Flash + Wii?
A couple weeks back, I got my hands on a Nintendo Wii (from Sears.com no less). I've played it to death and now I'm getting pretty bored with it... and yeah, I beat Legend of Zelda. So now what?
I've been looking around at the whole premise of designing games in Flash specifically for the Wii. This seems to be a hot topic since there are already some posts on the subject, as well as people talking about it at upcoming Flash conventions. By "people," I'm apparently only talking about one person when it comes to conferences... never the less... I think it's awesome that a Nintendo product is finally natively supporting independent game developers (even if it's unintentional), and people are jumping on this.
Kinda.
So when we say "Nintendo Wii Supports Flash 7" we're really talking about Opera supporting Flash 7. The beta trial version of Opera is available on the Nintendo shopping channel. It looks like this. What's interesting about Opera running Flash 7 is that I'd think the Flash Player would be able to run on the Nintendo Wii's core OS without help from Opera, but apparently it cant... At least not the current Flash Player 9. Because of this, Opera probably had to license Flash Player from Adobe. Flash Player 7 was more than likely the only version, at the time, that they Adobe would license-out. Of course this is all speculation.
The big problem with Flash on the Wii is that the version of Flash 7 that is running in Opera is apparently pretty stripped down and doesn't work with the Wii-Remote's directional pad. People like Aral Balkan and Mario Klingemann have been messing around with a few work-arounds.
At this point, is a work-around worth it? Will being able to use the directional pad or other buttons be worth the time if you have to create a hack (most have latency issues as well)? With sites like WiiCade and WiiPlayable, people are already trying to create portals for Wii/Flash games. Therefore, there must be a need for better Flash support.
All in all, I'm unimpressed with Flash on the Nintendo Wii, though I believe it is a good place to start for independent developers. Designing a Flash game to run in Opera with a couple hacks to try to get some more button support seems like a horrible solution to something that could potentially extend the life of the Nintendo Wii. An ideal solution, in my opinion, is for Nintendo to create a "shared-gaming" channel where people can play independent Flash games full screen with full controller support. Of course this would mean that you'd have to go through Nintendo with any and all uploads/changes/configurations of your Wii Flash game, but I think it'd be a small price to pay for exposure while offering free/independent gaming to Wii customers.
Everybody Likes CakePHP
So a few years ago I used to have to write PHP for a few projects I worked on at my old job. I wasn't very good at it and it was all procedural. Often it included some generated code from Dreamweaver, yuck. For the past year and a half I haven't written a single line of server side code. Being able to say that is sort of nice in some respect, but at the same time I wish I was able to write object oriented PHP to supplement some personal projects. Whats a Flash guy to do? Perhaps learn to use CakePHP! From the CakePHP website:
Cake is a rapid development framework for PHP which uses commonly known design patterns like ActiveRecord, Association Data Mapping, Front Controller and MVC. Our primary goal is to provide a structured framework that enables PHP users at all levels to rapidly develop robust web applications, without any loss to flexibility.
My coworker recently used CakePHP for the entire backend of a Flash project which we worked on together. It handles the data, the form handling and even the remoting. The remoting is handled with a version of AMFPHP. Their community is very Flash friendly and even have a flash remoting example on the website. My coworker also lurks their IRC channel for help from time to time and he said its been very helpful.
But It Looks Too Much Like Flex
First, I must digress. I have to admit, I've been really reluctant to get into Flex and MXML and all that jazz. Although, I do think Actionscript 3 is a huge improvement over the previous version. But Flex just doesn't feel like Flash to me. Maybe I'm ignorant, or maybe its because of my design schooling, or maybe its because I don't really build applications but rather consumer "experience" websites. However, the more and more Actionscript I write and the more I get into OOP concepts, the more it is starting to appeal to me. So recently I started familiarizing myself with Flex and what not just so I know what I'm missing out on.
Now to get on with the point of my post. I've checked out a few Flex applications online and some of the functionality displayed in these apps is awesome. My only gripe is that everything looks like Flex! Granted, I'm a total n00b when it comes to Flex and I'm sure there are ways to skin stuff, but right now it seems like a total pain in the ass. BUT! I did do some searching around today and just happened to stumble across what seems to be the start of a really awesome website: scalenine.com.
ScaleNine is a collection of themes created for Flex. It also serves as a source for interface options that expand beyond Flex's default theme. Some involve graphical skinning and others are purely CSS.
So this is starting to get me a little more interested, which is a good thing, because I certainly can't make consumer sites my whole life. Now its time to dive deeper into all of this and maybe have Marc teach me a few things.
Pimp Your Blog
Sunday's are awesome because you can sit around and do nothing thats productive and not feel guilty about it. So after watching Arsenal come back from a goal down against Wigan, I did a lot of snooping around for WordPress stuff. At first I was looking around for useful plugins, and I realized that I should setup Google Analytics for this blog. There's a handy plugin to easily set that up for WordPress located over at Richard Boakes Blog. I also stumbled across the widgets plugin that allows you to add all sorts of stuff to your side bar. There are some handy dandy widgets available too. Everything widget related can be found at widgets.wordpress.com. I advise all you WordPressers check it out.
Flex 2 Cookbook
I totally missed this, but Adobe, in cooperation with O'Reilly, launched the Flex 2 Cookbook Beta site. I believe they put this up around the New Year ... so it's not all that old.
The point of this site is to post solutions to problems that you may have encountered with Flex 2. If you're familiar with O'Reilly's existing Cookbook series... Adobe is essentially looking for people to mimic the structure of that series. If the editors like your solutions, they will add them to the printed edition of the Flex 2 Cookbook, by Joey Lott (and apparently you).
After a couple months of having the site live... it's pretty disappointing ... there are only Flex related questions but no real 'solutions.' Hopefully it picks up and straightens itself out.
Things I’d Like to Learn Before the End of Next Week
Where would a tech 'blog' be without tech related material? So for my first post, I'd like to list a couple things that I'm planning on learning before friday of next week. As it is, this is a completely unattainable goal since I just got my hand on a Nintendo Wii. But never the less ... this is it.
- ASUnit - I'd like to learn more about unit testing. The project I'm working on at work requires us to use unit testing ... something I know very little about. We're using ASUnit since the project is in AS3.
- Adobe Labs AS3 Libraries - I had no clue these existed. I never have time to explore this stuff .. hopefully this week, I'll find time.
- Adobe Macromedia Flash 9 CS3 Blaze Beta 4 - whatever it's called today, I finally got my hands on the beta and I'm planning on tinkering with it.
I think that's enough for now. Somewhere in there is "begin working on fun projects" and "finish reviewing chapters for Joey's flex book." So much to do ... I'm going to go play Elebits.