Barltrop is an educator who showed Sissy’s Magical Ponycorn Adventure to his high school students so they’d be without excuse – if a 5-year-old could pull off a game, he can expect a lot more from them. Mike enjoyed ponycorns so much that he painstakingly re-created a number of Cassie’s drawings and dressed up as the game for the Anime North nerdfest in Toronto:

To put Mike’s ponycorns passion into perspective, the game was released on May 25th. Anime North started the following Friday and ran the length of the weekend. And people at the conference recognized Mike’s costume. Awesomazing!

The Star’s Crayon Forgery Shenanigans

We spotted one piece of fan art that was no less hilarious than Mike’s costume, but unbelievable for a different reason. When the Toronto Star posted its story about the ponycorns’ meteoric rise to prominence, the online piece had two images in its gallery: a shot of Cassie playing the game, and THIS:

It doesn’t take a keen eye to see that this image is actually a forgery, created by an adult employed at the Star. When we saw this image on the site, we were a little baffled. We have a stack of original crayon art from the game that we could have sent to the newspaper at a moment’s notice. This kind of thing is in keeping with some of my other dealings with news media, like my interview with CityTV from a while back where they grabbed one tiny soundbite from me to prove the point they were trying to make, and completely discarded everything else i said. Hilarious! If you don’t already watch the news and read the paper with a cocked eye, i hope you’ll start today.

We asked the Toronto Star to correct the article, and the picture was removed in short order.

UPDATE

Now it’s ME doing the retracting. The wacky lads over at Shh-Mom.com have confessed to penning the offending artwork which, in its original context, isn’t offending at all. The folks at the Star must have grabbed it, thinking it to be genuine. i’m glad we got to the bottom of this. Has it restored my faith in traditional news media? No. Question everything!

Flannery’s Fanfic

We’re saving the best for last on Ponycorn P’toosday. 9-year-old Flannery, proud owner of a plush ponycorns mega-pack, sent us this fantastic storybook featuring the extended adventures of the ponycorns gang. Enjoy your face off!

Get Some

If this is your first exposure to ponycorns, pick up your copy on the iPad today! The game is also available on the BlackBerry Playbook and in your browser.

(any regular Untold reader will figure out how i commissioned such a great trailer voice-over without breaking the bank! :)

This is all in anticipation of the release of Sissy’s Magical Ponycorn Adventure on the Apple iPad next week, on a momentous date we’re calling Ponycorn P’toosday (July 12 2011).

Pricing and Strategy

The game is priced at $2.99. When pricing, i followed this reasoning;

• iPad versions of games usually sell for more than their iPhone/iPod counterparts. Why? Because. (you pay more money for your iPad, so you should pay more for its software? i guess? *shrug*)
• the lowest paid price for an iPhone/iPod app is 99 cents, so following the rule, that brings the iPad price to $1.99
• i have heard tell from people who have researched it more heavily that curiously, people don’t seem to differentiate between the $1.99 and $2.99 price points. If you go $3.99, they fly off the handle and you sell zero copies. But given the choice between selling at 2 bucks or 3 bucks, you may as well go with 3.
• Generally, it’s much easier to lower the price than it is to raise it, so you may as well start high. Some companies have claimed to launch at a low “introductory price” and have raised it from there – that’s really the only way i’ve seen of getting away with those sorts of price-raising shenanigans. (Although Tommy Refenes famously raised his price every time he got a sale. That was hilarious. And tough to duplicate.)

The average donation amount to Cassie’s Education Fund on the ponycorns website was $10, so it’s not such a wild stab.

Why Buy the Cow?

Now, of course, the real interesting bit will be to see if folks will buy the game on a mobile platform even though it’s available for free online. Here are a few reasons why the mobile version is more appealing:

1. it runs ad-free
2. there’s no download wait – the game instantly starts up
3. it’s easier for the kids in your life to access … they just have to tap the game icon (instead of you having to type in a url for them to play)
4. kids prefer touch interfaces over mouse-driven ones (and have more success with touch)
5. the touch interface even lowers the minimum play age down from 2 years old to zero years old
6. the audio is uncompressed and crystal-clear

The Importance of Being iOS

The indie game developers i know, who have had varying degrees of success on the iOS platform, have lovingly cautioned me that i’ve entered a lottery, and that i shouldn’t get my hopes up. i’m running somewhat of a different business than they are. It’s not crucial for an original Untold game to succeed on iOS, but it is crucial for Untold to have launched a product there.

The reason is that most of our kids’ production and broadcast clients are presently putting all their eggs in the iOS basket, for better or worse … i think that, as with most people, their eyes are all a-twinkle at the prospect of actually selling their kids’ games. Many of my clients treat these kids’ teevee brand extensions into video games as a marketing expense, and the interactive departments don’t generally turn a profit. When the axe comes down, as it often does, it comes down hardest on departments that are non-revenue generating. iOS represents a faint hope to many of these folks that they can become a money-making operation to gain more sway and security within the larger organization.

So! Now that Untold Entertainment can offer both online web game services AND mobile game development services (including Android, Playbook and iOS) to our clients, we’re very well situated. Don’t get me wrong – i’d LOVE for ponycorns to take off on the iPad and warrant an iPhone/iPod version. There are a whole lot of people out there whose days have not yet been brightened by the rainbow-coloured land of ponycorns, so we have some work left to do.

P’too Long; Didn’t Read

Did i mention the game comes out on the iPad on Ponycorn P’toosday, July p’12th? Mark your calendars!

Untold Entertainment is excited to announce the latest addition to its network of free-to-play game collections with the release of Tower Defense Game World. Over 120 games are ready to play, with new additions posted every week. Tower Defense Game World is the newest member of Untold’s suite of free game networks, which currently includes Zombie Game World and Word Game World.

“Tower defense” is a game genre that has become immensely popular in the past five years. Most tower defense games have the player protecting a fortress or base from incoming “waves” of enemies. The player can purchase and place turrets that fend off the hordes of invaders. Through careful placement and upgrading, the player can emerge victorious with an unscathed fortress.

Tower Defense games have proven to be one of the most popular game genres available today, with varieties that appeal to casual gamers, core players, and everyone in between. Plants vs. Zombies by Popcap Games is one of the most well-known tower defense games. Tower Defense Game World offers a curated experience, bringing the best free Tower Defense games currently available into one website.

About Untold Entertainment

Untold Entertainment Inc. is a boutique game development studio in Toronto specializing in games and apps for kids, teens, tweens, and preschoolers. Untold developed Sissy’s Magical Ponycorn Adventure which was co-created by a five-year-old girl, and its upcoming post-apocalyptic puzzle adventure game Spellirium.

Our entry for TOJam 5 (the Toronto independent game jam) was Heads.

The jam theme was “missing”. Heads is about a fellow who wakes up one morning missing … well, his head. The first puzzle in the game sees you constructing a makeshift head before you can leave the house. From there, we introduce a somewhat novel mechanic where you can switch heads with other characters to use their abilities. The game was the second title we created with UGAGS – the Untold Graphic Adventure Game System.

Worth 1000 Words

Heads was one of the games on Untold’s “Games to Build” wiki. The intended scope was much larger than what we ended up with, but the advantage of creating Heads at a weekend game jam is that we finished it and got the idea out to the world. The innovation we attempted with Heads came directly out of the first UGAGS game we created, Jinx 3: Escape from Area Fitty-Two. Jinx 3 had a LOT of character dialogue and was very wordy. Heads was a reaction to that; we tried to create a game with absolutely no character dialogue whatsoever.

The resulting challenge was that everything we needed to communicate to the player required a new animation. The unique Heads style required us to draw every frame 3 or 4 times to achieve a Squigglevision-style effect. This all added up to a very time-consuming process that tested the limits of what we were able to pull off in a single weekend.

Acclaim for Heads

Heads won “Best Use of Theme” at the public TOJam Arcade exhibition. It was featured in the START video game show at the Ontario College of Art and Design. You can play Heads for free on the Blackberry Playbook.

One Life, No Continues

One of the best things about being a game developer (aside from having a job that’s ALL FUN ALL THE TIME, with NO HARD WORK INVOLVED WHATSOEVER), is that all of my heroes are still alive. If you’re a mathematics fan, most of the biggest names in your movement have been pushing up daisies for centuries; if you’re into philosophy, your guys have been gone for millennia. (But what is death, really?)

We’ve lost a few folks: there’s Gary Gygax (but i was never a big D&D player), and Dan Bunten (but again, i could never figure out how to play my friend’s cracked C64 copy of M.U.L.E. without an instruction manual). Whenever i mention this, my 1337 gaming friends bring up a Japanese designer whose name escapes me … i only really follow Miyamoto, who’s still alive and kicking, with that almost unnerving Peter Pan grin.

Da-Doo Ron Ron

One of my favourite developers is Ron Gilbert, who created Maniac Mansion and The Secret of Monkey Island (as well as The Secret of Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge, which happens to be my favourite game of all time). He went on to develop a number of kids’ games with Humongous Entertainment. That makes us both kids’ games designers, so i feel there’s a certain affinity there. He worked on the first Penny Arcade game and designed DeathSpank with Hothead Games. After leaving Hothead, he eventually fell back in with Tim Schafer, a former LucasArts intern who worked with Ron on the Monkey Island games.

Back at Game Developers’ Conference 2011 a few months ago, i shamelessly geeked out when Ron delivered his Maniac Mansion postmortem, and he agreed to pose for a picture:

What’s more, he even deigned to sign my two original Amiga 500 Monkey Island game boxes from the games i actually played as a kid in the early 90′s. They’re hanging on my office wall right now:

… opposite the gigantic plaque-mounted Monkey Island posters:

It Began, Fittingly, With Piracy

What’s the big deal about Gilbert’s games? As i explained to him, here’s how it went down:

i didn’t have my own computer growing up in the 80′s because we were cash-strapped, and at that time home computers were toys of the idle rich. In one of the few times when i saw him, my father bought me an Atari 2600 for my birthday a few years after the crash, when 2600 shovelware was filling the bins at $1/cartridge (it’s actually not far off the situation in the App Store, actually. History repeats itself.)

i got a lot of play time in at The Twins’ house … that’s where i’d go to fill in the gap between the end of the school day, and the end of my mom’s work day. The Twins had a C64 and a massive treasure trove of over 400 pirated games. i used to love flipping through those big plastic floppies, reading the cryptic names written to the disk labels in the handwriting of multitudes of mysterious people, using a variety of pens.

Me: What’s ‘Whirlinerds’?

Twin #1: (from the other room, where they were playing with G.I. Joes) Oh – it’s this game where you’re a guy with a propeller on his head. It’s really hard.

(flip flip flip flip)

Me: What’s ‘Transformers’?

Twin #2: Sucks.

(flip flip flip flip)

Me: What’s ‘GEOS’?

Twin #2: Educational.

Twin #1: Sucks.

From there, it was just a quick LOAD *.*, 8 (load load load) CTRL+CURSOR UP,CTRL+CURSOR UP,CTRL+CURSOR UP,CTRL+CURSOR UP, LOAD, CURSOR OVER, 8, 1 ; , (load load load load load) (rainbow vomit-coloured pirate screen) (glitch) (load load load load load) (title screen), and i was playing a game!

Twitch games were okay (Whirlinerds was actually pretty difficult), but the games i really took to were the text adventure games. There were a bunch of them in that disk tray. i didn’t get to play any of the best-in-class Infocom titles (The Twins had Leather Goddesses of Phobos, but we weren’t allowed to play it. Here are a few games i came back to time and again:

The schtick was the same with all of these games:

> get shovel

(wait wait wait)

You pick pup the shovel.

> dig hole

(wait wait wait)

(slow-ass graphics refresh)

You dig a hole in the ground. There is treasure here.

> get treasure

(wait wait wait)

I don’t understand “treasure”.

> well, sssssuper.

Enter the Maniacs

i’ll never forget the day The Twins came home from their friend’s house, breathless and sweaty, and recounted the incredible things they’d seen on another C64.

Twin #1: It’s this GAME, and you get to pick like three people …

Twin #2: from a list of TEN …

Twin #1: Yeah, and you have to break into this mad scientist’s house and rescue your girlfriend …

Twin #2: and you get chased out of the house by this nurse with a knife …

Twin #1: … and later you have to call her on the phone and she teaches you how to make a dirty phone call …

Twin #2: … and you have to ring the doorbell and this guy comes down to the front door while you hide in the bushes, and you have to switch to another kid and break into his bedroom …

Twin #1: … and steal his hamster and put it in the microwave …

Twin #2: … and it’s totally …

Both Twins Together … AWESOME!!

It was pretty clear to me that The Twins had been enjoying some hallucinogens at their friends’ place. What they were describing wasn’t even possible in a video game.

Me: So you … so you type out your commands, and all this stuff happens in text descriptions?

Twin #2: NO! It actually happens on the screen. And it’s like …

Twin #1: It’s like animated, and stuff.

Twin #2: It’s like playing a MOVIE.

Me: (after a long, thoughtful pause) … You guys are full of CRAP.

Legacy of the Tentacle

As it turns out, they weren’t full of crap. It was some time later that i actually got a chance to play Maniac Mansion for myself, but since that day, i’ve been enthralled with the graphic adventure genre and the possibilities it pioneered. Now, nearly a quarter century later, i run my own video games studio making games in the same style, using UGAGS (the Untold Graphic Adventure Game System), a tool very similar to SCUMM (Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion) that ran those wonderful old games.

We just released a game that i made with my 5-year-old daughter called Sissy’s Magical Ponycorn Adventure. It’s a graphic adventure game that went viral, and eventually found its way to Ron Gilbert, who talked it up on Twitter:

Friends … dear readers, you have to understand … i’ve never cried tears of joy in my LIFE – not even on the day that Cassie herself was born – but when i saw that tweet by Ron, my living game dev hero, my face leaked. If Cassie’s ponycorns day in kindergarten was the best moment for her in all of this, Ron’s shout-out has been the absolute highlight for me.

i wasn’t the only one at Ron Gilbert’s GDC Maniac Mansion postmortem to credit him with my career in the games industry. He heard the same story numerous times that day, and whenever someone would tell him “you’re the reason i got into the video games industry!” his response was always the same: “i’m sorry.” Don’t be sorry, Ron. It’s largely because of you that i’m here to begin with, making the things i make, and striving for the things i strive for.

i touched Ron Gilbert, and he touched me.

i mean, i don’t want to kiss the guy on the mouth or anything. i just wanted to say thanks.

Visualization FTW

Have you ever imagined how a scene in your life would play out, and when you reached that moment, everything went exactly as you envisioned it, as if you and everyone around you were following a script?

When i originally had the idea to work on a TOJam game with my daughter, i knew the ultimate pay-off would be the day she walked into her kindergarten class with our Blackberry Playbook, and showed the game off to the other kids. Short of “Daddy and i built a jetpack”, it’s probably one of the coolest show n’ tell sessions ever.

