Making use of some slick physics, Acorny Joke makes its debut as Disney World’s August Backstage Pass game. Use your bucket to pocket some tasty acorns, but stay away from the pinecones. Those are an aquired taste, for sure. Tell me if you land in the 130 score-range.
Balancing Act was June’s Disney World Backstage Pass game. Keep Chip on the ball as long as you can! It starts getting real tough around 40 seconds. Let me know if you beat my high score of 1:01.
I just awoke from a nap.
I’m not a big afternoon napper, but I gotta tell you, the FlashForward conference in San Francisco really took it out of me. Busy days spent in inspriring sessions and working the Disney.com lounge, and busy nights spent in the finest late night establishments in San Francisco.
They changed the format of the conference pretty heavily this year. This is my first time at FlashForward, but it was pretty clear that the format was unlike anything else, except maybe TED, which I heard was the inspiration behind FlashForward’s single-track style. Each session was approximately twenty minutes, save some keynotes.
I’m not the best critic of FlashForward’s new style because this was my first year, but I can pretty easily imagine how much it has changed, if it was anything like other conferences. It’s nice to have something that’s different. Heavy coding sessions don’t play out well in 20 minutes, so speakers spent their time inspiring us with nuggets of wisdom rather than nuggets of ActionScript.
I spent some of my time working at the Disney.com lounge, so I didn’t get to go to every session. But of course, if I went to every session, then I wouldn’t get to spend some of my time working at the Disney.com lounge, so it was a good trade off. Needless to say, I missed some great speakers, notably BitchWhoCodes, who I heard found the perfect balance between being informative and comedic (aka entertaining).
I was able to attend about two-thirds of the sessions. It’s hard to pick favorites, but I would have to say that I was the most captivated by David Carson, who showed his print design portfolio, and of course, Erik Natzke. Erik showed us a timeline of his work, sometimes taking us through iterations of the same piece. He seems pretty disciplined at saving out his work in several stages, probably with these conferences in mind. I’ve only heard him speak a few times, but I noticed that he showed less of his ad portfolio (which is quite impressive) and more of his art. It’s great to see someone who is so successful and respected start out doing simple ad work, and slowly move into their passion over the years. It’s inspiring.
Word on the street is that Disney threw a bumpin’ party last year. This year’s party wasn’t sponsored by anyone except the conference itself. This meant no drink tickets, but the important guys had drink bracelets, which gave us all double-incentive to go up and meet them. I had a good time at the parties, but I left with my thoughts lingering more on the sessions than the drinks, which means that FlashForward 2008 was a success in my mind.
In fear of coming off completely starry-eyed about all of FlashForward, I feel like I should say something critical of the conference. While I really liked it’s single-track, no-code method, part of me feels like FlashForward’s new format is better left for conferences with a broader scope, like TED. Companies pay a lot of money to send their employees across the country to bring back some new knowledge of Flash as a tool. This format makes that difficult, and I think that these companies will be disappointed by the change.
While it can be argued that it’s more beneficial for us to come home with inspiration, motivation, and a new burst of creativity, I believe most of that newfound creative energy will be channelled into personal projects rather than company projects. I think we’re going to see attendees enjoy the new format more than the companies that are sending them.
You can now download a complete, usable package of ParticleSun. ParticleSun is a light, but robust Actionscript 3 particle system that allows for 2D or 3D particle effects. It’s expandable, and comes with an effect explorer, code generator, fully-documented API, and source code.
You can visit the Google Code site to check out a series of simple, cute demos, as well as view everything in the package.
Soon I’ll have a few more fun demos to show you. This time, hopefully with some source code for you to download. I’ve been hesitant to give out source code because I’d like the API to be a little more solid. It’s getting there. Even if the API isn’t set in stone yet, this version will do just about everything for you. Please let me know if you have any questions.
My father and I are working on our first collaborative game, titled “Duel”. For now, you can salivate over this title while we finish up the art for the game. When it’s finished, you’ll see it on this site, as well as (hopefully) many others.
Duel is a simple game that anyone can pick up and play. It’s a game that tests your reaction speed, either against a computer or against another player. If all goes well, you’ll see plenty more personally-released projects.
Now, creating awesome particle effects in ActionScript 3 is as easy as adjusting sliders! Check out the barebones build of the ParticleSun Explorer. Just set the values you want, and copy the code into your project. You can also get the early (unsigned) AIR app if you want quick access to the explorer.
The ParticleSun explorer will set all of the basic values for you. There are many functions and properties that are not yet included in particle sun, such as custom particles, particle events, and many more. Keep an eye out for updates to the explorer.
Please note: This works with the current version of ParticleSun (grab it on Google Code). Since neither of these products are a 1.0 release, there is no guarantee that the explorer’s code output will work with future versions of ParticleSun, although it is gaining API stability. Before you use the latest version of ParticleSun, make sure you also have the latest version of the explorer.
Alright, I may be about 3 months premature, but just launched today is Disneyland’s Halloween Time minisite, a collaborative effort by us at Walt Disney Parks and Resorts Online. It’s taking advantage of our new particle engine (check out the splash of candy corn!). For a little treat, click anywhere inside the site, then type “boo”.
