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General

Predicting circle line collisions

In my previous collision detection post, I talked about predicting whether two objects would collide in between frames. This is to avoid the situation where the objects are moving so fast that they pass through each other before you’ve had a chance to see if they’re overlapping. This is often known as a sweep test […]

Categories
General

Predictive collision detection techniques

In preparation for my upcoming Flash game programming training courses, I’m getting my head back into game physics, and I so I thought I’d share some useful collision detection methods I’ve discovered over the last few years. Reactive collision detection Collision detection in Flash games often occurs after things have moved. So you have a […]

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General

Learn how to program Flash games

I’ve just set up a brand new 2 day training course to teach you everything I know about making Flash games! It’s in Brighton (of course) on the 8th and 9th of February (the week after the Papervision training). We’ll be covering all the fun stuff, collisions, physics, optimisation, actionscript animation and working with graphical […]

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General

Technical Reviewer: Making Things Move part 2

Whenever anyone asks me to recommend a good book to learn ActionScript 3, I always tell them to run on over and buy a fresh copy of Keith Peters’ Making Things Move. In fact I was quite gutted when the first AS2 version came out; I’d spent the previous 2 years working out how to […]

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General

Particle tutorial part 2 in Computer Arts magazine

Part two of my particle tutorial in Computer Arts is featured in issue 152, August 2008. Using the skeletons on the Plug-in Media website as an example, I take you through how to blow things up in Flash! [kml_flashembed movie=”/wp-content/uploads/manual/2008/particlesskeletonswithtextfragged.swf” width=”480″ height=”300″ FVERSION=”9″ QUALITY=”high” /] Source files are included on the CD – let me […]

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News

Computer Arts Particle Article now online

[kml_flashembed movie=”/wp-content/uploads/manual/2008/sparkparticles.swf” width=”480″ height=”300″ FVERSION=”9″ QUALITY=”high” /] Excellent! I just found out that Computer Arts magazine have posted the article I wrote for them online as a PDF. So you can learn how to make a particle class from scratch and using it to create basic particle effects such as sparks and smoke. Here’s the […]

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News

Interactive Digital Fireworks – new video!

Note: this post is many years old but I’ve left it here for historic reasons – it’s the first time I made an interactive fireworks project which eventually led to the development of PixelPyros and Electric Laser Flares It seems like I’ve been promising to write this one up ever since November! And now I […]

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Speaking

Blowing things up in Toronto

[kml_flashembed movie=”/wp-content/uploads/manual/2007/introweb.swf” width=”445″ height=”340″ FVERSION=”9″ QUALITY=”high” /] Having a fantastic time here in Toronto, although in a supreme display of poor planning my session is at 9am this morning! Never fear! We shall fight the hangovers from the awesome party last night (thanks Influxis) and produce more crazy particle effects! As ever, bring your laptop […]

Categories
Speaking

Particle tutorial now on Lynda.com

After the Computer Arts article last month, you can now see my full particle presentation over on lynda.com [sorry, no longer available]. It’s a screen-cast of my presentation at Flashforward in Boston last September. So if you want to know how to make Flash smoke, sparks, or blow things up, this is the best place […]

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General

Flash snow in 15 minutes!

At FlashBrighton’s Big Day Out a couple of weeks ago, I set myself the somewhat crazy challenge of programming a dynamically generated snowstorm in fifteen minutes from scratch. No pre-written classes, no graphics, nothing! Which was really good fun! If a little scary. So when Kristin Henry, from GalaxyGoo recently asked if I’d be interested […]