In the days after TOJam and all the fun Cassie and i had there, she would excitedly tell her classmates about the experience. True to form, her fellow five-year-olds actually started mocking her, saying “TOJam isn’t REAL. You’re making it up!” They even doubted the existence of “The Boss”, TOJam co-founder Jim McGinley, who took on a Santa Claus-like mystique following the jam.

Eat THIS, Five-Year-Olds

All this doubt floating around at school, and Cassie’s Snuffleupagesque insistence that it really did happen, paved the way for a truly magical show n’ tell session today in her kindergarten class. There we were, just as i’d pictured it, showing the Playbook version to a formerly disbelieving group of kids as they sat, spellbound, on the storytime carpet.

Wit a grown-up telling the class all about it, there was no way the little TOJam-deniers could object. We told them all about how you get to stay up way past your bedtime there – even overnight – and that lots of people brought pillows and slept on the floor. We told them about the kitchen full of candy, where you could grab as much as you wanted and still go back for more. Cassie regaled them with the tale of how she ate two and a half bagels, and they made her fart, so i told her to stand in the designated “farting corner” to keep our work area bearable. (This is a story she gleefully repeated this evening when we were interviewed by BulletProof Radio.)

The kids watched, transfixed, as Cassie showed them how to collect the first two ponycorns. We left it on a cliffhanger, but i wrote a little note that will go into each student’s Wednesday envelope that tells their parents how they can access the game to play the rest of it with their children. i also wrote that if the parents were interested in making games with their children, they could check out the fabulous Scratch.

Games for Change

To wrap it up, we did a “question” period. The questions were “Um, Cassie, i like the green ponycorn,” and “i like the colour purple that you used in your rainbows.” Then Cassie showed the children the plush ponycorns that her mom made for her, and we gave each of the students a little ponycorn button.

i really, truly hope that this will spark a desire in the kids and their parents to get more involved in technology, an area which is tragically stagnant in elementary-level education due to the age of the teachers and a lack of funding. This is the same school where i’m working with the principal to offer Scratch instruction to the grade three class, which may yet become a lunchtime program that all of the students can enjoy.

The ponycorn revolution is turning out to be more than just the story of a little girl making a game … i’d like it to be the story of kids, everywhere, using technology to create – not just to consume.

Cassie drew all the pictures, wrote all the titles, and recorded the voice of the main character. She also came up with the NPCs (including Mr. Turtle, the Mean Tiger, and the villainous Lemon), and designed some of the puzzles (including the one where you [SPOILER ALERT] have to read a sign to justify your need for a coconut to throw at the Lemon).

Send Cassie to College?

i used Mochimedia’s ad service to inject ads into the game, which is fitting, because Mochi was a TOJam sponsor this year. i threw ads in there with the hope that the game might drum up a little bit of cash, which i will put toward the education fund that Cassie’s grandma started for her. Wouldn’t it be cool if Cassie’s game paid for college? (Sadly, it won’t happen. See the Pimp My Game series for more reasons why.) For kicks, i added a PayPal Donate button beneath the game.

Alert Child Services

Dragging your kid to a weekend-long game jam, eh? Before you call Children’s Aid on me, please understand that i didn’t actually keep Cassie captive at TOJam all weekend long. She came in with me at 9:30 Saturday morning, and was the most excited i’ve ever seen her. We’d been preparing her for MONTHS so that she’d be emotionally ready for TOJam. After the organizers expressed concern that my rotten kid would be running around the place pestering people and making noise (an entirely likely scenario, if you’re familiar with my insane children and my lousy parenting style), i spent every evening coaching Cassie.

Me: Remember, you’re the first little girl who’s ever made a game at TOJam. And everyone’s worried you’re going to run around screaming and making noise and wrecking things.

Cassie: (shocked face) No i won’t!

Me: *i* know you won’t. (totally lying here – i was as nervous about it as anyone) But you have to prove to everyone that little girls can make video games too. If you’re very well behaved, then next year if another little girl wants to come and make a game, the TOJam people will say “the little girl who made a game last year was SO wonderful, we’d LOVE to see more little girls making games.”

Cassie: i’ll be have. i will!

Yes, Cassandra, There Is a Game Jam

The morning of TOJam was like Christmas for her. i’m not kidding. In the days leading up to the event, she told everyone she knew that she was going to TOJam. Naturally, they had no idea what she was talking about, but the strangers in the elevator and in the grocery store smiled and nodded politely all the same.

By the end of the day on Saturday, Cassie had spent 10 hours at TOJam, and was begging me to let her stay overnight. She had put in about 6 hours of actual colouring work, and sunk at least another hour into voice acting later that evening at home, where it was quieter. i tucked her into bed and returned to TOJam late Saturday evening, and then pulled an all-nighter scanning her crayon drawings and integrating them with the game logic using UGAGS (the Untold Graphic Adventure Game System).

Family Jam

Sunday morning after church, the whole family joined me at TOJam with a bunch of instruments in tow. My wife Cheryl and the two little girls sat together on the carpet down a quiet hallway. Cassie grabbed the harmonica, i took the drum, Cheryl took the ukulele, and little Isabel used the thumb harp and the Happy Apple. We recorded some music tracks together. The one that made it into the game intro is just Cassie and Izzy playing together. It was really nice to have everyone involved like that. Here’s the family track that didn’t quite make the cut:

Sunday evening, the family regrouped at TOJam. The game, while still unfinished, was set up in a hallway where Cassie excitedly ran up to any interested passers-by, snatched the mouse out of their hands, and said “I MADE THIS! LEMMIE SHOW YOU HOW TO PLAY!”

i think it was a really valuable life lesson for Cassie to see that all her hard work and effort went into making a product that brought smiles to the faces of her players. The next step is to brave the hairy Playbook process to get it on the device so that Cassie can bring it to school for Show & Tell.

Correcting History

i really hope you enjoy Sissy’s Magical Ponycorn Adventure. In all of this, our goal as parents is to give our kids the kind of childhood we would KILL to have had. i can’t imagine how different my life would have been if i had made a real working video game with my father at age 5. In fact, i can’t imagine how different my life would have been if he hadn’t left when i was eight months old.

But no matter. Some day, the ponycorns will get him.

If the Zombie Apocalypse is a real concern for you (and it should be), bone up on your zombie-killing skillz at ZombieGameWorld.com (Twitter: @zombiegameworld), the best source of free zombie games on the Internet.

Identifying Tortfeasors and Causes of Action in the Probable Event of a Zombie Apocalypse

Sean P. Bawden, B.A. (Hons), LL.B.
Barrister, Solicitor and Notary Public in and for the Province of Ontario

According to an article published in the American newspaper USA Today, “Zombie hordes are everywhere!… There’s no stopping the zombie invasion.” The risk of personal and property damage due to zombie attack has never been higher.

Given the number of exclusion clauses currently being inserted into many homeowners’ insurance policies, the chance that you are covered in the event of a zombie uprising is steadily decreasing.

What, then, is an innocent party, suffering damage due to zombie uprising, to do?

The “Ghostbusters” were known for asking “Who ya gonna call?” Certainly to rid oneself of the ghost in question, the answer would be “a ghost buster.” But what if the ghost caused property damage? The Ghostbusters, while concededly learned in the ways of engineering, would be of no value in a court of law. The answer to the latter question therefore must be “a lawyer!” The answer is equally true if the cause of the damage was a zombie and not a ghost.

This research memorandum therefore canvasses the topic of possible common law tortfeasors against which one could bring a civil action for recovery of damages due to zombie uprising and the causes of action one could advance against such wrongdoers.

This paper starts by considering against whom one could even consider an action. Once the possible defendants are set out, one must also consider on what possible grounds one would be able to advance any such case.

Understandings and Assumptions

For the purposes of this memorandum the author has assumed that the presumptive plaintiff would not have insurance coverage. One should of course consult his or her own insurance policy to ensure whether or not coverage actually exists.

For the purposes of this memorandum, “zombies” will be defined to mean a reanimated human corpse, not controlled by another. Although the actual reanimation itself will by necessity be the result of a living being’s actions, this research will assume that the zombies’ actions following reanimation are the result of the zombies’ own freewill.

Furthermore, this memorandum only considers the issue of liability, not damages. Quanta of damages would have to be assessed on an individual basis.

Defendants

In the event that one suffered “damages”, as the term is defined and understood in law, as the result of a zombie uprising, plaintiffs’ lawyers would be called upon to identify not only likely defendants, but defendants against whom recovery is probable.

Given the operation of joint and several liability, and section 1 of the Ontario Negligence Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. N.1, plaintiffs would only have to establish that a defendant was partially responsible for their damages in order to recover the entire amount of their damages from that defendant. This is to say that provided that one could establish liability against one defendant with the means to satisfy the damages’ award, the plaintiff would be able to be made whole.

For the purposes of this section, the author puts forward possible defendants without consideration of whether or not an action could actually be maintained. Certainly in the case of some, if not all, of the proposed defendants, the defence of remoteness could easily be maintained.

1. Zombies

Joint and several liability is reassuring, as the most obvious defendant to any such action would the zombie itself. Given the novelty of the action, and the uncertainty of the law surrounding this issue, plaintiffs would be wise to name not only the zombie, but also the estate of the person so reanimated when issuing any action. For example, if zombie Ryan Creighton caused property damage, one would be prudent to name all of “Ryan Creighton”; “The Zombie formerly known as Ryan Creighton”; and “The Estate of Ryan Creighton”. By operation of Rules 7 and 9 of the Ontario Rules of Civil Procedure, R.R.O. 1990, Reg. 194, one would also be prudent to name a litigation guardian for the zombie and estate.

Whether or not one’s estate could be liable for damages caused by zombie actions is yet unresolved in Canadian law.

2. Re-animator

Creating life has its consequences. Indeed even if one does not bring the life itself into creation, having care and control of a living being is enough to ground liability if that creature causes damage to another: c.f. Dog Owners’ Liability Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. D. 16. Bringing people back from the dead is inherently risky.

It is this author’s considered opinion that any person who reanimates the dead must be considered a party to any action in which, as a result of that reanimated corpse’s actions, damages result.

3. Family of the Deceased

Zombies only result from reanimated corpses. By logical extension, where there is no corpse there cannot be any zombie. Cremation removes this possibility. By failing to cremate the deceased, families burying their dead have created an undue risk to the living.

Of all the defendants considered in this memorandum, the defence of remoteness is strongest for these defendants.

4. Cemeteries and all those Working at Cemeteries

The geographical starting point for any Ontario zombie uprising will be a cemetery. Home to, in some cases, thousands of corpses, cemeteries are fertile ground for the coming horde. Intuitively one considers the failure to keep zombies within their gates as the grounds upon which one would advance a case for zombie damage. Why else do they build those fences if not to keep the zombies in?

5. Casket Manufacturers

Of course, cemeteries would have less to worry about if casket manufacturers would simply make a sturdier product. The failure to design a casket that would contain a zombie surely puts these parties in the spotlight in any product liability action.

Causes of Action

The rule in Rylands v. Fletcher

When thinking about zombies rushing out of cemetery gates, the first cause of action that comes to one’s mind is the rule in Rylands and Fletcher.

In Rylands v Fletcher, [1868] UKHL 1 the House of Lords established that,

The person who for his own purpose brings on his lands and collects and keeps there anything likely to do mischief, if it escapes, must keep it in at his peril, and if he does not do so, is prima facie answerable for all the damage which is the natural consequence of its escape

Zombies are likely to do mischief if they escape. However, cemeteries do not bring zombies onto their land. Cemeteries bring the dead – not the undead – onto their land. And it is not the escape of the dead about which one is concerned.

As such it is this author’s opinion that one could not successfully use the rule in Rylands and Fletcher to maintain an action against a cemetery for damages resulting from a zombie uprising.

Intentional Torts

It is questionable whether or not the zombies would be committing “intentional” torts. In order to establish liability one would have to establish, likely via expert evidence, that the zombies were capable of understanding the consequences of their actions. It is difficult to comment on whether or not one would be successful in this regard. Furthermore it is questionable against whom one would have the right, or ability, to collect.

Negligence

Without question, the general heading of negligence is the most likely cause of action to be advanced in any such case.

In general, the elements of negligence are duty, standard, and causation. Remoteness, although a defence to the allegation and not a ‘true’ element, must also always be considered in the analysis.

For reasons of remoteness, the family of deceased persons must be stricken from the list of potential defendants. Clearly it is too remote, at least at this time, to hold someone liable for failing to cremate his or her loved one when there is yet to be a single reported case of zombies causing property damage. Similarly, even if one could defeat the remoteness argument, policy reasons would invariably defeat the suit.

Interestingly, one must consider what the standard of care expected of a zombie is. If the movies provide us any indication, it is that we must expect that zombies will cause damage. No action would therefore lie against the zombie in negligence.

Clearly persons choosing to reanimate the dead have a duty to the public to ensure that, if successful in their attempts, zombies do no harm. The failure to properly ensure proper safeguards for the public would fail to meet the standard expected of them, the result of which is that if damages result, liability should follow.

Casket makers must be alive, no pun intended, to the chance of corpse reanimation. Given that the intended user of their product is dead, their duty of care in manufacturing must attach to the living. The living expect that caskets will keep the dead within the confines of the casket. What other purpose is there for a casket if not to keep the dead within it? The failure to manufacture a product that can withstand not only the weight of the deceased during transportation, but also a ravenous zombie hell-bent on destruction fails, in this author’s opinion, to meet the standard expected of a reasonable casket manufacturer.

Similarly, cemeteries must owe a duty to the public to ensure that zombies cannot escape from their grounds. Although conceptually similar to the rule in Rylands and Fletcher, the duty here is different. In negligence the cemetery is asked to foresee the possibility of zombies and then protect against them, even though they are not expressly inviting zombies onto their land. Furthermore, given the fact that most cemeteries already guard against zombie escape (recall earlier comments about fences), the failure to build an adequate containment system may sound in negligence.

Conclusions and Recommendations

It is never too early to be prepared, and knowledge is power. The purpose of this memorandum has been to consider, in advance of a zombie uprising, against whom to bring an action for property damage in the event of property damage due to zombie.

This memorandum has canvassed both possible defendants and possible causes of action.

Having considered both, this author has reached the conclusion that in the event that one suffers damage at the hands of a zombie, the party so aggrieved should invariably bring suit against the person responsible for the uprising. (With any luck that person will work within a well-insured laboratory against which one could establish vicarious liability.) Out of an abundance of caution, one must also consider bringing suit against both the manufacturer of the casket from which the zombie escapes, and the cemetery that similarly fails to contain it. Both are likely well-funded defendants capable of satisfying any costs award.

