For my own game project, I needed to translate some AS3 code to Java. I could not find any software capable of doing this. Instead of doing all the boring conversions by hand (i.e. “function a():void” -> “void a()”), I wrote a simple converter based on regular expressions. It is very small [...]
<Code>
You are currently viewing the author archives of boris
Author Archives
Installing Wacom tablet in ubuntu
I recently bought a wacom bamboo tablet (the most basic one) and had to do a bit of research to get it to work on my Ubuntu Karmic (32 bit) machine and add pressure-sensitivity to Gimp. All drivers are supplied, but the version is too old to work with my new tablet. The [...]
Detecting mobile visitors on your website
While almost all modern mobile devices (mobile phones, that is) can handle HTML, it is a good idea to optimise your web pages to the small screen size and low bandwidth of a typical mobile device. So, you’d want two versions of your website: one for mobiles and one for normal computers.
I’ve been looking [...]
Designing games for a touch screen phone
Touch screen phones are becoming more and more common. Sales trends show that touch screens are really taking off since a year or two. This year we see the introduction of several cheap (€ 200) Android phones: The Samsung Galaxy Apollo and the LG GW620.
For both Android and IPhone, the primary input [...]
Showing progress bar when loading a large SWF (AS3, Flex 4)
If you have a single large SWF, you often want to produce a custom intro screen (such as a progress bar) while it is loading. This is possible in Actionscript 3, using a factory class, though I found the documentation rather obscure. Thanks to some blog postings and the Mochi API examples I [...]
Use PIC microcontroller to generate TV signal
Now, for something completely different. I’ve been working with the PIC series microcontrollers. These are versatile devices, which can, for example, drive a TV input directly, using no more than a couple of resistors. The PIC acts as a video chip (GPU) as well as a microprocessor.
mxmlc: compiling .as file inside package
Up till now I managed to avoid compiling a main class that was inside a package. When I did it the naive way, I got this error:
“a file found in the source-path must have the same package structure”
Sounds familiar? It does to many flex users. I found a lot of [...]
Kongregate’s crap, hidden gems, and overrated games
The Kongregate gaming community is an interesting place for gamers and game developers alike. Kongregate is basically community driven: by rating games, the users decide which games will gain more exposure and which will become buried and forgotten. This means editors have less work sorting out the loads of uploads and inevitable crap [...]
Pixel Bender water ripple filter
Demo + source of my pixel bender ripple filter. This filter create pixel displacement and shading effects that look similar to water ripples.
Shiny table effect with Pixel Bender
Here’s a second pixel bender example. It creates a “shiny table” reflection effect for arbitrary display objects, such as a video.