Frustrated with Away 3D’s transparent texture handling and armed with a weekend, I decided to make my own 3D graphics engine with Handsome Lads in mind.

I am yet to implement bitmap textures and perspective but the majority of the work has been done. At the moment it can wireframe and render an orthogonal view I plan to make the source available once the first Lads game is released.

Here is a demo.

UPDATE 08/04/2011: I have now added perspective projection and camera support.

The Breaka Jetski Game Engine Explained
(written for Cru Digital)

Games are a powerful medium. While a film can only provide a few hours of entertainment to a group of people, a game can provide potentially limitless entertainment to a potentially limitless audience through the lure and viral spread of social competition. When Breaka commissioned us to create a microsite, we put a game front and centre. A good game needs a great idea, a tonne of play-testing, ten tonnes of optimisation and a solid framework. In this article I’m going to introduce you some of the processes involved in creating the Breaka Island Jetski Challenge.

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Looking for a completely Open Source, lightweight, easy to use tweening engine? So was I.

I announce the first public release of TweenDark, an open source, lightweight, fast AS3 tweening engine.

Click here to read more.

So, I’ve been doing some more work on Rotat towards rotation. In this tech demo, the wall collision has been removed in favour of the ability to climb walls.

I am certain that this has opened up some interesting gameplay possibilities – especially as the two behaviours can complement each other.

EDIT: The demo has been updated with more accuracy and wall clipping included. We’re still buggy, but coming…

This is an early demo of the newly rewritten Rotat Engine.

Left / Right walk, space jumps.

Some of the cool features it has:

• Tight, pixel-based collision detection.
• Real-time gravity.
• Camera control.

The core has also been made in a very robust MVC-like pattern.

This game will be a Handsome Lads game; as this is a technology blog, any further announcements about it will probably be made there.

So I’m starting to take a look at Flash Player 10′s 3D capabilities. I was initially a little disappointed with what was offered, but at a closer glance, this plane-based 3D engine allows me to create my very own polygon-based rooms.

What I have above is a working example of one such 3D room. This sample is a tech-demo for the evolution of Rotat the Rat’s level tools, a game that has nothing else in common with Rotat the Rat.

I’ve been ripping myself to shreds lately as to how I should design my ultimate extendable user interface classes. Today I found a solution that I like to call the Widget…

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Using PHP, MySQL, XML and AS3, your daily healthy dose of programming acronyms, I’ve writen an AS3-based API for WordPress. If I continue to grow it, Actionscripters will be able to use this API to build their own wordpress blog without the need for data querying skills. I’m still figuring out what the title will be, but this open source project is sure to be a great way to give back to the WordPress and Actionscript communities.

The platform is incredibly easy to use for AS3 programmers. I am considering making it available as a component for MXML users.

I have an early working example based on my own website, available here.

It seems I’m always saying about how I haven’t posted in a while – but I have a good excuse this time. I just finished up the two games for the Ice Break Win a Ute campaign.

Ice Break are giving a way a Holden SS – V ute to the person lucky enough to find it under the cap. They’re also giving a bunch of petrol-powered, remote-controlled Holden utes to the mosty skilled drivers in an online game called Drift’n'Drag.

Drift’n'Drag is a Cru Digital (the company I am gainfully employed at) concept and, you guessed it, I programmed them both.

The website’s development was handled by my collegue Matt, the art and concept by Cru Digital, the portfolio by De Pasqualle.

I would strongly recommend you check it out, it’s my most proud programming work yet. Who knows, if you get good enough at the game you could even win the remote controlled ute!

http://www.icebreak.com.au – click to visit.

I’ve just completed the revamped website for Brisbane-based advertising agency Make Communications through my work at Cru Digital. Make are the guys behind the I (green heart) BNE and Bond University campaigns. I recommend watching a few of their TV and Radio reels.

This website was designed by Make themselves, I was given a week to develop it from scratch.

Make Communications Website