Although counter-intuitive, this author does not recommend bringing any action against the zombie itself. The uncertainties that would envelope the litigation would only serve to bog down the process and the chances of recovery seem slim at best. Furthermore, this author has no interest in cross-examining a zombie.

1. Start a New Project

Every Unity sits in its own folder. In this dialogue, browse to or create a new folder where your project will live, and then click the Create button.

What you’re left with is this:

Here’s what’s going on behind the scenes:

Unity automatically creates three sub-folders in your Project folder. You won’t have to touch these folders – in fact, you really shouldn’t, because there’s metadata in there that might get botched if you start poking around. Most of the time, you can import assets directly through the Unity IDE (program).

2. Make a Scene

Unity Projects are comprised of Scenes. In Flash, it wasn’t really a good idea to use the Scenes, but in Unity, it’s darn near a requirement. What you’re looking at now is actually an unnamed Scenes. Scenes must be saved individually … whenever you try to leave one Scene to look at another, you’ll get a Save Confirmation prompt.

The smartest thing to do right off the bat is to save this Scene.

Choose a name for your Scene. Some really simple examples are “Title”, “Credits”, “Win”, “Lose”, and “Game” for an extremely basic project. i’m calling this one “Game”, which is where all my main game action will take place.

Once you hit “Save”, two wonderful things will happen:

The Project panel is where all your stuff goes. It’s very much like the Library in Flash. Scenes have a little Unity 3D icon next to them.

Put Your Scene in a Folder

The final thing you’ll want to do is to create a folder for your Scenes, and dump your Scene inside it.

At the top of the Project panel, click the Create button and choose “Folder”:

You can also right click or alternate click on the Project panel to bring up this menu. Mac users can probably splat-click or some nonsense.

And then:

What Now?

How do i learn Unity 3D?

To learn more about developing games for Unity 3d and to learn the basic controls for getting around the program, read the first chapter of my book Unity 3D Game Development by Example. Next, buy four copies of the book (in case you accidentally drop three of them in the mud).

How do i build a timer in Unity?

When you’re a little further along, read this sample of Chapter 7 of my book, Don’t be a Clock Blocker. That’s how.

How do i program in Unity?

If you need a little help with programming in Unity using javascript, read our Understanding Programming in Unity Javascript series.

How do i transition from Flash to Unity?

Check out our article on Five Common AS3 to UnityScript Translations.

Alright – what else you got?

Like our style? For more free Unity 3D tutorials, sign up for our Unity 3D Game Development by Example newsletter, and we’ll send out a link whenever we post a new tutorial or article on Unity 3D.

Go forth and game!

Usually, i’m too smart to fall for this. Linking to boner pill sites is a great way to fall out of favour with Google and friends, not to mention your readership. But a few weeks ago, someone named “Britney Baker” wrote me up and asked if she could write a guest post for my blog. In exchange, i’d link to her pre-paid cell phone site.

i knew this was equally as bad an idea as promoting boner pills, but i admit that the allure of having someone write content for me, as i struggle to keep the blog current and interesting, was appealing. So i decided to have some fun with her: i used the LinkBait Generator, the subject of my failed LinkBait Tuesdays experiment from a few months ago, to crank out a number of absolutely impossible article topics. If Britney could tackle any of these, she could have the guest article:

• Nickelback and the occult
• 8 ways Facebook has been involved in political scandals
• 6 depraved sexual fetishes involving chick flicks
• The 5 scariest international spies of all time
• The 10 commandments of zombies

The easiest one was the zombie article, of course. i threw that in there because there’s a connection to our awesome game portal ZombieGameWorld.com. Britney chose this one. So to be completely clear: i can’t vouch for the content or advice over at Britney’s site PrepaidCellphones.net. But here’s Britney’s take on what thou shall and shalt not do when you are among the living dead:

The 10 Commandments of Zombies

1. Thou Shalt Eat Brains

All brains and nothing but brains. Red brains, blue brains, smart brains, goo brains. No zombie shalt discriminate against any perfectly edible brains before it (which are any brains before it with the exception of cold dead brains, which are just plain disgusting).

2. Thou Shalt Let Nothing Stand In Thy Way

Neither fast-moving vehicle nor 100-foot drop; not sharp-pointy object nor scalding acid nor maw of violent vicious beast shall keep a zombie from its course. Always and without exception, a zombie shalt either reach its target or kill itself trying.

3. Thou Shalt Feel No Pain

Pain is for the living (a condition fortunately, and unlike zombiehood, not contagious). Besides, pain and feelings are concepts. A zombie knows not of “concepts”.

4. Thou Shalt Be Vile

All zombies must turn heads, in the opposite direction. A zombies shalt look hideous and smell revolting. (It’s not a beauty contest, honey.) If a human shalt cast eyes upon a zombie and not be totally grossed out, that zombie is not taking enough care with its looks.

5. Thou Shalt Be Incomprehensible

The only words permitted to come forth from the flaps of decayed flesh that once were lips and tongue are, “Rrrrraawwwwrrrr,” and “Yeeeeeaaaaauugggghhhhh,” and “Blehhhhhhhhhhhhhh”!

6. Thou Shalt Walk Funny

No zombie may perambulate, and certainly not upright. All zombies must slouch and lumber and lurch and hobble and limp, lest they be mistaken for a politician and appointed to public office.

7. Thou Shalt Hesitate Before Eating Familiar Faces

Thou shalt eat them never the less (unless thou be kilt from hesitating). But in the presence of a familiar face or a voice recognized from one’s otherwise utterly obliterated human past, thou must pause like an idiot, tilt thy head like a bewildered dog, and in many cases, as a result, be the implausible instrument of their own extermination.

8. When Michael Jackson’s Thriller Comes On The Radio, Thou Shalt Stop Whatever Thou Be Doing And Dance

During which time, and only at which time, shalt humans be reprieved as food and used instead as unwilling dance partners. A zombie must also remain PG (and PC) whilst this zombie anthem is playing, refraining from baring any R-rated body parts or engaging in any R-rated violence. After the song ends, however, all hell must break loose once again and brain-eating must immediately re-commence.

9. Thou Shalt Leave Babies, Puppies, and Kittens Alone

No, thou shan’t. Just kidding.

10.Thou Shalt Not Be A Zombie

No zombie shalt know itself as a zombie, as zombies are forbidden from comprehending the word or concept of the word zombie, so help thee George Romero. The only thing thou shalt be is hungry.

In Understanding Functions, we learned that Functions are a way to bundle code statements together into a tight little unit that we can invoke (or “call”) any time we like, and as often as we like. There are two very important features to learn about Functions: Arguments and Return Values. We’ll figure out Return Values in this article.

One Fanta, Please

We talked about how Functions that accept arguments require exact change. If a Function asks for a String, you have to pass (“pay”) it a String. If it wants an int, you must pass it an int. If it wants two Arrays, a String, and four ints, you have to pass it those seven datatypes in that exact order. If you pass the right datatypes in the wrong order, if you pass the wrong datatypes altogether, or if you pass the wrong number of arguments, you’ll throw a (possibly cryptic) error.

So let’s imagine that Functions are kinda like vending machines. They require exact change, even specifying the types of coins you need to pay (ie five nickels, NOT one quarter). But what do we get for all our trouble? A kick in the pants and we’re sent on our way, that’s what. Wouldn’t it be great if Functions could actually give back to society, instead of being a drain on our charitable resources?

Thanks to return values, they can. A return value is the can of Coke that the Function vending machine spits out when we plug in our coins.

Just as we type (specify a datatype for) our variables, we can also type our Functions. When we do that, we’re saying “this is the type of thing the Function is going to return (give back/pay out/cough up). Here’s how we write a Function that returns a String:

function giveMeGoodNewsOnly() : String
{
    return "good news";
}

There are a few moving parts involved here. Let’s take it step by step.

The type of the return value goes at the end of the Function declaration. We split it out using a colon (two dots), just like when we type a variable. Here’s a punctuation refresher:

And here’s a representation of the Function using colour blocks, because colours are pretty:

By adding that datatype to the end of our Function declaration, we’re making a promise: the Function will return (pay out/cough up) something that has that datatype. To live up to that promise, we use the return keyword. Return is the command that pays/spits out/coughs up a value. In the code example above, the giveMeGoodNewsOnly Function is typed String, which means it must return a String. In the statement block (between the curly braces), we use the return keyword to return a String. And all was right with the world.

Where Does the Return Type Go?

So, fine – we return something from our Function. But what happens to that value? Remember when our Pac Man-like code interpreter chewed through the Function call, and packed his suitcase with the arguments?

When the code interpreter finds the function, he unpacks the arguments into the parameters.

At this point, the code interpreter has an empty suitcase. When he reaches a return statement, he packs the value into his suitcase.

As we saw earlier, the code interpreter returns to the next line after the original function call. But this time, he’s got a suitcase packed with a return value:

(this is an interactive demonstration! Keep clicking the “Next” button to follow the code interpreter through the example)

Unpacking the Return Value

When the code interpreter arrives from his journey with the return value in tow, we need to somehow capture that return value. Otherwise, the interpreter just throws it away and it disappears into the either.

Here’s a simple example to demonstrate that concept:

6+5;

You know and i know that 6+5 is 11. Your computer knows that too. When you type that into a line of code, the computer adds 6 and 5. And then …? Nothing. We haven’t told the computer to do anything with that result, so it’s a wasted piece of code.

Here are a couple of ways we can make use of the 11 result. We can store the result in a variable (bucket), or we can trace the result to the output/console window:

var result : int = 6+5; // Store the value 11 in a variable called "result"
trace(6+5); // Print 11 to the output window

Note: Unity javascript users should use print or Debug.Log instead of trace to print to the Console window.

It’s the same issue with Functions and their return values. If we call the sayHello Function and it returns a value, the value is going to disappear unless we capture it somehow. Just like the 6+5 example, let’s store the return value in a variable, or print it to the output window:

var greeting : String = sayHello("Jennifer"); // Store the return value "Hello, Jennifer" in a variable called greeting
trace(sayHello("Matthias")); // Print Hello, Matthias to the output window

The code interpreter needs some place to unpack his bags. These are just two ways to capture the return value – there are many, many more. For example, you can add the result to an Array using the Push method (see Understanding Arrays for more info).

You Get a-NOTHING!!!

What do we do about a Function that doesn’t return any value at all? Can we just leave that little section at the end of the declaration blank? Well, you can, but it all depends on how picky your compiler is. You can set the Flash compiler to Strict mode … certain other compilers are strict by default. This means that every variable must be typed (given a datatype), and every Function must also be typed.

The keyword for “no type” is void. If your Function doesn’t return a value, type it as void:

function thisReturnsNothing() : void
{
}

Return Stops the Show

The only really important thing to know about the return keyword is that when the code interpreter chews its way down to that line, it’s like hitting the EJECT button. The interpreter gets booted out of your Function, regardless of whatever statements you may have written beneath it:

function sayHello(playerName : String) : String
{
    return "Hello, " + playerName;
    // This line doesn't get executed.
    // Neither does this one.
    // Nor this one.
    // In fact, anything you write after a return statement gets skipped.
}

Breaking Stuff

As with arguments, there are some great ways to break a Function with return values. In brief, here’s how to do it:

1. Return a value even though your Function is typed void (or it’s untyped).
2. Type your Function to return a value, and don’t return a value.
3. Return a datatype that’s different than the return type declaration.
4. Write some branching logic so that it’s possible your Function may not return a value.

Let’s look at each of these, and the error statements that pop up when we make each mistake.

1. Return a Value When You Shouldn’t

Here’s an example of a Function that is typed void, but it returns an int:

function whoops():void
{
    return 57;
}

When you do this, here’s the error that the Flash compiler throws:

Scene 1, Layer ‘Layer 1′, Frame 1, Line 3 1051: Return value must be undefined.

That’s a pretty clear error message. Thank you, eggheads.

Here’s the error message you get when you use Unity javascript:

Assets/NewBehaviourScript.js(3,12): BCE0022: Cannot convert ‘int’ to ‘void’.

Again, with a tiny bit of detective work, this error is not too tricky to sort out. The compiler thinks you’re trying to make it force a value of type int to be a value of type void (which is what you’re returning), but this is impossible, even for computers.

2. Promise a Return Value, and then Cop Out

If we type a Function with anything other than void, we’re pledging to return a value. If we don’t return a value of that type, the compiler shows up on our doorstep in the middle of the night with mascara streaking her cheeks, demanding to know why you never do the things you say you’re going to do.

Here’s an example of a promise a programmer didn’t follow up on with a return statement:

function makeBabiesWithTanya() : int
{
    var numberOfBabiesWeCanHave : int = 17;
    // Honest.
}

So because the return statement is missing, this Function doesn’t actually give Tanya any babies. And that’s when she notices something is up:

Scene 1, Layer ‘Layer 1′, Frame 1, Line 5 1170: Function does not return a value.

This is one of the clearest error messages you’ll ever receive when using Actionscript 3. Let’s see how it looks in Unity javascript:

(no error)

Unity is clearly a lot more easy-going about this type of thing. Remember that when you’re thinking of which one you should invite on a road trip to Vegas.

3. Return the Wrong Datatype

If the Function is typed int, we gotta return an int. If it’s typed Array, we gotta return an array. Here’s an obvious boob:

function iAmConfused() : int
{
    return "nyearrrghhh";
}

This Function is typed int, but we’re returning a String. Here’s the Flash error:

Scene 1, Layer ‘Layer 1′, Frame 1, Line 3 1067: Implicit coercion of a value of type String to an unrelated type int.

Nice and clear. And in Unity javascript:

Assets/NewBehaviourScript.js(3,12): BCE0022: Cannot convert ‘String’ to ‘int’.

These are both very similar, and they do a pretty good job at getting the point across.

4. Faulty Logic

If you write a Function that should return a value, and you load it up with branching conditional logic, the compiler will actually step through that logic to make sure a value gets returned. Here’s an example of a logic structure that may never return the value promised by the Function:

function badLogic(playerName : String) : String
{
     if(playerName == "Pete")
     {
          return "Hi, Pete!";
     } else if(playerName == "Carl") {
          return "Hi, Carl!";
     }
}

So if the playerName is Pete, we return “Hi, Pete”, and if the playerName is Carl, we return “Hi, Carl”. But what if the playerName is Suzie, Jasmine, Turk, Paolo or Ferdinand? In that case, neither of the statements will get executed, and so it’s possible that the Function will not return a value.

Here’s what the Actionscript 3 compiler has to say about that:

Scene 1, Layer ‘Layer 1′, Frame 1, Line 9 1170: Function does not return a value.

Clear as crystal! And now, Unity javascript:

(no error)

Hmm. Now we’re up against a situation where permissive coding isn’t always a good thing. As a very new programmer, you might think “the fewer errors, the better”. But if you’re expecting that Function to return a value, and it somehow doesn’t, wouldn’t it be more helpful to see an error telling you what went wrong?

