We made it! Just under the gun, Turdhead.com has a brand new game! So far, the one-game-per-month challenge has been met. Pathetically, perhaps, but still…
Truth be told, this one was done start-to-finish in a single day (today). It's a bit rough around the edges, and yes, I'll probably tweak it in the next day or so, but DAMMIT, it's here, and it met its Feb. 28 deadline. Barely.
So here it is, Bus Terminal Amusements, Vol I: Guess Which Hand. The name — and the game — may seem a little odd, but we hope you enjoy it as much as we do! It's that classic game of childhood, "Guess Which Hand," but it's been bummed up pretty well with a creepy old man in a bus station. How many quarters can you take from creepy Carl?
Flash 8 player is required! Enjoy, and feel free to let us know what you think about it! Thanks!
Update: I've spiffed up the game a bit, and moved it to its permanent home in the Turdhead.com Amusements section. Click here to play the game!
PSPHacks.net last week announced the results of a competition to create a SWF player for Sony's PSP™ (PlayStation™ Portable) handheld device. The result is just that: a "mostly" Flash Player 7 compatible player running on the PSP.
From the site:
The player supports Flash 7 action script. Not everything mind you but a good portion of it.
As for limitations, I would say that people will have to bare in mind that the PSP only has 32mb of RAM.
3mb of that is taken up by the program itself, so there isn't much room left.
Having complex vector shapes is also a bad idea as the shapes are triangulated and produce massive triangle lists.
The bottom line is, try it and see what works and if someone is creating a new animation for the player they need to keep testing it to see if it still works.
Site creators say they'll release the new player "on or about" Feb. 28., and they'll soon sponsor yet another contest to develop Flash content specifically for the PSP.
I've been looking for a legitimate excuse to get a PSP lately, so the announcement couldn't have come at a better time. I'm not thrilled about the specter of "nonstandard" Flash players in the marketplace, but it's good to see people filling voids where they exist.
It's been a while since Macromedia introduced the world to the Flash Lite™ player — and since then, it's already advanced to Version 2. And while the previews I've seen on the Adobe Web site make it look like a lot of fun, I have to admit: I've never seen the !$%#@! thing.
Now, phone envy is nothing new to me: Verizon (my carrier of choice) has often "crippled" some of the best features of its phones (e.g., Bluetooth implementations and MP3 loads) to ensure customers only get their multimedia fix directly from the mama company (It's a sales technique perfected by schoolyard bullies and drug dealers, and it seems to work well in the mobile industry, as well). And while this usually makes me mad and jealous of others who can flaunt new technologies on their own phones, this time it's not the case: Truth is, I don't know a single person with a Flash-enabled mobile handset yet.
Press releases and Flash Lite enthusiast sites make it look like everyone
somewhere is enjoying the ride already, though: Adobe recently announced that more than 45 million mobile devices are now Flash-enabled. So, um… where are they?
Things are looking up, though: Macromedia and Qualcomm announced plans last Fall to release Flash Lite as a BREW extension (which, in theory, means it should work on my Verizon phone soon, no?), and LG Electronics (maker of my last two cell phones) signed up with Adobe last week to integrate Flash into its future handsets. Both these developments have raised my hopes somewhat, but at the end of the day, I still don't have the funny on my phone.
You know how sometimes, when you meet somebody with whom you really seem to connect, and you start devoting all your time to them, and you get really caught up in one another's conversations, but suddenly… you find yourself knee-deep in pancake batter… and unable to speak the local language anymore? Or (perhaps less extreme) you simply realize you're not where you want to be anymore?
Well, lately, that's how I've been feeling about Turdhead.com and its relationship with the Flash development
community. You see, I love working with Flash and its related technologies, and I can spend all day discussing the relative merits of object-oriented coding vs. procedural programming, but I created Turdhead to discuss just about anything else — art, writing, games, politics, general crap. But I "do Flash" for a living, so naturally, the topic does come up. (more…)
Thanks for the great submissions this year! The submission window is now closed! If you still want to show off your work, however, feel free to send it to us (or better yet, wait until next year's contest!) Thanks!
It's that time of year again: The 2006 ActionScript Poetry Contest is on! What's an ActionScript poetry contest?
To quote last year's entry rules:
Translate your favorite poem (any poem, but remember: "Nantucket" is not an accepted ActionScript keyword), and post it here in the comments section of this article before March 21 (which is UNESCO's official World Poetry Day). Once the deadline has passed, the judging will begin.
Judging will be based on several factors, including public reaction to the poem (as noted in comments here), its poetic appeal, creativity and the ungodly whims of our nameless, faceless panel of judges. Extra credit will no doubt be given if the "poem" actually does something in ActionScript, or if it somehow manages to retain some sense of poetic integrity.
Please include a link to the original poem in the comments of the script, so that the less literary among us can also figure out what's going on. And as always, keep in mind that this is not a call for Flash animations interpreting literary works, but a real, honest-to-goodness, geekfest in which the code itself becomes the poetry.
And to see what it takes to win, here's last year's winning entry, as penned by Ammocell:
// El Dorado
// Edgar Allan Poe
//
// Translated by Ammocell
// Original poem can be viewed at:
// http://www.mat.upm.es/~jcm/poe–shadow.html
// ========================
For his prize-winning efforts, AmmoCell was awarded an ActionScript Jabberwocky T-shirt which we're sure he treasures daily (assuming it arrived). This year's winner will receive their choice of a custom T-shirt featuring their own poem on the back or the classic ActionScript Jabberwocky digs.
The submission window closes March 21, and judging will begin immediately thereafter. We look forward to seeing what you can do!
The contest begins… NOW! Just leave your entries in the comments form below. To make sure the code formats correctly, please add the tag [code] (in square brackets) at the beginning, and [/code] at the end.If they look screwed up; don't fret — we'll straighten it up asap. Thanks!)
Shameless begging, panhandling and soul-sucking indignity
Want to show your appreciation for Turdhead.com, its products or services? Although it's certainly not necessary, we'd be pleased as punch if you felt like donating any amount you'd like, or even if you just wanted to give us a nod on Digg.com. Honestly, we have no pride whatsoever (the name of the site is Turdhead.com, after all), and we'll take any recognition we can get for our efforts here.