Here is the CSS3 Song::

And Now The nodejs/jquery Simdraz games engine Song::

And finally a song from our sponsors ;)::

Think your a creative javascript ninja?
I certainly don’t.. Not when I look at some of the entries!!

This is my favourite so far with canvas thrown in..

If you think you can create something better and are up for the challenge - want to show off a bit go here to enter.

Please tell me if you do enter and show me your examples; so I can sigh and think if only I had the time..

I’ve been suffering with email issues this month..
So if any one has tried to send me an email to bluestudios this month, sorry.. Im not ignoring you.. Outgoing mail has been working fine but nothing is coming in..

Hopefully be fixed this weeked..

J.

Should be working now Migrated to googlemail servers over the weekend.

If only it was a couple years earlier and I think I would of actually applied for this!

Why? Well, I believe it would be the chance to work with exceptionally creative people both in design and technology. You would be challenged and be able to bounce ideas off one another; this is one of the things I miss working as an Oracle consultant, there is never really anyone to talk about cutting edge web technology.. Even none cutting edge some of the time.. If you look at Spaces and if I’m critical it’s running poorly scripted but functional html4 - others are working hard to push xhtml, html5 renderkits but I feel this will be too late and won`t be in the next ps3 release and will causing skinning / re-branding headaches. And there is no support for ie6 or Opera - this is just lazy; I haven’t seen any real reason why IE6 could not be supported take a look at Sencha - Extjs all that functionality still works with IE6 and the performance is outstanding!

Anyway back onto the discussion of Dextrose.

There is a risk with joining this company - but I think the opportunity to work with this team would be a great boost to anyone who is looking for a challenge and to boost their skill set.  Whats the risk.. I have to say at the end of the day I feel it’s the technology they are using i.e. the engine they are developing is a big risk.. Especially for gaming. A lot of startup online games company just fail look at Earth Eternal.. I know Dextrose aren’t making a game but an Engine but still I feel it is risky betting your chances on JavaScript although at this moment in time it seems the right approach (that’s why I’m making Simdraz but just for fun in my spare time).. And I see they are looking into the future of canvas, svg asking for experienced developers in this area but webgl and other technologies are just around the corner - I just don’t know what the future holds and how successful Dextrose would be at selling their engine.. I feel a lot of big companies like EA will developer there own or extend from others they have created like Lord of Ultima! Yes, I’ve signed up and reviewed how they develop their stuff and it is good - they have some exceptionally good frontend developers.

At the end of the day; what I look for is to be challenged and to create things that people look at and ask “how’d you do that; it’s awesome”.. As well as working with people that are creative enough to bounce ideas about and look outside the problem and not come back with the response “can’t be done” most things can you just need discuss the possibilities and delve further down the rabbit hole

Since then I have tidied up the code and have been playing with the idea of testing it out on the iPhone, Android & Blackberry device.
You`r probably asking how do convert it to work on these devices?

Well simple - First.. I don`t really need to use AIR - as the application is written in html & javascript and should work as long as I upload the code directly onto the server with Webcenter otherwise I have to put in a cross domain proxy hack.  All you need is a browser.

But.. I want to package it as an application as there are features in AIR that I may want that are not available  in the mobile browser. So how do I do this?

iPhone - iPad::

Well luckily for me there is an Adobe Air iPhone packager that will convert my air app to a native iphone 3.0 app.
Unfortunately Apple and Adobe have been having a little war preventing me from putting it onto Apples appstore and Adobe have stopped development on the packager

Here is a small add of Adobe fighting back::

But wait.. Someone has already created a great free iphone app available at the store!!

If you wanted though you could create something different - branded and supported by all smart-phones just use the packager and make the app

Android::

Adobe also provide a AIR-APK packager for android devices - At the moment the packager is in Beta I haven`t had the time to test it out yet but hoping to get something done this week and try it out on my HTC Desire.

Blackberry::

Finally the Blackberry; I couldn’t find much info or support on the device - it looks like there are plans for an AIR packager but at the moment nothing has been released.
Adobe have been working closely with Google on the open screen project and with RIM . There are plans so fingers crossed by the end of this year there will be something.. For the time being I’m going to upgrade the blackberry browser and see the potential of using  Sencha Touch to improve the UI through a browser.

Here’s a quick demo of the cleaned up Connections app working on my VM.

So I had a quick play around this evening but didn’t have much success with converting a small html app to an ipa .. So far it is looking as if the packager only supports flash.. .. .. Not good still researching.. Will update this post when I find out more..

Ok; so after spending the whole weekend pulling out my hair working with both the iPhone package and Android Packager researching and finding very little on html, javascript support. Adobe have come back to me Woohoo!! There is a new method called StageWebView in 2.5 that should allow me to do what I want

]]> http://www.bluestudios.co.uk/blog/?feed=rss2&p=1196 http://www.bluestudios.co.uk/blog/?p=1193 http://www.bluestudios.co.uk/blog/?p=1193#comments Wed, 04 Aug 2010 07:31:04 +0000 admin http://www.bluestudios.co.uk/blog/?p=1193

Working with webcenter and sharepoint

Just kidding its not all that bad

Via Programmer’s life (cartoon)

So a few minor updates -

- We have animated the building location, so now when you start to build tiles go underground collect your building and show up.

- Hover over buildings now fades to 50% so you can see items behind buildings.

- We also have under construction and constructed buildings.

- There is now a global timer in place that calculates when buildings are complete and redraws completed buildings.

- Mouse over incomplete buildings shows you a timer and progress bar until item complete.

- This is still just rough mockup - building images are just examples and not final representation of actual building.

Usually I`d put this on facebook but I thought it was too good and so thought I`d share it with the world.

The Render Engine a MIT Open Source jQuery Games Engine.
Released only a couple days ago. The project was started last year by Brett Fattori..

And I have to say reviewing the source it looks good! Actually very good and way ahead in terms of development & documentation of the Simdraz engine..
All I can say is this guy has way too much spare time on his hands And he wrote his first game in the same year as I was born! I feel like  junior now…

Anyways go check it out!
The only drawback that I have with this Engine is the game viewport is generated with canvas…
Not that it will be a bad thing in a couple years. Just canvas for me is slow now.

Great work Brett!

Currently only Chrome and Safari from what I can see support websockets; but we are including this functionality. So; if you are using the AIR version of the Simdraz engine or a browser that supports websockets you won`t need to worry about AJAX request and polling even though AJAX is fast, it’s just not as fast as websockets and it also helps saves on bandwidth.

In theory less request & better performance