Answer: yes. Yes it would.

Your Triumphant Return

Those are the essentials of writing Functions that return values. Together with Understanding Functions and Understanding Functions – Arguments, you should have a complete picture of what Functions are and what they can do. But this is the HOW, not then WHEN of it. These articles just discuss the building blocks of Object-Oriented Programming. Assembly instructions, and even freestyle building – are entirely different matters altogether.

For more Flash AS3 Tutorials and a pile of other useful stuff, check out our Flash and Actionscript 911 feature.

In Understanding Functions, we learned that Functions are a way to bundle code statements together into a tight little unit that we can invoke (or “call”) any time we like, and as often as we like. There are two very important features to learn about Functions: Arguments and Return Values. We’ll figure out Arguments in this article.

Til You’re Blue in the Face

Arguments aren’t as unfriendly as they sound. They’re just additional pieces of information we can send to a Function during a Function call. You’ll remember that a Function call looks like this:

doSomething();

Quite often, we need to pass additional information to Functions to make them super-useful. Let’s imagine we have a text input field where the player can enter his name. The player types in his name and clicks a button, and the game says “Hello, John” (or whatever the player’s name is). The dynamic, or changing, part of that Function is the player’s name. Here’s how that Function might look if it was “hard-coded”:

function sayHello()
{
    trace("Hello, John.");  // ain't nothing dynamic about this
}

Note: Unity javascript people will want to start the function name with a capital letter as a best practice, and use either print or Debug.Log in place of trace.

This is okay, but the problem is that every time we call (run, execute, do) that Function, it’s going to say “Hello, John.” What if the player’s name isn’t John? Well, we need to make that part dynamic, because it changes.

Dynamic!

Let’s set up our Function so that we say “Hello”, and then tack on a variable that holds the player’s name:

function sayHello()
{
    trace("Hello, " + playerName);
}

(When working with Strings, the + operator glues two strings together.)

It’s getting better, but we have a new problem: the code interpreter is going to see playerName and think “playerName? What the heck is that?” Then it’s going to freak out and the Earth is going to crash into the Sun, and we don’t want that.

We need to declare and define the playerName variable somewhere. But instead of just declaring playerName any old place, we’re going to tell the sayHello Function which playerName we’d like it to say. We’re going to set our sayHello Function up so that it has a parameter. We do that between the round brackets in the Function declaration:

function sayHello(playerName : String)
{
    trace("Hello, " + playerName);
}

Parameters go between the round brackets in a Function declaration. In the continuing tradition of seeing our blocks of code as visual elements, check this out:

When we structure a Function this way, we say that the sayHello Function accepts one parameter, which is called playerName. The type of playerName is a String (a list of letters and/or numbers). Notice that even though this is kind of like a variable declaration, we don’t need to use the var keyword.

Exact Change Required

i like to think of parameters as the payment that a Function accepts. The sayHello Function takes one argument and stores it in its first parameter. Since the first parameter is of type string, we need to “pay” it a string. If we pay any other datatype (int, float, number, boolean, array), the compiler will throw an error.

Here’s how we “pay” a string to the sayHello Function:

sayHello("Murphy");

Freeze frame! Let’s become the Pac Man-like code interpreter and follow the logic of this statement for a moment.

The interpreter gets to this line and recognizes it as a Function call, thanks to those round brackets at the end.

It also sees – hey! – the programmer has passed an argument to the Function inside those round brackets. So Pac Man puts that in his suitcase, hops in the DeLorean, and travels off in search of the sayHello Function.

When he finds it, before he starts chewing through the statements in the statement block (between the curly braces), the Pac Man-like code interpreter drops off the argument into the waiting playerName parameter bucket, between the round brackets of the Function declaration.

Now the parameter called playerName has a value of “Murphy”. Since “Murphy” is a String, and since the sayHello Function demands exact change (one argument of type String), we’re good to go!

With payment resolved, the code interpreter chews through the statements in the statement block (between the curly braces), reaches the bottom of the Function, and hops back in the DeLorean to pick up where he left off, back at the end of the Function call.

Because the value of the variable playerName is the String “Murphy”, the result is that the console/output window says Hello, Murphy. It will say Hello to whatever name we pass in as an argument.

Breakamage Pt.1 – Wrong Datatype

It’s really important to break code and cause errors, so that when you’re in a jam on a project and an error comes up, you’ll know what it means and how to deal with it.

Try tweaking the sayHello Function call so that you pass an int (integer/whole number) instead of a String:

sayHello(42);

42 is not a String. Your first clue is that it’s missing those double-quotation marks around it. Since the sayHello Function DEMANDS exactly one string as payment, the compiler throws an error.

This is what that error looks like when we use ActionScript 3:

Scene 1, Layer ‘Layer 1′, Frame 1, Line 1 1067: Implicit coercion of a value of type int to an unrelated type String.

i really take exception to the way eggheads write error messages. They could stand to be a LOT more clearly written. But here’s what this error is trying to say: “implicit coercion” means you’re trying to force something to be something else, and ActionScript 3 can’t manage it. In this case, you’re trying to force an int (42) to become a String when Pac Man delivers the goods to the sayHello Function, and the compiler is having a minor freak-out. That’s your clue that you may have passed a mismatched type as an argument to a Function.

This is the error message that the same mistake will cause in Unity javascript;

Assets/NewBehaviourScript.js(4,10): BCE0017: The best overload for the method ‘Tutorial.sayHello(String)’ is not compatible with the argument list ‘(int)’.

Ugh! You eggheads are killing me. Forget what an “overload” is and focus in on the part that (sorta) makes sense to you right now: something is not compatible with the argument list. You can see quite clearly that one is a String, and the other is an int. That’s your clue that you’ve botched the argument type. Go back and patch this up, and you’ll be golden.

Extremely Argumentative

So is that it? Can Functions only accept one argument? No … they can actually accept multiple arguments. Be sure to comma-separate them, like this:

makePizza("pepperoni", "mustard", "tree bark");
 
function makePizze(topping1 : String, topping2 : String, topping3 : String)
{
 
}

B..but … do they all have to be the same datatype (String)? Heck no! You can mix and match. The only rules are that you need to pass the arguments into the Function in the same order as the parameter list, and you need to pass the same number of arguments the Function requires. The Pac Man-like code interpreter unpacks these one at a time in order. So let’s pretend there’s a function that takes a String, an int and an Array (in that order):

function initPatient(patientName : String, age : int, aPhobias : Array)
{
 
}

As long as we pass in a String, an int and an Array, in that order, it works:

var theName : String = "Shaggy";
var theAge : int = 17;
var aThePhobias : Array = new Array("like, ghosts", "like, zombies", "like, creepy-crawly things");
initPatient(theName, theAge, aThePhobias);

That’s fine. But as soon as we mix up the order, there’s trouble:

var theName : String = "Shaggy";
var theAge : int = 17;
var aThePhobias : Array = new Array("like, ghosts", "like, zombies", "like, creepy-crawly things");
initPatient(theAge, theName, aThePhobias);
 
// ERROR!  Totally long-winded explanation that could really be made a lot more clear, but eggheads aren't about making other people's lives easier (unfortunately).  In short, argument type mismatch.

So far so good? You may have noticed that i made the names of the variables i passed into the Function as arguments conspicuously different than the names of the parameters i accepted in the initPatient Function. This is because i wanted you to see that there is a difference between these two things, and that there CAN be a difference. When you call a Function and pass it some arguments, the variable names you pass in don’t matter … it’s the values stored in those variables that Pac Man takes with him on his journey.

Breakamage Pt.2 – Wrong Number of Arguments

Just as sending in the wrong type of argument will throw an error (ie paying a quarter when the Function wants a nickel), the compiler will throw an error if you pass in the wrong number of arguments.

In this example, we have a Function that accepts one argument, but we try to pass it two arguments:

function eatBacon(numberOfStrips : int)
{
    trace("OM NOM NOM!  I just ate " + numberOfStrips + " strips of delicious bacon.");
}
 
eatBacon(57, "i can haz heart attack"); // ERROR!!

The function wants only one argument, but we’re sending it two. Here’s what the error looks like when we use Actionscript 3:

Scene 1, Layer ‘Layer 1′, Frame 1, Line 6 1137: Incorrect number of arguments. Expected no more than 1.

Thankfully, this is one of the clearest error message i’ve ever seen an egghead write.

This is what the error looks like when we use Unity javascript (changing trace to either print or Debug.Log and using a capital letter to begin our Function name):

Assets/NewBehaviourScript.js(8,9): BCE0017: The best overload for the method ‘NewBehaviourScript.eatBacon(int)’ is not compatible with the argument list ‘(int, String)’.

That’s the same error we get when there’s an argument type mismatch, so the Actionscript eggheads did a slightly better job of communicating the problem than the Unity eggheads did. The important thing is that you learn to recognize why Unity or Flash are throwing the error so that you can fix it quickly and get on with your project.

Note that you’ll throw an error even if you “overpay” a Function. If a Function wants exactly two arguments, and you give it nine, you’ll get one of these errors.

But Wait – There’s More!

There are two more advanced topics when it comes to passing and accepting arguments – optional arguments, and Rest arguments. They’re useful, but not crucial. We’ll be sure to cover them in future articles.

For now, get some practice passing arguments to your Functions, and writing parameters to store those articles. The fate of the free world may depend on it! Or whatever.

For more Flash AS3 Tutorials and a pile of other useful stuff, check out our Flash and Actionscript 911 feature.

Now that we understand loops, and we understand arrays, we’re ready to smack their featureless plastic genitals together like we’re making Barbie have babies.

Arrays really come alive with Loops. By using an Array’s length property as the loop limiter, we can step through every element in an Array one by one.

Here’s what that looks like in code:

var myArray:Array = new Array("Nigel Tufnel", "Derek Smalls", "David St. Hubbins");
 
var i:int =0;
for(i=0; i<myArray.length; i++)
{
    trace(myArray[i]); // This prints each element in the array, one by one, to the console/output window 
}

Note: If you’re using Unity javascript, try print or Debug.Log instead of trace.

If you truly understand Loops, this shouldn’t be too challenging for you. Instead of using some arbitrary value like one thousand as our limiter, we’re using the array’s length property, which is the number of elements in the array. This property is dynamic, so that any time we add things to our array, or take them away, length is updated for us. We don’t have to rely on a hard-coded value (which means a number that doesn’t change).

The code snippet shown above traces out each element in the array, one after the other:

• Nigel Tufnel
• Derek Smalls
• David St. Hubbins

This is because on every iteration of the loop, our iterator variable called i is increased by one.

i begins life with a value of 0. On the first run through the loop, the code interpreter resolves myArray[i] to myArray[0]. The first element in the array, at index 0, is “Nigel Tufnel”, so that’s what you’ll see in the output console.

On the next iteration, i gets jacked up to 1. The element at index 1 in the array is “Derek Smalls”, so that’s what prints out.

Finally, in the third and final round, we print out “David St. Hubbins”, because myArray[i] resolves to myArray[2]. The element at index 2 of the array is “David St. Hubbins”.

After that, the interpreter bounces back to the top of the loop. i is incremented to 3. We check the limiter:

i < myArray.length

Because i is 3 and myArray.length is also 3, this line resolves to 3 < 3. Since 3 is not less than 3, the answer here is false. And because the answer is false, the code interpreter is not allowed to go through the loop any more. It happily exits the loop and starts chewing through the code beneath the bottom closed curly brace that ties up the loop.

Protip: If you’re a stickler for speed, it’s marginally faster to store myArray.length in a variable, to prevent your interpreter from having to do the length calculation on every iteration of your loop. Here’s what that looks like:

var myArray:Array = new Array("Nigel Tufnel", "Derek Smalls", "David St. Hubbins");
 
var i:int =0;
var len:int = myArray.length;
for(i=0; i<len; i++)
{
    trace(myArray[i]);
}

We store myArray.length in a variable called len, and then refer to that variable in the limiter section of the loop header.

For even more of a tiny speed increase, do away with the new keyword and declare the array like this:

var myArray:Array = ["Nigel Tufnel", "Derek Smalls", "David St. Hubbins"];

Who Cares?

This is all still pretty pointless. When are you ever going to use this when programming a game? Well, for the rest of the article, i’ll lay some real-world examples on you to give you an idea of how to maximize the wonderful union of Loops with Arrays.

Think of any situation in a video game when you have a list of similar things. In a first person shooter, you need to keep track of all the bullets that get fired. Makes sense to create an array to store all of those bullets. You can add bullets to the list and remove them from the list using the Array class methods we looked at in the Understanding Arrays article.

Most games run on one giant loop, with an Update process and a Draw process. Update figures out where everything should be, and Draw renders those things to the player’s view. If you want to update the positions of all the bullets, you may need to use a For Loop to loop through your collection of bullets and move them one tiny bit. Then in the Draw process, you loop through your list of bullets and render them to the screen. When you repeat these processes quickly enough, you get the illusion of animation.

Very often, you’ll use a loop to create the initial array of objects, and then more loops later to pick through that list. Here’s an example of two functions. One initializes all of the monsters, and the other kills all of the monsters (assuming the player just used the “Kill All Monsters” megabomb power-up).

var aMonsters:Array; // this array is a bucket that can hold many things: namely, monsters.
 
function initMonsters():void
{
     aMonsters = [];  // Defines an empty instance of the Array class.
     var totalMonsters:int = 50; // this is a variable (bucket) that contains the number of monsters we'd like to begin with
     for(var i:int = 0; i<totalMonsters; i++)
     {
         aMonsters.push(new Monster()); // Creates a new instance of the Monster class, and adds that instance to the aMonsters array.  
         // If that's confusing to you, we can split this up into two separate lines:
         // var monster:Monster = new Monster();
         // aMonsters.push(monster);
     }
}
 
function killAllMonsters():void
{
     var len:int = aMonsters.length; // store the length of the aMonsters array in a variable called len.
     // By doing this, we speed up our loop ever so slightly.
     for(var i:int = 0; i<len; i++)
     {
         var monster:Monster = aMonsters[0]; // stores a reference to the first monster in the array
         monster.die(); // calls some sort of death method on the monster instance
         aMonsters.shift(); // removes the first element of the array.  The aMonsters array gets shorter and shorter every time we loop, as we remove monster after monster.  By the end of this loop, the aMonsters array is empty.
     }   
}

Note: If some of the initialization stuff here looks a bit spooky, try reading the Understanding Classes series. Hopefully you’re catching what i’m throwing regarding loops and arrays, even if the class stuff is a little unfamiliar.

For Unity javascript: Everything here is almost identical … the main difference is that methods like push begin with capital letters.

Those double-slashes, by the way, are comments. They are ignored by the compiler, and are added to clarify the code.

