WARNING!!! THIS IS NOT A FULL STEP-BY-STEP TUTORIAL!

I assume that you already know how to compile a swf with Flash Develop, but I’ll try to go over the basic steps as a quick review. There are quite a few steps along the way to get everything working, so since I don’t want to reinvent the wheel with this how-to so I’ll instead direct you to the original sources I followed where it makes sense:

What you need:

• FlashDevelop
• JRE 1.6
• Flex 4 SDK
• Air for Android SDK and Runtime for Andoid 2.2 Emulator
• Android SDK
• Flixel (optional)

Install and configure FlashDevelop if you haven’t already. FlashGamesDojo also has a nice install/configure tutorial. Click here to read more »

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Level design is a pain if you don’t have a decent tool. I’ve been using Tiled, a nice little open source tile map editor. One nifty thing you can do is write your own plugin so you can support any map format you need!

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Adobe and Google have made porting Flash games to the Android platform painfully easy. I’ve reworked Hell Invades Mars to run on Air for Android. Here are a couple of updated screenshots:

UPDATE:

I was having problems getting the original version to run on the Android Emulator, so the entire game has been ported to Flixel!

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Run, Humanoid, Run! running on the Android SDK emulator:

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Adam Atomic has just released Flixel 2.0!

Flixel is an Actionscript 3 library designed to simplify Flash game creation. I’ve used Flixel on Gunpei Mania and Run, Humanoid, Run! and think that it is really a great tool. The new version breaks backwards compatibility, but it has some exciting new features, a number of bug fixes, and many general improvements.

Here are the important links:

• Download
• Announcement
• Release Notes
• Porting Guide (1.5 to 2.0)
• Demos

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I designed a simple retro-style font called 8-bit to use on my thesis game. It was created using the online tool FontStruct. It is a normal TrueType font so it should work on pretty much any OS.

I’m releasing it for others to use under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License. Happy Christmahanakwanzika.

Download 8-bit Font

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Chiptune is the art of making music using a microprocessor. If you remember music on any of the retro game systems such as the Commodore 64, Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Gameboy, or Sega Genesis you remember chiptune music. Many indie developers find chiptune music a fitting choice for their games. Here are a few links to help you get started.

Commodore 64

• Cynthcart – A cartridge that turns your C64 into a keyboard synthesizer.
• Mssiah – Another C64 synthesizer cartridge.
• Sid2Sid – Upgrade board to add a second SID sound chip to your C64.

Gameboy

• LSDJ – Little Sound DJ is a music sequencer for the Gameboy. It can be used in an emulator or loaded onto a real game cartridge.
• Nanoloop – Another music sequencer for Gameboy.
• Pixelh8 – Yet another sequencer.

Nintendo Entertainment System

• Super Synth Drum Machine – Turns your NES into a drum machine.
• MidiNes – Play music with a midi instrument on your NES.

Atari 2600

• Synthcart – Created by the same programmer who created the Cynthcart, this is more of a drum machine than a synth, but it has some cool sounds and effects.

Communities and Examples

• 8bit collective – A large chiptune community.
• Chiptune – A fun Amiga inspired site.

Where to Buy

• Atari Age – On the rare occasion when the store is not down for maintenance, you can purchase both the Cynthcart and the Synthcart
• Non-finite – Stocks modified Gameboys and occasionally you can pick up an LSDJ cartridge.

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This is a few days late since the new alpha version of Blender 2.5 was released back on Nov. 24. I finally had a chance to download and try the new build of Blender 2.5. This is a pretty amazing redesign. I really like the new interface. Here are the important links:

• Blender 2.5 Alpha 0 Release Notes and Road Map
• Blender 2.5 Manual
  
• Get Blender 2.5 Alpha 0

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My current setup. Intel Core Duo iMac with Wacom Intuos 3 drawing tablet, Lexicon Lambda USB audio input, microphone, “Play it Loud” Gameboy with LSDJ, Commodore 64c with a Cynthcart and paddle controllers, and an Atari 2600 with a Synthcart and keyboard controllers.

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Version 0.47 of Inkscape has just been released. Inkscape is an excellent vector art program, that runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and many flavors of Linux. Don’t let the version number fool you, 0.47 is a big release with some exciting new features.

Posted on inkscape.org by Alexandre Prokoudine:

“After over a year of intensive development and refactoring, Inkscape 0.47 is out. This version of the SVG-based vector graphics editor brings improved performance and tons of new features, some of which are as follows: timed autosave, Spiro splines, auto-smooth nodes, Eraser tool, new modes in Tweak tool, snapping options toolbar & greater snapping abilities, new live path effects (including Envelope), over 200 preset SVG filters, new Cairo-based PS and EPS export, spell checker, many new extensions, optimized SVG code options, and much more.

“Additionally, it would be wrong to not mention the hundreds of bug fixes. Check out the full release notes for more information about what has changed, enjoy the screenshots, or just jump right to downloading your package for Windows, Linux or Mac OS X.”

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