Archive for November, 2007
Windows Media Player and Flex Embed Don't Play Nice
Posted by SimianLogic in Uncategorized on 11/30/2007
While putting some final polish on my latest flash game, something utterly bizarre happened. I usually save putting in sounds for the last job, but due to re-used interface code the menu sounds (on rollover) for this game were already in place. While sorting through my somewhat pathetic sound library (around $15’s worth off of SoundRangers) on my laptop, I came to the sad realization that Windows Media Player was the only software on it that would play mp3s. I loaded up my library and listened to everything a few times to try to sort out which sounds would go where. Once done, I closed WMP and switched back over to NetBeans. I dropped in the code for a few new sound effects to test, compiled, and loaded the SWF. Nothing. Nada. No sound. Not even the menu sounds, which I KNEW were already working.
Disclosable WP Categories
Posted by SimianLogic in Uncategorized on 11/27/2007
This is probably a sign of bad blogging… but I have too many categories already. Maybe if I stuck to one uber-specific topic, I wouldn’t have this problem–but that wouldn’t be nearly as much fun. What I needed instead was a decent way of controlling which categories are displayed. After looking around for awhile, I didn’t really find any plugins that did just what I wanted: limit the category display to only those that have a certain number of categories. Several of them allow you to designate certain categories as public or private or hide them completely from the home page, but I didn’t want to hide them for good.
I just wanted disclosable categories.
Read the rest of this entry »
Napa, Thanksgiving, and a New Theme
Posted by SimianLogic in Uncategorized on 11/26/2007
Not much activity in the last couple of weeks, so I thought I’d do a little update post. I made another game. I’d say it’s around 95% done (just need to do a bit of visual polish and grab some sound effects), but I’ll save that one for a post of its own once I get some sponsors ironed out (or publish without). A friend was in town a couple of weekends ago, so my roommate, her, and I all headed up to Napa Valley. Two of my friends had birthdays on Monday, so I thought some decent wine would be a good gift. Read the rest of this entry »
BarCamp and Bike vs Car
Posted by SimianLogic in Uncategorized on 11/13/2007
My friend Annie and I went to a BarCamp over the weekend. I’d never heard of them before, but it wasn’t too hard to talk me into an all night programming event. A BarCamp is sort of like a grass-roots conference where the participants are also the ones who present little mini-modules. This one had an UX application design contest, some speakers from Facebook, and a guy from Amazon. The details on the wiki (and Facebook group, which is where Annie heard about it) were a little sparse,but we understood it to be an overnight programming contest–where you start an app at night and present your results the following afternoon. Read the rest of this entry »
Nibblets and the State of Flex Game Development
Posted by SimianLogic in blog on 11/09/2007
I had an idea for a game about a month ago. Normally I just prototype this things, file them away, and move on to the next one (there’s always a next one). I was taking part in the MochiAds beta at the time, though, so I figured I’d put a little more work into it and release it on a few sites. To cut a not-too-long-story short, making games sucks. I’ll qualify that. I love prototyping, but I’ve spent the last month (on and off in my after-work non-girlfriend free-time) essentially adding instruction screens, level selection screens, and high score integration. The actual gameplay (and all 10 levels) haven’t changed at all since my first prototype (which took about 2 hours) over a month ago. Read the rest of this entry »
ToggleButtonBar fix
Posted by SimianLogic in Uncategorized on 11/07/2007
I’m working on adding Header controls to my version of the Flex Rich Text Editor, and I noticed that the ToggleButtonBar doesn’t… exactly… work. I dug into the source and saw why. When using the “ToggleOnClick” property, the TBB does some funny stuff that it’s parent, the regular ButtonBar, doesn’t really care about. While it’s possible to set the TBB’s selectedIndex to -1, this doesn’t actually get transmitted to the parent ButtonBar. This means that, while the TBB deselects the item properly, the parent BB still think you have the same thing selected. Which means you can’t click on it again until you select something else and then come back to it. Read the rest of this entry »
Adobe RIA Dev Camp
Posted by SimianLogic in Uncategorized on 11/07/2007
On Monday, I headed up to San Fran for one of Adobe’s little community events: an “Adobe Rich Internet Application Developer’s Camp.” I have to say, I really liked their corporate digs. Besides the 2-man behemoth of a company I’m working at now, I’ve worked at Electronic Arts and been to several events hosted by Apple/Google/Yahoo (to name a few). I could probably fill an entire post on the differences (perceived by me anyway) between the corporate cultures of the various mega-corporations, but I’ll keep it to a minimum by saying I liked Adobe’s HQ a lot better than any of the others I’ve been to. And free beer didn’t hurt, either. Read the rest of this entry »
A little Friday exercise.
Posted by SimianLogic in Uncategorized on 11/02/2007
For the last two weeks, I’ve only biked to work once each week. Apparently, winter in California means that it’s going to look like a thundering downpour is eminent every weekend… then clear up and look nice by lunchtime. I may have to actually start checking the weather report before deciding whether to bike or not… or just suck it up and get some decent rain gear that wouldn’t completely immobilize me. Today, though, it was just too nice out to not do something… so I ducked out of work at around 4:15, came home (~15 mins), loaded up the kayak (~30 mins), and went off to the little lake up by the Shoreline golf course (~15 mins). The rental shop was closed already, but there was a guy still working. He said not to bother with the $4 launch fee, which is always nice. It was only about a mile around the border of the lake (thank you gmap pedometer), so I also went across and back (around another ~.38 miles each way). Even around 2 miles isn’t exactly a lot, but I haven’t been paddling in a month or two–and I definitely felt the burn. I only found out about this lake last weekend, and it’s actually close enough to make kayaking a viable exercise option (on days other than Saturday and Sunday).
I’ll make sure to bring my sunglasses next time, though.