Get Carded

Here’s another example. Let’s say we’re programming a card game. We can use an array to store our deck of cards. Each element in the array is a card. We use one loop to build the deck. Then we shuffle the deck. Finally, we use a loop to deal some cards onto the table, using the Array.shift() method to deal off the top of the deck. This removes the cards from the array one by one, and adds them to a different array called aCardsOnTable.

var aDeck:Array; // declare an array to hold all the cards
var aCardsOnTable:Array; // declare an array to hold the cards that we deal out
 
function buildDeck():void
{
    aDeck = []; // create an empty instance of the Array class and store it in a variable called aDeck
    var totalCards:int = 52; // we want 52 cards in the deck, so that's how many times we'll loop
    for(var i:int=0; i<totalCards; i++)
    {
         aDeck.push(new Card()); // we instantiate the Card class, and add the new card instance to the aDeck array.
         // Once again, if we're doing too much in this line for you to follow along, here's a longer version of the same code in two steps:
        // var card:Card = new Card(); // create the card instance and store it in a variable
        // aDeck.push(card); // add the card instance to the aDeck array
    }
    shuffle(aDeck); // this is a custom function that you'll probably have to write yourself (just like the Card class).  It randomizes all of the elements in the array.
}
 
function dealCards():void
{
    aCardsOnTable = []; // define aCardsOnTable as an empty array
    var numCardsToDeal : int = 5; // Let's deal 5 cards to the table.
    for(var i:int=0; i<numCardsToDeal; i++)
    {
         aCardsOnTable.push(aDeck.shift()); // pulls the first element out of aDeck, and adds it to aCardsOnTable
         // That's a bit of shorthand.  Let me blow that line out into separate steps in case you're having trouble following it:
         // var topCard:Card = aDeck.shift();  // use shift to pull out the first card in the aDeck array, and store it in a variable called topCard
         // aCardsOnTable.push(topCard); // add the card we removed to the end of the aCardsOnTable array.
    }
    // When we finish with this loop, there are 5 cards in the aCardsOnTable array,
    // and 47 cards left in the aDeck array.
    // This is a great way to deal out cards!   By removing a card from the aDeck array each time using shift(), we ensure that we'll never deal the same card twice.
}

Those previous two examples are very similar. Here’s another real-world example that’s slightly different.

Looping Through Movieclips on the Stage

Super eggheads like to lay out their GUIs (graphical user interfaces – buttons and windows and text boxes and junk) entirely in code. i don’t prefer to do it that way, because i’m a very visual person, and i like to see my interface laid out on-screen. i like to be able to poke, prod and nudge things around visually.

So often, i’ll have a bunch of buttons on the stage. The buttons all have instance names. i’ll put those instance names in an array, and then loop through the array to add standard buttonMode, rollover and rollout effects to all the buttons in one shot. Here’s how that looks, presuming i have the buttons “phyiscally” on my stage and named properly:

 
 
// i call the initBtns function somewhere in my code
 
function initBtns():void
{
    var aBtnNames:Array = ["btnPlay", "btnQuit", "btnCredits"]; // we store the instance names of my on-stage buttons in an array
 
    var len:int = aBtnNames.length; // Let's dynamically loop through as many buttons as we have in the array.
    for(var i:int=0; i<len; i++)
    {
         activateBtn(this[aBtnNames[i]]);
         // Here's a slower, possibly clearer way to say that:
         // var btnName:String = aBtnNames[i]; // Refers to the i'th element of the array
         // var btn:MovieClip = this[btnName] // Refers to a movieclip instance on stage with that name
         // activateBtn(btn); // Passes the reference to that button to the activateBtn function
    }
}
 
function activateBtn(btn:MovieClip):void
{
     // This is standard stuff i want all of my buttons to do:
     btn.buttonMode = true;
     btn.mouseEnabled = true;
     btn.mouseChildren = false;
     btn.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_OVER, rollOverBtn);
     btn.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_OUT, rollOutBtn);
}

Of course, an even better way to handle this button situation is to create your own custom button class, but we’re taking baby steps here. That’s the thing about code – these pieces we’re learning are like Lego blocks. There are tons of different ways to build a sculpture out of Lego. There are no “right” ways – only preferred ways. Use this Understanding … series to get a grip on all the blocks you have to play with, and then … it’s time to play!

For more Flash AS3 Tutorials and a pile of other useful stuff, check out our Flash and Actionscript 911 feature.

A few years later, i landed a bit part in a community theatre production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Who’s That Guy in the Background Trying to Grow a Beard?. It looked as though i had once had a full beard, but was then tragically mauled by a mountain lion and patches of it had been eaten.

Flash forward to today. It’s the end of Movember, the month when dudes grow beards to raise awareness for Cancer of the Balls and Cancer of That Other Thing, and mens’ health in general. The folks at my church are holding a creative moustache growing competition tomorrow, and the prize is a pair of Leafs tickets. i couldn’t care a fig about hockey, but the moment someone says “creative competition”, i’m in, and i’m in deep.

The Foundation

A creative moustache growing competition is more of a creative moustache grooming competition if you think about it. To that end, i figured it would be wise to grow as much hair on my face as possible, without risking the townspeople loading up their shotguns with silver bullets. So i decided to lay some follicular groundwork – the raw slab of marble from which my masterpiece would be hewed.

An hour later, with the help of my wife and resident manscaper, armed with scissors and a safety razor (NOT electric clippers, which would be like winning the Olympic 100-meter dash with a bionic leg), we gingerly chipped away at it until we got exactly the effect we were hoping for.

i call it “The Blustery Day”.

December 1st is my birthday, at which point the moustache goes out and the presents come in (i am registered at Toys ‘R’ Us, in case you’re racking your brain trying to think of what to get me). It was an amusing adventure, and while the beard gave me a distinct confidence boost after the first two awkward weeks, it still felt like i was being stabbed in the face by thousands of microscopic men with tiny little spears. A face phalanx. A facelanx. i dunno. i’ll be glad to get rid of it, anyway.

The Results

For the entire month, Untold Entertainment’s team of one has raised exactly zero dollars in the name of mens’ health. We didn’t take donations. (It’s not too late to kick a couple of bucks over to people who did!) But consider this a promise that in future years, the Untold Entertainment team is one you want to get behind with your pledges, because we’re bringing our (hairy) game faces. An Untold Entertainment moustache is money well spent.

Join us next year. And in the mean time, make sure to give the boys a jiggle at least once a day to avoid Cancer of the Cajones (AKA Huevos Canceros). Or better yet, get your loving manscaper to do it for you.

Can’t get enough of moustaches? Check out our game-in-progress Putty Crime: On the Tail of the Foxy Badger, in which every single character (including the pigeons) have lip sweaters. Good show!

Further Reading:

• Movember 2011 – “Balls On Chin”

The sophomoric outing of the annual event expanded to two days this year, and spanned two different venues: the Toronto Underground Cinema, and the Hernando Velasquez School for the Digitally Inclined, both in Toronto. After hearing great reviews of last year’s event, i begged the organizers to give me a speaking slot. i heard they were looking for someone with experience building educational games, and we happen to be completing just such a project at Untold. Serendipitous!

Two Rad Dudes

As with any event, some things went off without a hitch, and some things were rough around the edges. Some ideas worked, and some didn’t. But you have to hand it to the two event organizers, whose background is in film, not games – their enthusiasm, winning personalities, and passion for the games community are infectious, and they give us all a real hope for the future of games-related events in Toronto for years to come.

Mark and Jaime got a lot of things right with Gamercamp this year. They did a lot of ground-level research, personally attending the events that already existed (like the Hand Eye Society socials). They made the right contacts, finding people around the city who were doing all sorts of interesting things with games … some folks i’d never even heard of, but was very glad to have discovered. And they put the right amount of effort into organizing their event. i can’t fathom the number of hours that went into running Gamercamp, but i can always tell that any event that has printed programs, and where the venue ceiling is not falling on the attendees, and where three or fewer people die or are irreparably injured, has had boatloads of effort put towards it.

The Right Way to Do It

Gamercamp stands in contrast to a certain other Toronto event, where the organizers don’t run in quite the right circles or grasp exactly what makes games enthusiasts tick. One of the Vortex Competition organizers actually attended part of Gamercamp on the second day, which was great to see! I hope she was taking extensive notes.

The key difference between the two events is that Mark and Jaime play games. They grew up with them. During my talk on the second day of the conference, i repeated the importance of this: for men and women who have grown up with video games as an essential element of their lives, there is a language – a common understanding – a culture in the truest sense of the word, that folks in the older non-game-playing generation just don’t get. i don’t think it’s impossible for them to get it, but it would take a lot of hard work and effort playing games, researching games, reading game magazines and articles, and striving to understand the culture like an anthropologist would try to dissect a newly-discovered tribe in South America (for whom there are extensive Wikipedia entries and funny YouTube videos).

If you’re not part of the culture, you need to put in that legwork and that effort in order to run a games-related event with any feeling of legitimacy or relevance. What Gamercamp has that Vortex currently lacks is credibility – a feeling that it’s genuine – that it’s motivated by a true understanding of gamer culture and a kinship with its people. If Gamercamp is run by natives, Vortex is run by missionaries.

Location, Location, Location

Of course, not everything at Gamercamp went off without a hitch. Jaime explained to me that he and Mark were throwing ideas at the wall like wet spaghetti and trying to see what would stick. For me, day two stuck. It far stronger than day one, which slid down the wall in places. i think the disparity was largely due to the venue. Toronto Underground Cinema was plagued with technical problems, most notably audio, and the in-house techs were frustratingly slow on the uptake when it came to fixing problems on the fly (including turning up completely inaudible presenters, and even simply turning down the house lights after one speaker’s repeated requests before an increasingly impatient crowd). This could be due to the fact that TUC is a relatively new venue. i’m not sure how many events of this type they’ve handled, so they could still be working the kinks out.

The building, though, isn’t ideal for a conference event. The upper foyer with its ticket window is just small enough to feel cramped with ten people. While the lower level foyer is larger, it still struggled to contain the attendees during break times. Certain of the day one talks were worth skipping in favour of networking, but the foyer wasn’t an ideal location for that. It felt more like a thoroughfare than a place where you could stand around and gab without being in anyone’s way.

Hernando Velasquez School for the Digitally Inclined made a much better venue on day two, particularly with its nooks and crannies perfectly suited to stuffing them with game machines and teevees. Noticeably absent were bean-bag chairs (organizers: please be all up on that next year – daddy loves his bean bags). These areas reminded me of an excellent GDC party i attended, where Autodesk dolled up a hotel meeting room replete with an inflatable couch, swag lamps and a shag throw rug … and one big-ass wood-trimmed cathode ray tube teevee set with an Atari 2600 hooked up to it. These small details really made the space, and with (even) more effort, the game rooms could be taken completely over the top in a fantastic way.

Content with the Content

The content on day two exceeded much of the day one talks. It was agonizing to have to choose one out of four talks that ran simultaneously (scheduling only three talks together may mitigate this). i spoke to a number of people who said the talks i missed were “great”, “excellent” and so forth. i’m not sure there was a lemon in the bunch … the talks i attended were very good.

i think it comes down to venue again. When you put everyone in a large theater setting, it’s far less personal. The speaker isn’t making eye contact with you, or even speaking to you – he’s speaking out into this vast space. During some of the day one talks, the lighting was such that the speaker was in total silhouette. This made it easier to tune out, heckle, or completely ignore the day one talks.

Contrastingly, the intimacy of the day two talks, in their smaller rooms, was excellent. The rooms were just a hair too small, in fact … it’s a very difficult balance to strike. One possible solution to the big room problem is to have cameras projecting the speaker’s face on one or two secondary screens, but this requires a much more robust tech set-up for which TUC was likely unprepared. It’s possible next year’s budget might allow for hiring an events company to handle the fancier tech stuff (like mics that don’t sound like they’re down the speaker’s pants).

A fix for the smaller rooms is to stack the tables where you can, and add more chairs to the room. This would require volunteers to dismantle entire rooms, but as i’ll mention later, if volunteers can be trusted to “own” their rooms, it’s possible.

i was immensely impressed that all of the sessions were recorded – that’s Jamie and Mark’s film background shining through. It means that i can catch all the sessions i missed on day two, and that i’ll be able to make a portfolio piece of my own talk. This is a great incentive to give the volunteer speakers some sort of return on investment for their effort.

Volunteer pwnage

i think next year, provided the organizers continue (and i sincerely hope they do), i’d like to see them delegate certain aspects of the event to some devoted volunteers. For example, hand one of the game rooms to two volunteers. They can find the swag lamp and the shag carpet and the absolutely vital bean bag chairs, and they own that piece of Gamercamp – and it’s one less thing for Jamie and Mark to worry about. Let two volunteers own the Mortal Kombat competition. Let them make a trophy for it, and set up a mic with an amplifier and a sports commentator. Have them play wrestling-style theme music as the combatants enter the room. Hand over the retro cereal breakfast bit to five people who can go stock the room with couches and set up rec room mood lighting and faux wood wall paneling. Have the volunteers treat each element as its own mini-event, and challenge them to completely outdo each other. Since most of the volunteers were Hernando Velasquez students, throw some extra credit marks at it and make it a project. Event management is actually a valuable skill to have in the games industry – think game launches and corporate parties.

But all this is fine trim on an event with very, very good bones. It was inspiring and exciting to see an event pull together game developers, game enthusiasts, educators, press, trade associations, tool makers, and two rad dudes with the gusto to slam it all together so that the pieces fit. Gamercamp is a very good idea, and one that i hope will make non-Torontonians rabidly jealous. My only regrets are that it’s not longer, and that it doesn’t happen every weekend.

Escape from Area Fitty-Two is the sequel to a pair of great original graphic adventure games on YTV.com (YTV is like the Nickelodeon of Canada). The first two games, A Dark and Stormy Night and Miracle in the 34th Dimension, were featured Hallowe’en and Christmas games, respectively. They were created by Toronto-area game design phenom Michael Lalonde, whose work you’ll see in a lot of kids’ games made here in the city. Michael is also the creator of Orneryboy, which is a bit like Garfield, if Garfield were a multi-tentacled Lovecraftian demi-god in a zombie-filled world imagined by the love child of Edgar Allen Poe and the creator of the Care Bears. i like to call it “pop occulture”. (Content warning: Orneryboy is for older readers. Ask your parents first, kids.)

So working from characters created by Michael, a concept by Michael, and an aesthetic i lifted from Michael’s first two games, i went for broke and created the biggest Jinx adventure yet. (Michael would be spinning in his grave right now, but despite an occasionally pallid complexion, he’s very much alive. :) Audience expectations were very high, and given the nearly ten year release date gap since the second game in the series, we were very worried that the game would never be made. But last year, YTV pulled through, commissioning the second sequel and making a lot of fans and new players very happy.

