I can has flash?!
So .. who thinks flash + Galcon = win? I don’t know yet, but I’m giving it a try. I’m not actually developing the flash version. An awesome friend of mine has been doing the time on this one. Though I’ll probably be doing the LAMP end of the deal. At present the game is non-networked, but we’re been considering the possibilities. A TCP/IP edition of the game could be made, but I wonder if that would end in tears. TCP/IP isn’t ideal for gamedev IMO. Flash doesn’t support UDP as-of-yet.
This isn’t the first time Galcon has reared it’s head from within the browser window. (See my earlier blog posts …)
I haven’t decided exactly what I’m going to do with this once it’s completed. Probably a few things. Throwing it on facebook is an obvious one. Throwing it on galcon.com is another one. Maybe mixing it with something like The Maze of Madness is another one. Or maybe something else!
One idea that I have that would be really cool would be if the tinypy vm were ported to ActionScript using Alchemy* .. and then somehow people would be able to script Galcon on the web and share it with their friends..
*I don’t know if you caught that .. but I think my weekend just got booked 🙂
March 12th, 2009 at 8:18 pm
So .. I just ran alchemy GCC against tinypy and it didn’t choke.
I guess next phase is to get it do something 🙂
March 12th, 2009 at 9:27 pm
Let us know if there’s anything we can do to help! 🙂 I liked the iPhone version a lot.
Personally I wouldn’t spend too much time down the Alchemy rabbit hole, it can only target Flash 10+ and it hasn’t really been widely used yet. There might be something out there in PyPy that can host Python on top of AVM2 bytecode, but a vanilla AS3 implementation might be the least pain (although not nearly as fun).
March 12th, 2009 at 9:51 pm
After you get the flash version out I’d be very curious as to which of the three platforms you get the most/best response from; desktop, iphone or flash.
Let us know if you get anywhere with Alchemy. It would be very interesting if you could get it to do something (useful).
March 12th, 2009 at 11:52 pm
So .. If anyone knows how to tell flash to use flash 10 in the browser, that’s what I’m stuck on .. all the tags I’ve cut-n-paste are flash 9 tags. And my test app only works in the browser.
March 12th, 2009 at 11:59 pm
I highly recommend using swfobject instead of using embed/object tags. Once you’re doing that, setting the minimum version is very obvious.
http://code.google.com/p/swfobject/
March 13th, 2009 at 12:05 am
So .. I got it working (w/o a browser .. though I have the code ready for browser use). I’ll have to see if there is a way to post a demo. But yeah, it does require flash 10.
Code in my .as file:
do_test(“return ‘hello world'”);
do_test(“def fnc(x): return x*5\nreturn fnc(5)”);
do_test(“return fnc(10)*5”);
Results:
phil@phil-desktop:~/tmp/flash_player_10_linux_dev/standalone/debugger$ ./flashplayer /home/phil/code/tinypy/tinypy/as3/mytest.swf
return ‘hello world’
hello world
def fnc(x): return x*5
return fnc(5)
25
return fnc(10)*5
250
March 13th, 2009 at 12:06 am
The .swf is only about 200k, so tinypy is pretty compact and appears to work, yay 🙂
March 13th, 2009 at 2:00 am
Have you considered IronPython in SilverLight?
It may prove more hazzle free as Python is directly supported.
Links:
– http://www.voidspace.org.uk/ironpython/silverlight/index.shtml#ironpython-silverlight
– http://www.codeplex.com/Wiki/View.aspx?ProjectName=IronPython
March 13th, 2009 at 10:28 am
Looks like Flash 10 has some UDP support via this new RTMFP protocol:
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/fplayer10_security_changes_03.html#head6
I’m kind of surprised, but Silverlight doesn’t support UDP either.
March 13th, 2009 at 11:00 am
Have you thought about throwing it up on Kongregate? Huge userbase, good exposure, and the possibility for (admittedly tiny) streams of revenue.
March 13th, 2009 at 3:17 pm
http://armorgames.com/play/2675/phage-wars
March 13th, 2009 at 10:51 pm
Noooo there goes my productivity.
March 24th, 2009 at 7:48 am
Perhaps having to install separate software defeats the purpose of targeting the Flash platform (and the fact that Flash 10 apparently supports UDP,) but I had the idea to write a small app for generalized game-oriented network data transfer. It would run locally, your Flash game can connect to it via TCP, and it will in turn talk to the game server.
On the other hand, maybe this idea isn’t obsoleted by Flash 10’s UDP support, because apparently it’s not real direct UDP access, and it requires Flash Media Server.
April 19th, 2009 at 7:40 am
Phil,
Tinypy, what a wonderful concept! Whats your progress on compiling tinypy with alchemy, and interfacing with flash player..
Could you post some of the action script code, demo’s etc?
Thanks!
June 10th, 2009 at 1:16 am
PIMP. Nice post Phil!
Btw, Flash 10 will have a form of UDP support as far as I know!
June 20th, 2009 at 1:28 pm
I’d love to know how you compiled tinypy as a .swc, and asked this question on the tinypy mailinglist: http://groups.google.com/group/tinypy/browse_thread/thread/ec8a1ce0b0b175ab?hl=en