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There are currently 10 responses to “FOTB Slides and Asobu Game Toolkit”

1. 1 On September 26th, 2009, Josh Tynjala said:

   It looks like your Director class is similar to something I built for my games that I call ScreenNavigator. You can add screens as display objects or classes, transitions are created by calling function references (which allows me to swap out different tween engines based on whichever is my favorite at any moment in time), and I can use events from each screen to wire up the navigation. An event will either display a new screen by referencing a string id, or it will call a function reference to do something else. It’s very flexible, and maybe not all that pretty, but once I had it up and running, my development of game menus sped up significantly.

2. 2 On September 26th, 2009, kp said:

   Yeah, sounds pretty similar.

3. 3 On September 27th, 2009, Prankard said:

   I looked at your slideshow. It looks really really cool.
   I understand that it isn’t “groundbreaking” stuff, in fact when it works, it’ll just work. But that’s the point.

   I work for a very small design agency, and I’ve had to make a general game menu system to re-use for a lot of games. But that’s just one menu and it isn’t very flexible at all but it’s handy for making small games.

   I’m going to suggest a couple of things (even though it’s not complete yet). Maybe for version 1.5 or something.
   I’ve been using Cocos2d this weekend and making the menu’s etc was the easyest thing to whip out. So so useful. At first I thought it was limited in the terms of the menu positioning. But then I realised I could make more menus and then re-position them. Making a complex looking main menu.
   But what I feel the menu.h is missing in Cocos2d is to justify text menus left and right. Perhaps with the flash textfield this can be done quite easily? I’m not sure.

   And finally, the sound manager class. It would be useful to have stopAndFade(timer:Number) and pauseAndFade(timer:Number) aswell.

   I made a small MP3 player that loops through tracks. And it’s so much easier to go:
   var mp3:MicroMP3Player();
   mp3.addSong(new SoundTrack1());
   mp3.addSong(new SoundTrack2());
   mp3.addSong(new SoundTrack3());
   mp3.play();

   And that sound will be managed and loop infinitely through the game. Perfect for in-game music.

   package {

   import flash.display.Stage;
   import flash.media.Sound;
   import flash.media.SoundChannel;
   import flash.events.Event;
   import flash.media.SoundTransform;

   /**
   * …
   * @author James Prankard
   * http://www.prankard.com/
   */
   public class MicroMP3Player {

   private var songs:Array = new Array();
   private var playing:Boolean = false;
   public var currentTrack = 0;
   private var constantChannel:SoundChannel;
   private static var stageInstance;

   public function MicroMP3Player() {
   }

   public function addSong(song:Sound):void {
   songs.push(song);
   }

   public function play():void {
   playing = true;
   if (songs.length>0) {
   constantChannel = songs[currentTrack].play();
   constantChannel.addEventListener(Event.SOUND_COMPLETE, waitForFinish);
   }
   }

   private function waitForFinish(e:Event):void {
   if (constantChannel != null) {
   constantChannel.removeEventListener(Event.SOUND_COMPLETE, waitForFinish);
   nextTrack();
   play();
   }
   }

   public function nextTrack() {
   currentTrack++
   if (currentTrack == songs.length) {
   currentTrack = 0;
   }
   }

   public function prevTrack() {
   currentTrack–
   if (currentTrack < 0) {
   currentTrack = songs.length-1;
   }
   }

   public function playNextTrack():void {
   nextTrack();
   stop();
   play();
   }

   public function playPrevTrack():void {
   prevTrack();
   stop();
   play();
   }

   public function stop():void {
   playing = false;
   if (constantChannel != null) {
   constantChannel.stop();
   constantChannel.removeEventListener(Event.SOUND_COMPLETE, waitForFinish);
   }
   }

   public function getPlaying():Boolean {
   return playing;
   }

   public function setVolume(volume:Number):void {
   constantChannel.soundTransform = new SoundTransform(volume, 0);
   }

   }
   }

   Anyways, really looking forward to seeing and using your framework

4. 4 On September 27th, 2009, abitofcode said:

   Great presentation at FOTB this year, I’ve recently run into the ‘Game is more than a game loop’ issue. The game part was built in just under 3 days the rest of it is 3 months and counting, cocos2D is helping reduce the dev time but its still a little painful. Keeping an eye on all the retain/release business is also having the side effect that I keep falling into early optimization.
   Looking forward to next years FOTB carefully blending technology, creativity and alcohol.

5. 5 On September 27th, 2009, leerraum said:

   do you think john will release the videos? there are no videos of FOTB08 except those teaser vids. I would be quite pleased if he would release them.

6. 6 On September 28th, 2009, Richard Lord said:

   I so wanted to see your session, but others at the time were more relevant for work so I ended up missing you. Thanks for putting the slides up.

7. 7 On October 1st, 2009, Lee Probert said:

   I really wanted to sit down with you to talk about the use of the Decorator pattern as a technique to create the component based entities you spoke about. Never found a good time. The last thing you’d have wanted was someone talking shop while you’re enjoying your beer. Be good to chat about it at some point though. Really enjoyed your talk. Cameraman was a bit eager though wasn’t he?

8. 8 On October 3rd, 2009, » Notes Marc Hibbins said:

   [...] Keith Peters (site) – Casual Game Architecture: How to finish coding a game without despising it View slides [...]

9. 9 On October 8th, 2009, Flash On the Beach 2009 | News | SupaFlash – Guillaume Tomasi said:

   [...] Keith Peters a présenté une session sur une architecture de développement de jeux. Son dernier projet "ASobu" : un toolkit pour le développement des jeux était aussi un sujet de sa présentation. (Slides de sa présentation). [...]

10. 10 On October 25th, 2009, Flash on the Beach 09 Write Up | markstar said:

    [...] mentioned the gaming toolkits Flixel and PushButton Engine, and also announced Asobu (Keiths own toolkit). I’ve looked into using PushButton Engine for a game I’m currently [...]

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