adamcoburn.org

The Great Divide

In my quest to become an Actionscript Guru, I’ve familiarized myself with some of the other tools out there to write Actionscript in other than Flash. Thanks to the free Flex SDK, great tools like FlashDevelop have risen up. On the outside it seems that Actionscript is really starting to open up. Think of the available Open Source code online now compared to a year and a half ago. It all seems so warm and peaceful. But then you hit a wall. Its the wall that’s creating a division in the Actionscript community. Have fun writing your code in Flex using the mx packages. Too bad Flash can’t support it.

Wait back it up. WTF!!! Am I alone is thinking that this is the most ridiculous thing I have ever come across?

Adobe wants to push Actionscript even further then it’s come already, by opening it up to other languages, but they should first go back to the drawing board and create a single package that is universal no matter what IDE you program in. At the moment, we are faced with the divergence of a single development community into two smaller opposing ones. You have your Flex developers on one side and your Flash Developers on the other. Who will win? Well why is there even a dividing point? We shouldn’t be faced with this issue.

The guys I work with are constantly having to spend time developing workarounds so that their software and tools are compatible with both Flex and Flash. Imagine how much time companies would save if Adobe just made this a null point? Sure they know of the issue… Do they plan to fix it? This should be higher on their agenda then expanding the Flash platform beyond Actionscript. Any thoughts?

Tags: Actionscript
Posted in Actionscript 3, Adam Coburn, Flex | No Comments »

Making Money from Flash Games

I didn’t know this, but it seems that making cheesy flash games is a big business. With my career based in Flash, I’ve always toyed around with making simple flash games just for fun. I never imagined it could be for profit. I met a guy recently through IM on a flashkit.com board and he’s been giving me all kinds of tips to get started. I’ve also done some of my own research and I’ve tried to organize some links to share so others seeking the same things has me might have an easier time finding it.

Say you’ve finished your Flash game, you like it a lot and you want others to play it. Consider monetizing your work besides giving others joy of playing? Here are some good places on web where you can begin making money off of your creation.

Kongregate is maybe best place for you. If your game is chosen you can win some weekly cash or monthly top $1500 prize. Also, Kongregate shares ad revenues with developers.

Mochiads “is a no-hassle way for Flash game developers make money from every play. Their flexible system is easy to setup and gives you control over where and when advertisements show.” You place ad inside your game and every time someone plays it you earn. No cost and no obligations. Payments are via PayPal after your earnings reach $100.

CrazyMonkeyGames will sponsor your Flash game, just ask for it on contact page.

Gamegecko is another website where you can ask for sponsorship request for your games.

NewGrounds is THE biggest flash portal on Internet with 500k visitors a day. Here you can find opportunity to be noticed by many and where is traffic, there is cash also.

Hope this quick list will help you in your money making online quest with your Flash games development skills.

If you know any other good website do leave a comment. Thanks.

I am currently working on a flash game portal site of my own.  I will use it primarily to present my own games, but will also allow other developers to sign and and easily present their games as well.

Posted in Flash Games | No Comments »

Adobe Extending Flash Platform

A friend of mine recently sent me a link to an article on www.thestandard.com that is pretty interesting. Its about Adobe extending the Flash Player to allow programming from other languages to produce a swf file. One has to wonder what Adobe’s grand strategy with Flash is.   What does that mean for the future of Actionscript?

I included the text below

Adobe Systems is working on a research project intended to make it easier to run programs written in various languages on Adobe's ubiquitous Flash Player client runtime.

With the project, languages like C and C++ can cross-compile to the virtual machine inside Flash and AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime), said Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch at the Adobe Engage event in San Francisco on Monday.

“It’s basically a way to take other languages and make them run on top of Flash Player,” Lynch said.

Expanding on the project, Ted Patrick, Adobe technical evangelist, said the technology would allow for cross-compiling existing code from C, C++, Java, Python, and Ruby to ActionScript. This would enable components written in those languages to be integrated into a larger project, Patrick said. “That code becomes perfectly portable into our application platform,” he said.

For example, an alternative PDF renderer providing a lighter version of PDF could be cross-compiled, and the Flash Player could read it and display PDFs.

“Right now, everything has to be written in ActionScript or our lower level byte code languages,” said Patrick.

In Flash Player, everything has to compile down to SWF byte code, Patrick said. The byte code language inside SWF is called ActionScript byte code.

Read the Article Here: http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/02/26/adobe-extending-flash-platform

Posted in Actionscript 3 | No Comments »

A Career Move

After a failed business partnership in 2007 and having no desire to pursue either obtaining more clients or more freelance opportunities, I decided it was time to look for a nine to five job. I considered it more about freeing myself of the 24/7 grind that was with working for myself. So I sent out my resume to 5 companies in the Charleston area.

I got 4 responses in a day and began the interview process with a company called Universal Data Solutions. Being from web design, the company profile didn’t interest me much at all. Man was I in for a shock. In the recent years, I was the Flash/Actionscript guru that the web companies in town used as their resource.

Apparently no one in town knew what an expert was. The guys at UDS are doing things that are mind blowing. It had me frothing at the mouth.

Surprisingly, it is a joy to be at the bottom rung of this software development company. It gives me plenty of room to grow and a ton of resources to feed off of in my progression.

I am happy to call this company my new home and am also excited that it has freed up the much sought after personal time to advance my Actionscript abilities.

Posted in Actionscript 3, Adam Coburn | No Comments »

PaperVision3D

I’ve been playing with PaperVision3D and it seems pretty straightforward and easy to use. I’ve also been able to find a ton of resources to help me learn all the ins and outs of this Engine.

You can do all kinds of things with PaperVision3D and it natively supports Google Sketchup models.

Visit the PaperVision3D website: papervision3d.org

Check out the example I put together in about 15 minutes. Its an example of how you can map an image file to a 3D object,

Tags: 3D Flash, Actionscript 3, PaperVision 3D
Posted in 3D Flash, PaperVision3D | No Comments »

Sandy 3D Engine

Today, while browsing through stuff about papervision3D I ran across this other 3D engine. They seem relatively the same… does anyone know which is better or easier. From first impression, Sandy looks geared more towards producing 3D games in Flash (which is why I’m interested in these 3D engines to begin with) It supports more 3D model types for import and with their work on integration with the Red5 multi player server, its looks like a good match for my needs.

Visit the Sandy Website: flashsandy.org

Tags: 3D Flash, Flash
Posted in 3D Flash | No Comments »

Welcome to AdamCoburn.org

Welcome to AdamCoburn.org.  This is my new site to share and discuss Actionscript and all things related to the technology.  I hope you find many interesting things here or contribute to some of the thoughts that I share.  Enjoy.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »