The benefits of programming Air apps for Google phones grows more and more compelling every day. This video shows a game of asteroids linking a mac book pro, 3 Nexus One's, and 2 Droids. The setup supports up to 8 simultaneous users. If the developer can find some way to take the MBP out of the equation and run the game without the need for the central server this game would catch on like crazy. I've often thought about coding my own version of Asteroids. I'd code in much better sound effects too :)

Over the past 2 weeks, I've participated in 2 self-imposed programming challenges and received recruitment letters from 2 game development studios. I've had a blast working on new projects and polishing the code from past projects. Rather than rushing through the experience, I'd like to enjoy it. I've decided to set a strict programming schedule and stick to it.

I find that I am most productive and prolific when I code early in the morning. I enjoy Ben Franklin's method of "Focus and Reflection." I'm planning to focus on specific areas of software development by continuing to read more programming books and by studying more open source software. Currently looking into the Humble Indie Bundle that just went open source. Writing this post is making me want to watch National Treasure again. Working on physics simulations in Flash with Box2D today.

I'm seeing the potentional in vertical story driven games in iPhone game development. I'm currenlty inspired by The Cat in the Hat iPhone game adaptation of the book.

The Indie Game Jam is an effort to rapidly prototype video game designs and inject new ideas into the game industry. Started in 2002 by a group of game designer-programmers, the event features a shared game engine technology hacked on by other designer-programmers for a single long weekend. The games resulting from that weekend are then published, open-source, on the IGJ web page.

- Indie Game Jam, wikipedia

I've been eager to participate in an indie game jam for a very long time now. My interest started with my desire to pair program. Now that I've had the opportunity to pair program (and have found it extremely beneficial) , I want to participate in an indie game jam with other game developers from Hawaii. We could reserve rooms at one of the the University of Hawaii's libraries and code for 48 hours straight. Even Sid Meiers participates in 48-hour game challenges!

Earlier this year I was asked to be a mentor for a game developer's challenge geared at high school and college students. The students would be asked to create mobile applications for the Hawaii Tourism Authority. Unfortunately, the project is on hold for now.

If you're reading this and you're interested in starting a game jam in Hawaii. Send me an email at david@mathogen.com and let get something started. The first one doesn't have to be huge. Let's build some awesome games and gain momentum. I'm looking forward to jamming out some games with you.

Click here to play Mathogen in Flash.

Send me Feedback:

This weekend I successfully ported Mathogen from Objective-C for iPhone to Flash for Facebook. Please comment or email me at david@mathogen.com if you notice anything wonky about the game. Mathogen is a game designed for kids to help them learn basic math and have fun competing against their friends for worldwide highscores. If you have kids, please ask them to play the game. Do they like it? I'm planning to release this game on Facebook for free as soon as I work out all the bugs. Please send me feedback to make this game better.

Facebook Issues:

I had planned to have Facebook integration ready to show this morning but Facebook's developer page has been buggy all weekend. I plan to submit Mathogen for Facebook approval as soon as I get authorization from Facebook to create a new developer account. I deleted my account a few months ago amid privacy concerns and opened a new account specifically for Mathogen. Unfortunately it has been difficult to contact Facebook to reacquire my original developer account. As soon as I am authenticated, I plan to work on further Facebook integration (stream publishing, inviting friends, and viewing their high score).

Goodbye Flash IDE:

This is the first Flash project that I did not code in the Flash IDE. Flash IDE, we've had some good times. I coded my first flash movie, wrote a few games, and made a few websites with you. However, we've grown apart because you don't offer me any of the developer features I need to manage my code. I've started using Flash Builder 4 and so far I like it. It was fun while it lasted but I'm moving on. Goodbye Flash IDE.

Hello Flash Builder 4:

I used Flash Builder 4 for this project. After reading through all the documentation, watching all videos, I was looking forward to the nice code folding, keyboard shortcuts, and class outline features that were promised. Perhaps I downloaded a bad copy of FD4 or I need to restart my computer.

None of the features that were promised in the documentation work as expected. Perhaps these features only work with full Flex or Actionscript projects -- I was only editing one class file. The code folding showed fold points in-between function definitions, double clicking on a method name in the class outline lead me to random pieces in the code. I'm going to reinstall and give it another shot. The keyboard shortcuts worked great. Despite the many things I found lacking in FB4, I'm going to continue to use it to code AS3.

Obstacles:

I had planned to have Mathogen in Flash posted this morning but I ran into a few last minute problems when I uploaded the swf and began testing the game on my remote server. Last minute bug fixes included:

• Local swf ran fine but the copy on the server could not pull high scores data.
• URLRequest was having a fit trying to pull data from a cross domain server.
• simpleXML would not execute without a php.ini file on the server to run code as php5

Lessons Learned:

I've been coding with Flash since version 4. I learned the ins and outs of AS2 and slowly transitioned to AS3 when the new version called for it. I still believe that Flash is the best language for interactivity, portability, and platform diversity. Coding this project gave me new insights into physics integration, sound design, and score tracking in Flash. Compared to Objective-C, Flash allows me to integrate new features more quickly because it is the language I am most familiar with. I wish I could code iPhone games this quickly in Objective-C. Maybe that'll be the next weekend programming challenge. Thanks for reading this post.

Next Steps:

Time to take a break from coding and get a coffee. I've been working on this code for nearly 26 hours. Apart from breaks to make food and sleep, I've been programming all weekend. I will continue to update the game until I am confident that all of the bugs have been discovered and fixed. Thanks in advance for play testing my game. Your feedback is crucial. The game soundtrack was composed by the Japanese band, Woolitchipan. You can learn more about them on their myspace page: http://www.myspace.com/ytamo

This week I've decided to focus completely on completing the Facebook version of Mathogen. I plan to have FBML setup to store high scores, share my score with my Facebook friends, and display the high scores of the Facebook players within the Facebook app's canvas.

I've been researching the FBML architecture and I believe I have a good grasp of it. I'm planning to complete this undertaking in 2 days. I was very inspired by the feedback I recieved from my friends on TechHui regarding my Tetris clone, Gemtris. I'll post a blog with my success story and lessons learned on Monday. Time to code. Wish me luck!

My friend is a longtime Flex developer. He'd gotten an early build of Flash Builder 4 and swore by it. I was coding Mathogen in Flash CS4's ultra limiting editor and he told me I should switch. I was in the middle of prototyping updates in Objective-C for the iPhone version and didn't have time to learn a new editor so I brushed him off. Man was I wrong! Today I downloaded a trial copy of the newly released Flash Builder 4 IDE and I'm blown away by how easy things are. I watched a bunch of Flash Builder 4 videos on the Adobe site and I'm supremely impressed.

The most amazing advances in Flex development using Flash Builder 4 are writing directly to the database in the IDE, integrated webservice wizards that generate stub code, and network monitoring in the IDE. I can remember the days of Flash MX, trying to get the components to load and display correctly. Now it's all drag and drop! The newest version of Flex breaks apart the model from the display and allows developers to use Spark with CSS to style components. Today is indeed a good day :) Planning to refactor Mathogen Flash in Flash Builder 4 tonight after work.