Flixel 2.0 – Flash game development

We have finished an enjoyable project for SPAR International, which involved creating an athletics game based around the button bashing classic, Daley Thomson’s Decathlon. When creating the graphics and style for this game we wanted to utilise the nostalgic bitmap effect which you see quite often in Flash games and in the graphic style of Pixel Art. From a development perspective this was very convenient because I have been looking for an excuse to try the Actionscript 3 game framework, Flixel, which I have seen lorded around the Internet as perfect for this purpose.

It has it’s own global render cycle which simplifies the process of adding bitmap graphics to the stage and creates a predictable fps independent game loop. Forum posts on the Flixel site state that this rendering process is more efficient than Flash player alone due to the fact that is purely geared toward low resolution bitmapped graphics. There where many elements which increased the speed of development such as the inclusion of the FlxObjects which are already set-up with simple motion facilities such as acceleration and velocity on both x and y axis which allow for the simulation of horizontal character movement and also vertical forces (i.e. gravity).

There are many other noteworthy features of the Flixel framework such as Sprites for Animation and the global/static FlxG control class which have been very well designed to make game development in Flash easier. I will, however, not go into detail about these because a concise post about Flixel from the Inside RIA blog has covered these. For those (developers mainly, I suspect) interested in understanding the affordances of using this framework over creating a game from scratch, reading this and also exploring the host of games and tutorials on the Flixel site will be worthwhile. Canabalt is a particular favourite game due to the intense screen shaking and accompanying music.

The game we created is called Beat Barni and is online now. Due to time constraints we created a pentathlon (5 events) rather than a decathlon, so feel free to challenge Barni to any of the following events; 100m, 400m Hurdles, Javelin, Pole-vault and Long Jump.

This post was written by Gareth on June 2, 2010 at 10:00 am

Recent and noteworthy projects

Whilst we continue to rebrand and redesign our site, we have put together a sample of our most recent and noteworthy projects. This also contains elements of our new colour scheme and a proposed logo design.

This post was written by Gareth on May 8, 2009 at 4:53 pm

Creative Tools for e-assessment

One of our most recent projects has involved developing a set of creative tools in Flex / AS3 which are part of a larger academically funded project in which digital tools are used in Design and Technology to encourage creativity and teamwork. This is part of broader discourse in education as to the value of the pen and paper, exam structured methods of assessment which we are all familiar with.

The main point of contention between the traditionalists and those wishing to push the bar on technology in education is whether or not traditional exam assessment is indicative of a students abilities in a certain subject areas. Throughout modern education ICT is used to support and enhance learning yet when it comes to the all important exam assessments students are forced into sweaty school halls and, in isolation, encouraged to recall facts and figures under pressured circumstances. I think I may be showing my opinion in this matter however this is not an academic paper so never mind!!!

The project which we have developed these tools for enables students to be assessed for their Design and Technology course work through various different means; photographs, voice recordings, drawings, written work and mind-mapping. These tools are all controlled through a parent/client application which leads the students through predefined questions or requests which require them to use the creative tools to evidence parts of their work. e.g. Sketch your initial designs for new type of pill holder / Take a photo of your prototype / Mind-map some ideas for new features.

Whilst the work is being created it is being immediately stored in the individual students online portfolio. The evidence and work collected facilitates a more subjective approach to student assessment called ‘Comparitive Pairs’.

Although this system is currently being piloted for Design and Technology only, I hope that further down the line that this type of assessment could be used more widely and potentially offer an alternative to archaic pen and paper type assessment.

The creative tools we have developed at Ultraviolet are a painter tool, text editor and mind mapper. All the tools were created in Flex / AS3. As concepts they are in no way groundbreaking, in fact at some points during development it seemed a little fruitless re-inventing the wheel, but the functionality for each tool is prescriptive to the project and clients needs.

Feel free to play and let us know what you think. Or if you find any bugs!! *Gulp*

This post was written by Gareth on December 18, 2008 at 2:01 pm

Switching from Webtrends to Google Analytics

We have been working with a client on a website (www.modernselling.com) for sales focused users for several years and have built a system to turn dynamically driven urls (such as news.apx?pageid=xx) into SEO friendly urls (such as news/sales-news-headlines/insider-trading-arrests.aspx).

The client has spent hundreds of hours (and therefore thousands of pounds) struggling with the behemoth otherwise known as Webtrends 8a in order to filter out the chaff traffic (robots and the like) from the valued traffic (actual users, referrals and actual advertising click rates). I won’t bore you with too much information but Webtrends is ultimately an enterprise piece of software and for smaller sites/start-ups and those with less time/budget (most of us) it’s analogous with using a sledge hammer to crack a nut! One example being that the installation documentation and support staff (US based) stress the application must run on its own server and has a recommended RAM size of 4GB. This might be OK for some large businesses but usually one dedicated server (hosting the website) is stretching the budget far enough for the aforementioned clientele without the associated costs of managing, maintaining and purchasing/renting a further server simple to do a bit of traffic analysis!*

So for the past 6 months we have been assessing and testing what the FREE Google Analytics (www.google.com/analytics/) has to offer. I have to say that I am impressed! Instead of tediously running pre-set up profiles and reports (hours of setting up and hours of laborious database churning) AKA the Webtrends Model we can report on everything we need by utilising the JavaScript functions available within the latest Google Analytics script (ga.js). By using pre-defined rules for advert impressions, advert click-throughs and editorial outbound links and applying them through pageTracker._trackPageview() we can record all the statistics we need.

The good news is that the client can now simply search for a string in Google Analytics (such as ‘advert-name-click’) and it will return all the statistics related to click-throughs for that advert. He can then calculate his conversion rates, see which section of his website is most effective for a particular advert and use the system to bill his clients who are all happy with the statistics and reports because they come through Google.

Remember if you are using pageTracker._trackPageview() multiple times on the same page that you must apply a filter to Google Analytics to ensure that your overall page impression statistics are not skewed – you must filter out anything other than the page impression.

More to follow on the detail…

*Note: in order for the client to return the required statistics though Webtrends we first had to write an asp.net desktop application to parse the raw log files to remove anything that looked like suspicious/robot traffic, he then set up some filters and rules in Webtrends (one for each advertising campaign) and ran the parsed logs through

This post was written by Kirsten on July 31, 2008 at 2:18 pm