Jinx 3 features three playable characters that you can switch between on the fly, a waypoint system for greater freedom of movement, and a bunch more puzzles and cutscenes than you found in the first two games. i would really like to have added voice-over, because Jinx 3 is pretty text-heavy. Maybe YTV will commission a Special Edition?

Here’s a fan-made walkthrough of the first half of the game from teh uTubez, if you want to watch someone else play it:

Note: The choppiness in the video is due to the fan’s screen capture software. The actual game plays smoothly. The writer character’s disappearing head is due to the YTV site embedding the game at a different aspect ratio, which causes animation glitches.

Introducing UGAGS

Jinx 3 was the first game created with UGAGS, the Untold Graphic Adventure Game System, which is a code framework and set of tools we’re building to help us create these kinds of games more quickly and easily for ourselves and our clients.

Jinx Fans Only

Everyone else can stop reading right now, but if you’re a Jinx/Sitekick/YTV fan, you may be interested to know how this game ties together the mythology of a lot of the original content on YTV. Here’s a list of trivia:

WARNING: Here be spoilers!

• The game reveals where Dr. Frantic got the red vat of mysterious alien ooze that you see in his lab when you go back in time in the Friday/Sunday chapter of the Sitekick Saga … he STOLE it from Area Fitty-Two!
• The alien ooze comprises the black gelatinous ooze core of the Sitekick, offering a possible explanation as to how Sitekicks gained sentience (note: the current Sitekick redesign doesn’t allow you to open your robot to see the ooze core any longer, which is a shame)

  

• YTV released a casual downloadable game called They Came for the Ooze. It was a match-3 game featuring little aliens that look a bit like Sitekick. The game hinted that the aliens returned to Earth to reclaim their ooze, but it never explained how Dr. Frantic obtained the ooze in the first place. Now we know!
• Dr. Frantic gets the idea for the Sitekick from the design on the wall of the small room inside the hangar. The design was confiscated from the Gnat aliens, which may mean that the Gnat aliens originally designed the Sitekick.
• The metal plate on the back of Dr. Frantic’s head joins a new revelation: when Dr. Frantic walks through the X-Ray, he’s a robot!

  

  Holy crap – it’s like the X Files up in here!

• Michael’s original concept for the game had Dr. Frantic losing his head, and Jinx had to rewire him to put him back together. The idea didn’t make it into this version, but it would be really neat to see it in a sequel.
• Michael made a time management Sitekick Factory, where one of Evil Santa’s E.L.F.s (Evil Loyal Followers) had to build Sitekicks. At the end of Jinx 3, Dr. Frantic offers the E.L.F. a job, which is a reference to Sitekick Factory.
• Between Jinx 2 and Jinx 3, Michael created an animated short where a UFO kidnaps Jinx while Jinx is camping. The UFO was a repurposed asset from Michael’s quickie game Nero the Hero. It was reused once more in the hangar in Jinx 3.
• At launch time, there was a Sitekick code in the small room inside the hangar. Get it while it’s still active!
• DID U KNOW? Jinx is never referred to with a gender-specific pronoun, which leaves it up to the player to see Jinx as either a boy or a girl
• There’s nothing under the sheet when Jinx walks through the X-Ray (another of Michael’s great ideas!)
• It’s tricky to catch, but when the E.L.F. walks through the X-Ray, he has a cupcake in his tummy. i threw that in there because i know Michael has a thing for cupcakes.
• Dr. Frantic gets his hovercar from the hangar, which he uses again in the Sitekick Saga – Wednesday chapter to battle the rampaging Monster Sitekick. One early idea was to have the characters all escape in their own hovercars.
• The inventory items are consistent and carry over from game to game.

YTV.com has a rich creative history packed with some fantastic original content. It would be great to see Corus, YTV’s parent company, exploit some of that IP worldwide. i think it would be a hit! Meantime, Jinx 3 was a fantastic project to work on – a real labour of love – and an itch i’ve been wanting to scratch for nearly ten years. i think it’s the funniest game i’ve ever written. Hope you enjoy it! (Now go let YTV know you want to see the much-rumoured sequel to Freaky Friday! :)

i’ll never make that mistake again.

People came back positively RAVING about GamerCamp. i knew this year that i just HAD to be involved.

Thus Spake Ryanthurstra

i am thrilled that Jamie and Mark, the awesomazing organizers behind the event, invited me to speak (after a teensy bit of grovelling). (… from me, not them.) They wanted someone with experience in educational game development, and Untold Entertainment’s got it. In addition to the educational preschool games we’ve built for Sinking Ship Entertainment, we’re currently working on a project funded by a high-ranking ministerial body of educational governance. i admit it sounds a little dull, so i wanted to spice it up a bit.

Here’s the advice the event organizers gave on titling my talk:

You can call your talk whatever you want and by no means self-censor. Try and make your title a declarative statement or provocative question.

(For example, Dragonette has a song called “Get Your Titties Off My Things” and if they wanted to speak at Gamercamp and call it that, I’d high-five them.)

So without very much deliberation, and because i absolutely love high-fives, i decided to call my talk “Get Your Titties Off My Things : Adventures in Educational Gaming.”

Titties and Education Don’t Mix

In updating the site, the organizers had a last-minute change of heart and decided to censor the talk title. Since it didn’t make much sense any more (not that it made any sense to begin with), i decided to re-title the talk “SCUMM-Sucking : Adventures in Educational Gaming“.

What do you do when you LOVE building LucasArts and Sierra-style graphic adventure games, but you have to take boring educational service work to pay the bills?

>Get MONEY.
>Use MONEY on GAME.
>Give PRESENTATION to GAMERCAMP.

The educational project is an experiment in teaching deadly-dull guidance counselor material by speaking the students’ language – the language of video games!

i’ll also be talking about how i leveraged the educational project to add features to UGAGS (the Untold Entertainment Graphic Adventure Game System), which is my attempt at building a Flash version of the LucasArts SCUMM engine. (They used SCUMM to make Maniac Mansion, The Secret of Monkey Island and others.) The client benefits from our increasingly feature-rich engine, we get a better product that we can use to make awesome games in the future, and everybody wins!

Including you! Come out to GamerCamp in Toronto November 13-14 to hear the tremendous line-up of speakers, eat some cupcakes, jam out to a crazy nerd party, and battle your hangover to hear about UGAGS the afternoon following the big bash.

(huge thanks to @cartoondutchie for helping me save my breath)

ZombieGameWorld.com is the newest portal in Untold Entertainment’s growing Game World Network, a group of sites packed with free-to-play web games catering to niche audiences. The key difference between ZombieGameWorld.com and WordGameWorld.com is quality: WordGameWorld.com is a curated site, where we hand-pick only the best or most enjoyable word games available online.

But we’ll throw any old piece of trash on ZombieGameWorld.com. Our reasoning is that zombie fans historically have a lower quality bar than the rest of us. With a few notable exceptions, their favourite movies and books are largely low-budget schlocky affairs where concept trumps execution. An audience accustomed to consuming entertainment that’s a little rough around the edges may be interested in the more … strained attempts of amateur game developers trying to cobble together a zombie game. The Featured section of the site highlights the rare online zombie games that are good-looking and great fun to play.

All new game content is cross-posted to the ZombieGameWorld.com Facebook fan page, as well as the ZombieGameWorld Twitter feed. The Twitter feed adds zombie-related news that gets cross-posted back to the main site.

Future plans for the site include community-based game-on-game elimination battles, badges, and possibly even an online loyalty system. The current model is advertising rev share through MochiAds and Google Adsense. Our immediate business goal is to earn enough ad revenue to cover hosting – both ZombieGameWorld.com and WordGameWorld.com are currently operating at a loss.

If you know zombie fans, or you have a GREAT idea for how we can promote the site without spending any money or digging up any corpses, i’d love to hear from you! Leave a comment and tell me if you think ZombieGameWorld.com has any potential, or if we’re just not using our braaaaaains.

Update

Mark Rabo of Gamercamp shot this fantastic piece at the event. Among the video’s revelations: Ryan is badly in need of a shave and a haricut.

When i heard that the Hand Eye Society needed indie companies to sponsor a collection of arcade cabinets for this event, i knew i had found a better option than lighting my money on fire or sending it straight up my nose. (Never understood sending money straight up my nose, btw … i can only ever cram a single bill up there at a time, and it’s rather uncomfortable. Why do Bay Street types enjoy it so much?)

What Is?

So here’s the deal: Nuit Blanche (French for “beach noogie”) is a Toronto public art exhibition that takes place throughout the downtown core on Saturday October 2nd, all night. The Hand Eye Society is the Toronto indie game developers association. HES asked indie companies like mine (including, but not limited to, Spyeart, ][, and Metanet). The event takes place from sundown to sunrise at the TIFF Bell Lightbox building, which as you know is completely overrun by the spectral remnants of Irish potato famine victims.

Truth be told, it’s been kind of a lousy sponsorship activity. Sponsors aren’t mentioned on the event flier, on the HES announcement page, or on the Nuit Blanche site, which are all very easy places to throw a logo or link. i’ll admit i’m a little disappointed about that. However, when it’s all said and done, the Untold offices will actually host the cabinet… WHICH MEANS i will get absolutely no work done as i continually try to beat my high score on Boong-Ga Boong-Ga.

Come out to the event! Join the Nidhogg tournament, which will be a blast, especially if you don’t know what Nidhogg is. And swing by the office if you want me to take a plaster cast of your lower extremities for my Boong-Ga Boong-Ga cabinet mod.

1. You Could Use a Hole Punch to Double Your Disk Space

The Commodore 64 was an immensely popular home computer in the 80′s. My family didn’t own one because we were dirt poor, but i used to play with one at the twins’ house (the twins’ mom would babysit me after school). Copy protection was almost non-existent on C64 games, so most kids (the twins included) had one or two enormous troughs of 5 1/4″ floppy disks that were mysteriously labeled. Sometimes up to three games were crammed on a disk. i remember the first time i ever saw a C64 game being sold new in the box in a computer software store and thinking “Oh … so THAT’S where they come from.”

These 5 1/4″ floppy disks were, by their very nature, double-sided. You could buy blank floppy disks, or you could pay extra money for double-sided floppies which you could flip over and insert into the disk drive upside-down to write to the other side. The way the drive knew that a floppy was double-sided was by a square notch cut into one side of the disk sleeve. By using a simple hole punch, you could pop a divot into your supposedly single-sided disks and voila – twice the space, half the money!

Bonus Fact: When 3.5″ floppies came out a few years later, many people took to calling them “hard disks”, a term which actually described a hard disk drive array where the disk media and read/write head are combined in one unit. If you cracked a 3.5″ disk open, you’d see that the disk inside was just as floppy as its larger-format forefather ever was.

2. Loading a Game Required Typing Skills

The common routine for loading a single game on the C64 went like this:

1. Fish the disk out of the trough. The hand-written label says “Dallas.” No idea what that is. Let’s try it.
2. Put the disk in the drive and flip the door lock down. It goes “caCHUNK.”
3. You’ve got a blue screen in front of you. The prompt says “Ready.”
4. Type LOAD “*.*”, 8, 1 (sometimes LOAD “$”, 8, 1; depending)
5. Type LIST .
6. The directory listing comes up. Cursor up to the name of the file you want to load. i think that the up/left arrows shared a physical keyboard key, as did the down/right arrows, so you’d actually have to hold a modifier key like CTRL in order to cursor up the screen.
7. Type LOAD before the name of the file. Cursor right to the end of the file name and type ,8 ,1;
8. With any luck – and sometimes it WAS just luck – your game would (slooowly) load. The actual loading process could take up to five minutes, depending on the game.
9. You discover that the game you chose was Dallas Quest, the text adventure based on the popular prime-time soap opera. (Yes, this is an actual thing.) A winner is you! Watch out for that conniving Sue Ellen.

3. Blowing on a Nintendo Cartridge Could Damage It

The Nintendo Entertainment System was not a very well-built machine. To play a game, you would flip open a little door, slide the cartridge inside a hinged carriage, and press the housing down until it clicked into place, making contact with the system’s guts. This mechanism wore down over time – a very short time, if i recall correctly – and the system’s innards were like a dust magnet. Most of us would try to fix the lurking problem of interior dust clogs by blowing on the cartridge contacts. This was a bad idea. We were actually blowing spit onto the metal contacts, making them vulnerable to corrosion.

The very best plan if you want a working NES these days is to eBay yourself a top-loader like i did. (note: “top-loader” is not to be confused with “top-shelfer”, which is where you take a crap in the toilet tank.)

4. Loading a Saved Game Took Five Minutes (And You Could Be Arrested For It)

1986′s The Legend of Zelda on the NES deserves a place in gaming history first for being awesomesauce, and second for being the first home console game cartridge with a battery back-up to store a saved game. You’d think that would be the end of it, right? Unfortunately, due to the added cost to integrate this feature, the vast majority of games did not have a battery in the cartridge, relying instead on very long passwords that described the variable state of your game progress. You’d usually get one of these passwords only when you passed a level, and they were often about forty characters long. Due to some lousy font choices by developers, you’d usually have an ass of a time distinguishing between 1′s and lower-case L’s, and zeroes and upper-case O’s. Entering one of these codes could take five whole minutes. Early game reviewers took to warning gamers about games using these clunky systems.

The one upshot to this was that you could enter passwords to get to later levels in the game that you’d never reach otherwise, if the game was too difficult or you couldn’t be arsed. These were pre-Internet days, so you’d usually only find these codes in gaming magazines and paperback books. i distinctly remember being chewed out by an uptight bookstore owner who caught a friend and me copying a 40-character password from a video game book in her store. “Do you know what that is, boys? That’s theft of information, and i could have you arrested for it!” These were also the days before mega bookstore chains like Chapters|Indigo here in Canada – if you were caught giving books more than a lingering glance, you’d get the old “EXCUSE ME SIR THIS ISN’T A LIBRARY.”

i quite like the future.

5. Pause or Die

Even worse than password-enabled games were games with no battery and no password system whatsoever. This was the pinnacle of lazy development, and it would force you to put your game on pause to go eat dinner, or sometimes leave it on for days while you were grounded. You were always paranoid that Mom would cruise by with the vacuum cleaner and nudge that exposed Reset button on the front of the NES. Systems like the Atari 2600, the joystick for which had only one button, actually pre-dated the convention of the now-ubiquitous “Pause” feature.

