Optimized FXG graphics in Adobe Illustrator

In one of our previous posts we've spoke about possibility of creation vector assets and generation textures with right size for specific device on the fly during application loading. As a result we can achieve the same good quality on all devices and extremely smal size of application.
Key point of this approach is that all vector assets should be in FXG format. But I'd like to say that it is not so easy to create vector graphics with good quality in Adobe Illustrator and export it in pure FXG format without side bitmaps.

Starling vector textures - Part 2

In my previous post I wrote about possibility of creating vector textures for games powered by Starling and Adobe AIR. Now let's take a look how we can approach this. First of all you need to create set of vector FXG files that will be used as a source for textures. You can do it for example in Adobe Illustrator. To build game project we will use Flash Builder 4.7 - you need to create new Action Script Mobile Project and integrate Starling library. To compile FXG files you need some classes from Flex SDK just copy packages spark.filters, mx.filters, mx.graphics.shaderClasses and also create SpriteVisualElement class extended from Sprite with two additional properties viewWidth and viewHeight. This class should be placed in spark.core package.

Step into Mobile Gaming with Google Plus community

Good news! Our team created Google Plus community - Mobile Gaming with Adobe AIR and Starling. This is step into Mobile Gaming community with Adobe AIR and Starling framework. Feel free to share your experience and knowledge. Be part of our community, be part of mobile gaming world!

Popular directions in mobile gaming

Great and creative idea is big part of successful game. Today on the market we may see tons of different mobile games. But we also may see that majority of these games designed using pretty similar ideas. In other words there is no need to design something new and innovative. You may 'borrow' existing popular idea and adapt it to your own game.

Starling vector textures

If you have ever tried to create mobile applications you may faced with a problem of choosing the right size of bitmap textures. In our world there are tones of devices with different screen resolutions even screen aspect ratios, for developer it could be cause of nightmare. Starling documentation has a good post called Multi-Resolution Development wich shows how to manage textures using contentScaleFactor but the problem with quality of texture images remains. Many developers just create two different bunch of textures one for low resolution mobile devices and another one for high resolution tablets called "HD". In this case you will lose with size of application because you need to pack two bunch of textures, of course you can create two applications but even in this case problem with texture quality is not completely resolved.

Christmas Toys game released

Santa in a hurry losing gifts on his way, catch them, and collect your Xmas Toy!

Tap the boxes to catch candies, lollipops and gingerbreads. Collect Christmas Toys from puzzles. Use TNT to break metal boxes. Try to catch mystery energy ball. Candies will help you to unlock new levels in this addictively fun game.

Play our game and feel real Christmas spirit!
Game was powered by Adobe AIR and Firefly SDK.

Squeeze Me game released

How to squeeze toothpaste from the tube? Do you ask yourself this question every morning or evening? Let’s play our game “Squeeze Me” and set your own record! The only things you have to do are:

- screw the cap;

- squeeze out the whole toothpaste from the tube;

- roll the tube to squeeze out remaining toothpaste.

Screw, squeeze, roll, beat the record!

Become the best player in "Squeeze Me"!

Starling TextField performance issue resolved

Starling is popular pure ActionScript 3 framework which provides a lot of features for creating 2D games or any other graphical applications. We've decided to use this framework in our game as a primary game engine. While creating stopwatch component which uses starling.text.TextField class for rendering text we've faced with performance issue and memory leaks. Issue was resolved by creating new starling.text.TextField instance each time we need to render new time. Sounds strange, but this approach works much faster (without any memory leaks) than just updating text property of existing starling.text.TextField instance. Below describes step-by-step flow which we've discovered during stopwatch component implementation.

Text Input with Starling framework

Starling is a popular pure ActionScript 3 framework for Adobe Flash with a lot of features. It's an open source library, so you can download ans use it right away. Starling runs not only in the browser but on all major mobile platforms, like iOS and Android.
The Starling framework allows you to create hardware accelerated applications in Flash. The main target is the creation of 2D games, but Starling can be used for any graphical application.
Starling's API is very similar to the native Flash API what is very beneficial. It provides almost the same set of classes and functions, which makes it easy for experienced Flash developers to make the transition from the conventional display list to stage3D accelerated content.
Unfortunatly for today not all components are covered in Starling framework. Like Text Input component is not part of this framework. But we can still create a classic TextField and put it on top of Starling.

