Adventures in Playbook Land

by Devon O.· April 09, 2011· in Life· 9 comments tags: blackberry, playbook
Now that the ordeal is over, I thought I’d take the time to sit down and share my account of what it was like to develop a Blackberry Playbook application using the Adobe Flex SDK. Like many other Actionscript developers out there, when I heard that RIM was giving away free Playbooks to developers who had an app published by the end of March, which was eventually accepted, I thought, wow, what a great opportunity – this should be a piece of cake and a learning experience. A learning experience it was. A piece of cake, it wasn’t. I won’t bore you by starting from the very beginning. This has already been covered quite eloquently and humorously enough by Jamie Murai here. Suffice it to say that I, and I’m sure most everyone else developing a Playbook app for the first time, went through a nearly identical experience. At the point I begin my story I have a simple game built (this was actually the easy part), the annoyingly VMWare powered simulator is installed and running nicely, and, thanks to studio|chris and fruitbat, I even have a way to easily install and uninstall my game to and from the simulator […]
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Beach Ball Kinect Party

by Devon O.· February 15, 2011· in Flash, Life· 4 comments
So we finally got a Kinect camera hooked up to a pc at work and, while it doesn’t seem to be legal to use it for commercial projects (but, hey, I’m no lawyer), the boss asked me to get it figured out and come up with some ideas just in case it would be feasible to use in the future. So, my first go: A Kinect Beach Ball Party. You can see the video of it below. Technically speaking, this is using Flash, Box2D, and OpenNI for Kinect integration. NOTE: there seem to be two distinct paths to follow if you want to delve into the world of Kinect and PC – OpenNI and OpenKinect. It’s a shame that someone smarter than myself doesn’t merge the two as there are capabilities of each I’d like to use. For example, I love being able to get the skeleton data with OpenNI, but I’d also like access to the regular RGB image data that you can get with OpenKinect. Ah well. Only been at it now for a day – I’m sure there’s something I’m overlooking. .. Yes, this is what I get paid to do… …
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Facebook and Flash – A Book Review

by Devon O.· January 23, 2011· in Flash, Life· 6 comments
Now, I should begin by saying I absolutely hate building Facebook applications. And I build a lot of them at work. Every time I get the word from above that we’re doing another FB app, I just groan – both inwardly and out. It’s become a running joke of the office. Why do I dislike Facebook apps so much? After all, I say to myself, they’re really just little Flash widgets and whatsits (at least the ones we do) that have to make a few extra calls to the Facebook API to tie the thing to a social platform – and I love building things with Flash and actionscript. Well, occasionally, the trouble is the client who asks for a Facebook application with absolutely no idea what they would like it to do or what it’s even capable of doing. These are companies simply trying to keep up with the Joneses of the social networking age who probably read in last month’s edition of some Digital Marketing magazine or other that Facebook applications are the “Way of the Future” in getting your product noticed. Facebook applications, in and of themselves, aren’t necessarily a bad thing, but they exist to perform […]
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On the Rebound

by Devon O.· December 28, 2010· in AIR, Flash, Life· 9 comments
I am rather pleased and excited to say that I have just completed my first AIR for Android game. Now, I will be the first to admit, it may not be the most exciting game in the world, but it is exactly the type of game I would enjoy (and have enjoyed) playing on the train or bus or standing around in queue somewhere. The object is to just use your finger to slide some circular game pieces up the playing board, off some bumpers and down into a scoring area without hitting the end. Think shuffle board or curling around a corner. Here’s a quick screenshot: Get the game for free in the Android Marketplace here (click on the QR image if you’re currently browsing on an Android device): And for the Geek bits. The game was built for 480×800 resolution and so far only tested on a Galaxy S. If it works or doesn’t work on any other device, please leave a comment either here or in the marketplace. And for those who care, the physics were done using Box2D. It runs a nice 19 to 24 FPS on my Galaxy. Again, though, any problems or no problems at all with […]
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It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Unity…

by Devon O.· December 24, 2010· in Life, Unity3D· 0 comments
Happy Christmas from the Wolfgangses’s, all! http://onebyonedesign.com/flash/xmas10/
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Devon O. Wolfgang

AIR | Unity3D | AR/VR

Unity Certified Developer

Technical Reviewer of “The Essential Guide to Flash CS4 AIR Development” and “Starling Game Development Essentials”

Reviewer of “The Starling Handbook”

Unity Engineer at Touch Press.

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