Weren’t no pausing, weren’t no saving. Thank goodness those games were such shorter experiences. Except …

6. The Atari 2600 Had an RPG on Cassette Tape

i remember my mind being officially blown when my friend came over to my house with a DragonStomper cassette tape. DragonStomper used the Starpath Supercharger add-on to milk more out of the startlingly limited Atari 2600 system. You’d jack the Supercharger into the console, and then feed the line into your ghetto blaster. You’d insert the DragonStomper cassette and press “Play”, and what unfolded on the screen really opened my eyes to the possibilities of the medium of video games. You played a little white dot, and on the Atari 2600 – yes, the Atari 2600, famous for its dead-simple single-screen games and rudimentary goal structures – you had to roam around the countryside buying supplies and assembling a small army to take on a ferocious dragon. What? It was a far cry from fighting that yellow duck thing in Adventure.

Wikipedia has a great article on DragonStomper. It’s a good read if you want to find out how developers were really pushing the limits of the hardware when every bit counted.

7. Per-system Game Ports Were Radically Different

Quite often, when a game like Pac Man came out for the Intellivison, the Coleco Vision, and the Atari 2600, three completely different dudes worked on the arcade port in complete isolation. The result is that Pac Man could be a completely different experience from console to console – a fact that we tend to forget in the days when the only palpable difference is often which exclusive Star Wars character you unlock in your system’s version of your favourite fighting game.

8. Games Cost Money

When you played a game in the arcade, you had to pay money. It was 25 cents per play, and it’s quite likely you would lose like an asshole in the first two minutes. It was like slot machines for kids, with no chance of ever earning your money back. When ports of popular arcade games hit home consoles, it was like a dream come true: i can play all i want, and i don’t have to insert any quarters!

These days, we’re adverse to shelling out a lousy dollar for an entire game experience on the iPhone. (But dadgummit, Apple’s doing its best to charge rental fees for teevee shows with its new set-top box, and i foresee a future where companies start abusing digital distribution to the point where we’re back to paying per-play again. Hell – WildTangent’s already doing it.)

9. Games Were Bitching Hard and Absolutely Unforgiving

Slowly, certain saving graces have developed as standard video game conventions: the saved game, the password, the battery back-up, the concept of lives (three strikes and you’re out), the extra life, the concept of a limited number of Continues after your lives were used up, earning extra continues after passing a score threshold … but in the Wild West of early video games, you were lucky to get just one of these features in your game.

The rest of the time, you were subjected to super-twitch gameplay that required the reflexes of Mr. Miyagi on uppers if you wanted to survive past the first level. Shadow of the Beast, Solstice, the Peter Puppy escort level from Earthworm Jim, Zaxxon, Zorro, and that bloody f*cking Turbo Tunnel race from BattleToads all stand out as games that i desperately wanted to see more of, but couldn’t, because i wasn’t all that excited about popping bennies as an eight-year-old to increase my alertness.

If you wanted to take it easy (like i often did) and kick back with something more cerebral like a text adventure game, you’d be confronted with a text parser that made you talk like Tarzan (TALK MAN! TAKE GEM! HIT HEAD!) with such a limited vocabularly that the game was impossible to play because you were too intelligent for it.

Chip, I’m all jacked up on Mountain Dew!

Any other gaming grandpas wanna weigh in on the so-called glory days? Leave a comment and tell me all about it, before we all get wheeled away to a retirement home and forced to stand up to play Wii Sports.

Note: While i didn’t use the LinkBait Generator this week, this article is still a proud part of LinkBait Tuesdays! Please enjoy responsibly.

Of course, the cover is still a work in progress. i’ve made a few suggestions to the publisher of what i’d like to see. For example, here’s a mock-up of the cover with a cat singing karaoke:

i’ve written a FAQ for the book. At last, all your burning questions will be answered:

What is Unity 3D?

Unity 3D is a game engine that’s been around for only a few years, but is rapidly gaining steam. It’s a tool that enables you to create your own 3D (or, with effort, 2D) games. You can deploy your games to the browser. That’s right: after a quick ~3MB plugin download, people can play your full 3D game right inside the browser, without having to download and install an .exe. If you want people to visit your portfolio site and play your games instantly, Unity 3D is the tool for you.

Can I Only Deploy to the Web?

No – the main Unity engine allows you to create standalone game files that will run on PC and Mac. If you purchase additional licenses, you can target the iPhone/iPod/iPad and WiiWare. Upcoming support has been announced for Android and Xbox Live Arcade (but keep in mind that you’ll still have to be a developer in good standing with Nintendo or Microsoft to develop for their consoles – it’s not a path you’ll likely take if you’re a hobbyist.)

How Much Does Unity Cost?

There are two versions of the core engine. Unity is free, while Unity Pro costs. Unity lacks a few features of Unity Pro, most notably real-time shadows and video playback support. (note: this lack of features is definitely not something that would get a beginner in much of a twist.) Games created with Unity are prefaced with a Unity-branded splash screen. You can check out a Unity license comparison grid here.

Beyond those restrictions, you’re free to make as many games as you like with the free version of Unity without paying a single cent to the engine authors. This is in contrast to UDK (Unreal Development Kit), Unity’s main competitor, which starts clawing back cash at (comparitively) alarming rates if you sell a certain number of copies.

I like Flash. Will I Like Unity?

Oh, yes! There are many similarities between the two programs. The biggest difference is that Flash is a content creation tool that people manhandle to the point where you can make games with it, while Unity 3D is a dedicated game engine. That means that it includes a lot of game systems right out of the box: physics, collision detection, 3D rendering and particle systems, to name a few.

Check out our Five Common AS3 to UnityScript Translations article in our Unity Nuub section.

What’s in the Book?

Unity 3D Game Development by Example contains lessons, code and art assets to build four very simple games in the engine: a keep-up game, a catch game, a memory game and a space shooter. These lessons are written in very plain language with lots of analogies and plenty of pictures, so that readers who have never coded or used a game engine in their lives will be able to get these projects off the ground. Certain elements, like the three countdown clocks in Chapter 7, are presented as standalone pieces that you can integrate into your games as you like. The book teaches you how to build standard game bits – title screens, buttons, timers, collision scripts, sound effects triggers, and endgame scenarios – that you can remix into your own projects.

Is This Book Appropriate to Use as a Text Book for my College or High School Game Design Program?

Absolutely. Please contact Packt Publishing for volume sales.

Is It Available As an e-Book?

Yes.

I Enjoy Murdering Trees. Is It Available as a Book Book?

Yes.

What Language is the Book Written In?

English, currently. All code examples are in javascript. Unity supports three different languages: javascript, C# and BOO. i chose javascript for the book because most of the online examples and tutorials i’ve come across are in javascript. It’s probably the best choice for a beginner.

What’s the Difference Between This Book and Unity Game Development Essentials by Will Goldstone?

Will’s also written a great beginner book – the first Unity 3D book on the market – that you should definitely check out. Will’s book contains one large open-world project with a number of smaller activities inside of it. My feeling was that open-world games open a whole can of worms that could potentially overwhelm someone new to Unity (what happens when you walk out into the water? What if you get stuck inside a volcano?). My focus was on keeping things simple and manageable, so that you can start with a very controlled and fully-functional project, and ramp up from there as your skills increase.

What’s the Difference Between This Book and an Riding Down an Exhilharating Waterslide on the Back of a Unicorn?

Not much.

Preface and Chapter Listing

By request, here is an excerpt from the book’s Preface:

“Game Developer” has rapidly replaced “firetruck” as the number one thing that kids want to be when they grow up. Gone are the days when aspiring developers needed a university education, a stack of punch cards, and a room-sized computer to program a simple game. With digital distribution and the availability of inexpensive (or free) games development tools like Unity 3D, the democratization of game development is well underway.

But, just as becoming a firetruck is fraught with perils, so too is game development. Too often, aspiring developers underestimate the sheer enormity of the multidisciplinary task ahead of them. They bite off far more than they can chew, and eventually drift away from their game development dreams to become lawyers or dental hygienists. It’s tragic. This book bridges the gap between “I wanna make games!” and “I just made a bunch of games!” by focusing on small, simple projects that you can complete before you reach the bottom of a bag of corn chips.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, That’s One Fancy Hammer!, introduces you to Unity 3D—an amazing game engine that enables you to create games and deploy them to a number of different devices, including (at the time of writing) the Web, PCs, iOS platforms, and WiiWare, with modules for Android and Xbox Live Arcade deployment in the works. You’ll play a number of browser-based Unity 3D games to get a sense of what the engine can handle, from a massively-multiplayer online game all the way down to a simple kart racer. You’ll download and install your own copy of Unity 3D, and mess around with the beautiful Island Demo that ships with the product.

Chapter 2, Let’s Start with the Sky, explores the difference between a game’s skin and its mechanic. Using examples from video game history, including Worms, Mario Tennis, and Scorched Earth, we’ll uncover the small, singular piece of joy upon which more complicated and impressive games are based. By concentrating on the building blocks of video games, we’ll learn how to distil an unwieldy behemoth of a game concept down to a manageable starter project.

Chapter 3, Ticker Taker, puts you in the pilot seat of your first Unity 3D game project. We’ll explore the Unity environment and learn how to create and place primitives, add Components like physic materials and rigidbodies, and make a ball bounce on a paddle using Unity’s built-in physics engine without ever breaking a sweat.

Chapter 4, Code Comfort, continues the keep-up game project by gently introducing scripting. Just by writing a few simple, thoroughly-explained lines of code, you can make the paddle follow the mouse around the screen to add some interactivity to the game. This chapter includes a crash course in game scripting that will renew your excitement for programming where high school computer classes may have failed you.

Chapter 5, Game#2: Robot Repair, introduces an often-overlooked aspect of game development: “front-of-house” User Interface design—the buttons, logos, screens, dials, bars, and sliders that sit in front of your game—is a complete discipline unto itself. Unity 3D includes a very meaty Graphical User Interface system that allows you to create controls and fiddly bits to usher your players through your game. We’ll explore this system, and start building a complete two-dimensional game with it! By the end of this chapter, you’ll be halfway to completing Robot Repair, a colorful matching game with a twist.

Chapter 6, Game#2: Robot Repair Part 2, picks up where the last chapter left off. We’ll add interactivity to our GUI-based game, and add important tools to our game development tool belt, including drawing random numbers and limiting player control. When you’re finished with this chapter, you’ll have a completely playable game using only the Unity GUI system, and you’ll have enough initial knowledge to explore the system yourself to create new control schemes for your games.

Chapter 7, Don’t be a Clock Blocker, is a standalone chapter that shows you how to build three different game clocks: a number-based clock, a depleting bar clock, and a cool pie wedge clock, all of which use the same underlying code. You can then add one of these clocks to any of the game projects in this book, or reuse the code in a game of your own.

Chapter 8, Ticker Taker, revisits the keep-up game from earlier chapters and replaces the simple primitives with 3D models. You’ll learn how to create materials and apply them to models that you import from external art packages. You’ll also learn how to detect collisions between Game Objects, and how to print score results to the screen. By the end of this chapter, you’ll be well on your way to building Ticker Taker—a game where you bounce a still-beating human heart on a hospital dinner tray in a mad dash for the transplant ward!

Chapter 9, Game#3: The Break-Up is a wild ride through Unity’s built-in particle system that enables you to create effects like smoke, fire, water, explosions, and magic. We’ll learn how to add sparks and explosions to a 3D bomb model, and how to use scripting to play and stop animations on a 3D character. You’ll need to know this stuff to complete The Break-Up—a catch game that has you grabbing falling beer steins and dodging explosives tossed out the window by your jilted girlfriend.

Chapter 10, Game#3: The Break-Up Part 2, completes The Break-Up game from the previous chapter. You’ll learn how to reuse scripts on multiple different Game Objects, and how to build Prefabs, which enable you to modify a whole army of objects with a single click. You’ll also learn to add sound effects to your games for a much more engaging experience.

Chapter 11, Game #4: Shoot the Moon, fulfills the promise of Chapter 2 by taking you through a re-skin exercise on The Break-Up. By swapping out a few models, changing the background, and adding a shooting mechanic, you’ll turn a game about catching beer steins on terra firma into an action-packed space shooter! In this chapter, you’ll learn how to set up a two-camera composite shot, how to use code to animate Game Objects, and how to re-jig your code to save time and effort.

Chapter 12, Action, takes you triumphantly back to Ticker Taker for the coup de grace: a bouncing camera rig built with Unity’s built-in animation system that flies through a model of a hospital interior. By using the two-camera composite from The Break-Up, you’ll create the illusion that the player is actually running through the hospital bouncing a heart on a tin tray. The chapter ends with a refresher on bundling your project and deploying it to the Web so that your millions of adoring fans can finally experience your masterpiece.

What you need for this book

You’ll need to be in possession of a sturdy hat, a desk chair equipped with a seatbelt, and an array of delicious snack foods that won’t get these pages all cheesy (if you’re reading the e-book version, you’re all set). Early chapters walk you through downloading and installing Unity 3D (http://unity3d.com/unity/download/). A list of resources and links to additional software can be found in the appendix.

Who this book is for

If you’ve ever wanted to develop games, but have never felt “smart” enough to deal with complex programming, this book is for you. It’s also a great kickstart for developers coming from other tools like Flash, Unreal Engine, and Game Maker Pro.

What’s Next?

Got any more questions? Drop me a line in the comments section and i’ll answer them here.

The café is on Bloor Street West of Bathurst, quite nearby Honest Ed’s and the Pizza Pizza joint frequented by Scott Pilgrim and pals in the movie. i showed up on their second night of operation to find the place packed with people of (nearly) all ages. i’m not sure i spotted anyone over 45, but there was a surprising number of young teens and children in the place. Seeing children in Toronto is like sighting leprechauns – they’re so rare that you think you may have chanced upon some mythical creature that you need to catch up and strangle for its gold. (Unfortunately, despite my enthusiastic strangling, these kids were flat broke.)

i saddled up to the counter and ordered a hot cup of jasmine green tea, the perfect choice having just cycled through 30 degree heat with high humidity (i didn’t notice that they had cold pop until much later). The tea tasted awful, which is less a criticism of the café, and more a criticism of tea … the stuff is supposed to boost my metabolism, but it tastes as if i’m licking a tree.

For the first little while, i stood like a dope holding my mug. The joint was so packed, i couldn’t find a place to sit all by my lonesome, so i wandered by the absolutely enormous collection of board games and perused the titles.

This place has everything, from classic strategy games like chess, checkers and go, to well-known stand-bys like Monopoly (in many different flavours), all the way up to the kind of games i enjoy – European board games like Settlers of Catan (which is like Monopoly, except it doesn’t blow ass). The more “serious” Euro games sat on the shelves, in and amongst the well-known titles, lying in wait for some unsuspecting patron to say “Let’s try Agricola!” or “I wonder if Power Grid is any fun?” It’s a sly strategy of a clever pusher, like lacing cupcakes with smack.

i was pleasantly surprised to see a number of games i’d completely forgotten about, but which brought about a flood of nostalgia, including the two “toy” games 13 Dead End Drive from the 90′s, and Fireball Island from the 80′s, both of which got played while i was there.