Trends in Software Development for 2012

The following post containes expertise analysis of David Intersimone (known to many as David I.),  a passionate and innovative software industry veteran (often referred to as a developer icon) who extols and educates the world on Embarcadero developer programs and runs the rampant online developer community.
Intersimone brought five major trends in software development in 2012, based on data of how developers and companies have already started using these solutions.

Root Login to the Amazon EC2 Linux instance

By default Amazon EC2 Linux machine configured in a such way, so you can only login as ec2-user. And to run command as root, required prefix the command with sudo. To avoid such complexity  security restrictions we propose to configure root, generate public/private key pair and store into the key repository and reconfigure SSH client to be able to login as root by default.

The Evolution of Google Services

Today Google corporation plays very important role on the Internet and software development market. Google provides solid Internet search engine, cloud computing platform with a bunch of services, advertising technologies and a lot a lot more. Google is a high-end corporation with a rich history.

Let's speak about Google founders and history, services which you can easily access in the Internet, good and bad experience, new sources of income, trends for 2012 year.

Install PostgreSQL 9 on Amazon Linux instance

In the previous post we spoke about how to build and configure Amazon EC2 Linux instance in terms of free tier offered by Amazon. Also we decided to use Amazon cloud platform as a staging environment where Tomcat 7 web-server will be installed. And now we are going to install PostgreSQL 9 server on the same Amazon EC2 Linux instance.

The process of installing PostgreSQL 9 could be described in several steps. After successfull installing it will be possible to connect to the database with pgAdmin tool for further configuration.

Install Tomcat 7 on Amazon Linux instance

In the previous post we spoke about how to build and configure Amazon EC2 Linux instance in terms of free tier offered by Amazon. Amazon propose list of services in scope of cloud platform where we can easily deploy and launch simple web application or test existing web solution. We've decided to use Amazon cloud platform as staging environment where Tomcat 7 web-server will be installed.

The process of installing Tomcat 7 web-server is very simple, furthermore Tomcat 7 included in the package repository of Amazon Linux AMI.

Mobile Game - Publishing and Marketing strategy

For today we have a lot of mobile devices on the market with preinstalled operation systems from such wellknown vendors like Apple and Google. Mobile device is a part of our life - communication in social networks, sending emails, reading books, listening music, watching movies and a lot more. Mobile games is also part of our life. Having some free time we like to play games, share our experience with friends, just have a fun.

But let's take a look on mobile games from another side, from side of people who develope this games and publish on the market.

Build an Amazon EC2 Linux instance

In the previous post we spoke about cloud computing platform from Amazon and described setup AWS account procedure. For all new AWS customers Amazon provides majority of their services for free during one year. All these facilities enough to launch simple web application, organize DB, test existing application in the cloud or simply grab some experience with AWS. Each month Amazon provides free quote on their services, like:
- 750 hours/month of Amazon EC2 Linux micro instance (this is enough to run continuously each month)
- 750 hours/month of an Amazon ELB
- 30 GB/month of Amazon EBS (plus 2 million I/Os)
- 5 GB/month of Amazon S3 (plus 20,000 Get requests and 2,000 Put requests)
And only if your free usage expires or if your application use exceeds the free usage tiers, you simply pay standard rates.

Create an Amazon Web Services account

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a cloud computing platform with a bunch of services. The most popular of these services are Amazon EC2 (provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud), Amazon EBS (provides block storage volumes for use with Amazon EC2 instances) and Amazon S3 (provides service for storing and retrieving data, at any time, from anywhere on the web).

The realy great thing that new AWS customers are able to try all these services for free - AWS introducing a free usage tier.

The AWS sign-up process is pretty straightforward and fully automated. The process may take from several minutes to half an hour (Amazon may verify your identity by the phone call), but you have to do it once.