Eventually, i accosted a couple at their table. They were playing Lost Cities, a two-player game that’s found its way to Xbox Live Arcade. i insinuated myself into their game, so i suppose the first game i played at Snakes and Lattes was “cockblocking”. Once they’d finished playing and i’d successfully killed the mood with my sweat-swathed face, now completely overheated from the bike ride and the tree-licking, we cracked open a copy of Ticket to Ride, another table-to-Xbox conversion.

The evening progressed delightfully from there. i ordered a gingerale and cooled down, while we laid track across a tabletop approximation of industrial America. The café officially closes at 11 PM on weeknights, but we didn’t clear out until closer to midnight. If you pay the shop a visit, be sure to leave enough time to finish your game. The good-natured owner, a friendly Frenchman named Ben, tolerated us and our suggestions for new games (despite his already killer collection), but it was apparent that his girlfriend and business partner Aurelia was tired and overworked from an apparently exhausting opening. i hope she lasts the week!

Ben will likely get very tired of people suggesting games he doesn’t have on offer. i found out that he doesn’t like expansions, which is a shame because some games only become playable with their expansions. Ticket to Ride Europe, for example, fixes a number of problems with the original game. When asked if he’d consider selling board games as well, Ben said he’d think about it.

i can see the fervor over Snakes and Lattes dying down as the café moves past the positive press surrounding its opening, but i hope it will develop a loyal enough fanbase to stay open through the bitterly cold winter months here in Toronto. i very much enjoyed my visit, and am excited about making a return trip.

To show your online love, you can Like the Snakes & Lattes Facebook page, or follow @snakesandlattes on Twitter.

The panel was moderated by Jason MacIsaac of Electric Playground fame, late himself of a small Ontario game studio from the Niagara region called Cerebral Vortex Games.

My fellow guests on the panel were (from right):

• Ian Kelso, head of interactiveontario
• Leslie Phord-Toy, a producer at UbiSoft’s new Toronto Studio
• Ryan MacLean, formerly of Pseudo Interactive and a founder of Drinkbox Studios (also both the second Mac and the second Ryan on the panel)
• Philippe McNally, from Longbow Digital Arts, who recently released their PC RTS Hegemony: Philip of Macedon

i was thrilled to see that the line-up for the talk was substantial. A Fan Expo staff member asked us if we were okay with people sitting on the floor when we ran out of seats. Of course, Ubi Soft was the big draw, as many of the audience members wanted to know how to get a job there working on their favourite triple-A console franchises. i made a point to mention that UbiSoft also developed the Nintendo DS Babiez/Petz/Horsez games, as well as a number of cash-in movie licenses that have failed to pull in the same acclaim as their more well-known blockbusters.

i’m doing my best to end this (apparently prevalent) notion that working in the video game industry is the ultimate fulfillment of this masturbatory Tom Hanks in BIG fantasy everyone has. Bills gotta get paid, and you may be asked to (gasp!) work on something you don’t like, such as a (shock!) video-heavy bank website instructing visitors on the various retirement products available to them (as we did last year).

Half-Remembered Q & A

i admit, i’m having a hard time remembering what went on at the panel. There was a girl in the second row wearing an incredibly distracting Slave Leia costume, so i think most of what i had to say was along the lines of “hummina hummina hummina.” (Slave Leia costumes don’t usually do it for me, but this one was worth strangling your hutt over.)

So the pro reporters will definitely cover the panel better, but here are a few questions and answers that i can recall:

Q:Why develop games in Toronto?
A:Lesley’s answer was no secret – Ubi was attracted by the tax credits and government funding. Ian hinted that interactiveontario and the government are trying to secure at least one more “whale” to move into the province. For the three small developers, the answer was “intertia”. Our families are here, we live here, and for folks like me who have young kids and ties to grandparents, it’s very difficult to seek our fortunes elsewhere. Ian added that the work they’re doing to attract big companies helps heal the brain drain; if Lesley were to leave UbiSoft (for example), he wants enough studio muscle here to retain top talent in the province.

Q:Does your choice of school make you more or less employable?
A:Ryan M seemed to be more impressed by educational pedigree, saying that it was not the only thing he looks for, but that it is an indicator of a qualified applicant. The only “good” Ontario schools mentioned were Waterloo, Sheridan, and University of Toronto. There are many, many schools that aren’t on that short top-of-mind list, including yours. Reflect on that.

i took a few digs at the International Academy of Design and Technology, saying that nearly everyone i’ve known from that school – both students and faculty – bad-mouthed the place (and forgetting that the moderator had been an instructor there – oops). Despite the school’s rock-bottom reputation, i’ve hired two programmers in my stint as a studio owner, and they’ve both been IADT grads. For me, individual excellence beats a school’s bad rep.

Q: Why aren’t more studios embedding themselves in schools to cherry-pick the best talent?
A:(no one really weighed in on this, but i gave it a shot at a local community college this year with disastrous results)

Q:How do you get a job in the industry?
A:The panel agreed that portfolios were really important. Ryan M said that demonstrated capability trumps a fancy CV. Philippe liked to see evidence of problem-solving ability. i said i’d much prefer a candidate with a portfolio of a few finished games he’d created himself, rather than a student project he completed with a number of classmates.

Q:Why don’t more companies take interns?
A:The three indies – Philippe, Ryan M and myself – said that interns were a risky proposition for small studios, due to the resources they demand. Leslie said that Ubi takes interns (theirs was in the front row taking pictures), but that the intern would have to have something valuable to commit to the organization.

One thing i didn’t get a chance to say was that people should be very wary of schools that offer internships. Picture it: you’re a college program head, and your school has guaranteed this placement program. You’ve got a few great students, a handful of middling ones, and two or three absolute morons who have barely managed to squeak by. Do you really want your school’s reputation stymied by those guys? Do you really want to risk damaging your relationship with industry by sending them out on a placement? No, you don’t.

Add to that the fact that there are very few shops in town, compared with the number of schools cranking out game-trained grads (Humber, Waterloo, George Brown, Durham, U of T, UOIT, Ryerson, Trios, Sheridan, Seneca, York, and Max the Mutt off the top of my head). Some schools churn grads as often as every six months. There’s a clear internship supply-and-demand problem here.

That’s why in my personal experience (and from what i’ve heard anecdotally from others), when you enroll at a school that promises a great placement program, they’re lying. It’s often a marketing ploy to get you in the door. You’ll certainly have to complete a placement to earn class marks, but you’ll have to hunt down the placement yourself. When i was a student at Seneca College here in Ontario, the school had two or three placements in industry for their favourite sons, and the rest of us scrambled. One girl got a job at her uncle’s trucking plant. i found an internship on my own at the Durham Board of Education, working in the computer lab with students in junior kindergarten. This was the final program requirement for 3D computer art and animation students.

The type of school you really want to attend is one that has high entrance standards, and that fails students early and often. There are very few that do this, but i heard an apocryphal tale that Sheriden will refuse to graduate a 4th-year student with a weak portfolio/art thesis presentation. (Note that Sheridan was on the panel’s very short list of prestigious schools.)

Q:How do you choose the right school?
A:Most of the panelists were too political to answer frankly. i don’t toe the same line, because i feel that many of the schools in this province – particularly the community colleges – are doing the industry and their customers a great disservice, and should be held accountable. i warned against schools with very new programs (which is most of them), because they often work out the kinks at the expense of their initial student intakes. i also took issue with schools whose teachers have very tenuous connections to industry. i was speaking to a colleague of mine not long ago, who suggested that every two years, the colleges should kick their instructors back out into industry to ensure they’re keeping their skills up to date.

Ian mentioned that organizations like io in other countries have partnered with (bullied?) schools into an arrangement where the trade association has to approve its course offering in order for the school to earn a passing grade from industry. As a prospective student, you just look up which schools the association recommends, and apply there. i like that idea, but i worry it’s prone to abuse in the name of politics and playing nice.

Party On and Be Excellent to Each Other

If there was one main takeaway from the conversation, it was to focus on personal excellence. The very best stand out, while everyone else falls to the wayside, as in all things. You wanna make games? Then the barrier to entry is so low, as Jason said and as Ian reminded us, that you should already be making games. Don’t wait on UbiSoft or some small indie shop to give you your big break. There’s a golden opportunity for you right here, right now that didn’t exist when the rest of us were getting our start.

The panelists spoke about a number of groups, technologies and resources. Here’s a non-exhaustive list:

Groups

• Hand Eye Society Where Toronto’s indie developers meet.
• IGDA Toronto Chapter This group places more emphasis on professional development than the HES.
• Artsy Games Incubator Artists who want to make games, but have no programming ability, get together to … make games! Closely tied to Jim Munroe’s efforts at the HES.
• TOJam The Toronto Indie Game Jam, an annual event where the city’s pros and hopefuls get together over one weekend to make games. A fantastic event.
• FlashInTO The Toronto Flash user group.

Technologies

• Unity 3D Create 3D video games in the browser, with a (comparatively) low learning curve.
• Adobe Flash A relatively inexpensive program for creating 2D and quasi-3D browser games. Lots of books and tutorials – join our ranks of over two million developers!
• Game Maker A free game creation tool, and the favourite of many indies.
• Scratch An easy-to-grasp game creation tool from MIT
• UDK The consumer version of the Unreal Engine. i don’t recommend this one because of its eventual high cost (despite an initially free download)

Resources

• Unity by Example, a book written by me that is coming out very shortly. It’s a great resource for new game developers that teaches you how to make small, simple games, and how to approach your game dev career so that you don’t give up on it. Send an email to info [the at symbol] untoldentertainment.com and i’ll send you a note once it’s available.
• MochiMedia, Kongregate, FlashGameLicense, HeyZap Four places (of MANY) to distribute and monetize games you create with Flash.
• Wooglie A unity game portal.
• TIGSource The de facto site for indies.
• Pimp My Game Our own series on making money (or not) with Flash games. Includes tons of sites that spill the beans about the financials on their games.

Were you at the panel? Do you have anything to add? Was there anything you wanted to ask that you didn’t get a chance to ask? Leave me a comment and we’ll have a great discussion.

Thanks to dendritejungle and Jason MacIsaac for the pics!

For Spellirium we had to develop a system that could determine the most efficient path between a series of nodes on a point. After some diligent research and careful consideration it became clear that the A* search algorithm was the way to go.

Now, I was familiar with the basics behind A* but had never actually implemented it. Thankfully though I had a copy of Keith Peter’s Advanced ActionScript 3.0 Animation which has a very nice chapter all about path finding and A*.

Before we begin, some prerequisite knowledge is required. In order to follow along with this you should have a knowledge of AS3 Classes and Interfaces. It is certainly possible to implement A* without knowledge of these concepts but in order to build a flexible, reusable solution, we will be using both. Check out our Understanding Classes in AS3 tutorials if you need help getting up to speed.

What is A* path finding?

According to the ever-so-useful Wikipedia, A* path finding can be described as:

(A) computer algorithm that (finds an) efficiently traversable path between points, called nodes…. A* uses a best-first search and finds the least-cost path from a given initial node to one goal node (out of one or more possible goals).

Sounds nice, but what does this mean? It means that A* chooses a node (or tile in a tile based world) searches through all the directly connected nodes and calculates a cost to travel to all of them. It then selects the node that has the lowest cost and uses it as the starting node for the next phase of the search. A* continues to do this until it reaches the destination.

To implement the algorithm it is first important to understand a few concepts:

• Node: This is a point along a path. In a tile-based environment you can think of it as a tile. The reason why we don’t call it a tile is because it can be used for non-tile based worlds. You will provide A* with a starting node and ending node. A* will then calculate all the nodes to get from the start to the end.
• Parent Node: When a node is tested in the algorithm all of its directly connected nodes (nodes that are traversable in a single step) are assigned that node as their parent. By doing so, we can easily work backwards through all of the parent nodes to create our path after we reach the destination node.
• Cost: Cost is assigned to each node based on two factors. Nodes with a lower cost are used over nodes with a higher cost. The two parts that make up the cost are: the cost to get to that node from the starting node and the estimated cost to get from that node to the end node. The cost of a node is usually expressed via 3 variables f, g and h.
• g: This is the cost to get to this node via the starting node. We know this value exactly because we can follow the parent nodes all the way to the start and add up their costs.
• h: This is the cost to get from this node to the final node. This value is estimated. It is not exact because we don’t know the path that we will take to get to the final node. Therefore we must estimate the cost and we do so using a function called a heuristic.
• f: This is the total cost of the specific node – it is calculated by adding g + h.
• Heuristic: This is the function that estimates the cost of getting from a particular node to the end node. The beauty of A* is that it supports a variety of heuristics, therefore you can try out different ones until you get the result you are looking for. Heuristic functions can differ based on their speed, efficiency and a variety of other criteria.
• Open list: This is a list of all the nodes that have been visited (in an iteration of the search) and have been assigned a cost. The node that has the lowest cost will be used to perform the next iteration of the search.
• Closed list: This is the list of nodes whose neighbors have been visited.

The Algorithm

Now that is out of the way we can move on to the actual algorithm. Before we actually begin coding, let’s just take a look at how A* actually works.

1. Provide a starting node and an destination node
2. Add the starting node to our open list (which should have been empty)
3. Start our search loop:
   • a. Pick the node currently in the open list with the lowest cost – we will call this node the current node. When we first run the loop this will obviously be our starting node.
   • b. If the current node is the same as the destination then we are done and we can move on to step 5.
   • c. Check every directly connected node. In a tile based world this would be up to 8 tiles. For our implementation we will provide a function that determines all the connected nodes. For each node that is connected:
     • i. If the node is not traversable (you can’t move to it because it Is occupied or for some other reason) or the node is already in the open list or in the closed list we can skip and move on to the next node in the list of connected nodes. Otherwise continue to ii.
     • ii. Calculate the cost of that node.
     • iii. Set the current node as the parentNode.
     • iv. Add the node to the open list.
   • d. Add the current node to the closed list.
4. Now return to step 3 (loop again) with the newly updated open list. (The loop should keep running until it hits the destination node)
5. We have found the destination node (hurrah!) Now we create a list of nodes that will be our path list and we will add the destination node to that list.
6. Add the parent node of the destination node to the path list.
7. Add the parent of the previous node to the path list, we will continue to do this until we have added our starting node.

We should now have a list of all the nodes that make up the best path from our starting node to our destination node.

The Implementation

Now that our theory is out of the way, let’s start writing some code. First we will start with our Node class. For this I will actually create an interface for your node:

public interface INode
{
	function get f():Number;
	function get g():Number;
	function get h():Number;
	function get x():Number;
	function get y():Number;
	function get parentNode():INode;
	function get traversable():Boolean;
	function set f(value:Number):void;
	function set g(value:Number):void;
	function set h(value:Number):void;
	function set