Stop press
Posted by Kerry Turner on November 1, 2011
Filed under: General chatter
I keep meaning to collect all the nice write ups my work gets in one place – both my own work and my work for Littleloud have been featured all over the place.
This isn’t that, though. This is much more important. Today on Rock, Paper, Shotgun, you can read my controversial views on a subject that affects everyone in this industry: The Games Industry on Poached Eggs.
I think I can retire happy now.
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Quick catch-up
Posted by Kerry Turner on October 17, 2011
Filed under: General chatter
It’s been a very busy few months.
In the day job with the lovely Littleloud, I’ve been working on a number of exciting projects – most recently a couple of updates to our award-winning educational games Bow Street Runner and The Curfew, and our latest game for Channel 4, Sweatshop. The latter has been a particularly awesome project to work on, and I’m pleased to announce that I can now add “Humorous achievement text writer” to my CV as a result.
After a bit of a break from personal projects, I’ve got a couple of games in progress – including my first attempt at a horror game, using Unity – and I’ve been doing a lot of tool/pipeline development in Ant and JSFL that I’m super pleased with. Tutorials and screenshots ahoy!
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Ant, Apparat and FlashDevelop: a total beginner’s guide
Posted by Kerry Turner on March 8, 2011
Filed under: How to
Before we start, a quick heads up: I’m new to both Ant and Apparat. If you know a better way of doing anything that I talk about here, please let me know! I should probably also clarify that this guide is for Windows users only, and that these steps apply only to projects that are compiled using the Flex SDK rather than the Flash IDE.
So, I was using FlashDevelop to compile my AS3 project, and then running the published swf through Apparat’s Reducer to reduce its file size. I wanted to automate that process so that compiling and reducing could be done as one action. Turns out you can do it all from within FlashDevelop. Let me show you how.
This guide is in two parts. The first is a guide to downloading and installing Apparat itself. If you’ve already got Apparat working, skip straight to part two where I explain how to get started with Ant and how to set up an Ant task to compile a swf and then run Reducer on it.
Read the rest of this entry
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I talk Flixel, dragons, puddings, etc.
Posted by Kerry Turner on August 12, 2010
Filed under: General chatter
My Flixel talk is available online now!
Head to live.flashbrighton.org and click the bottom right icon to see the on-demand content. Mine’s the one called “Flixel Game Engine – Kerry Turner”, of course.
This probably goes without saying, but FYI: it’s a bit more sweary and less competent than most online tutorials.
If you’d like the source for the demo game I made and an installation guide for Flixel/Flex/FlashDevelop on Windows, check out this post. Yes, I am kind.
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My Flixel talk: demo, source code and a couple of other bits
Posted by Kerry Turner on July 7, 2010
Filed under: How to
Thanks to everyone who attended or watched the stream of my Flixel talk last night. I think it went pretty well, although I’ve been kicking myself all day about the cool things I meant to mention but completely forgot. You guys, FlxG.debug! Etc.
For anyone who didn’t make it but is desperate to watch me make an arse of very basic physics, I think the video should be up soon. I’ll let you know when it is, of course.
As promised, here’s the source code for the AMAZING example game I made in the second half of the session. I should explain that the purpose of this example wasn’t to wow anyone with my coding prowess – rather to show how quick it is to get a very basic game up and running using Flixel, and to demonstrate some of the really handy helper methods like createGraphic().
Play Flixel demo (God knows why you’d want to, though)
Download source code (ActionScript 3 and Flixel)
Here also is my a quick description of the config I’m using, as a few people seem to have trouble getting Flixel set up – but please note, this is Windows only. I’ve got FlashDevelop 3.2.1 (get it here), Flex SDK 3.5 (get it here), Flash 10.1 debug standalone player (get it here). I’m currently using Flixel 2.23 but I’m about to upgrade to 2.35 once I’ve finished my next project – I’d recommend going with the most stable recent version (get it here).
Finally, here’s a link to the site where I found the royalty-free music for the demo: www.pacdv.com/sounds/. You’re welcome.
Oh, and post-finally – here are a couple of links some great resources for help with Flixel: the Flixel documentation, the Flixel forums and the incredible Flixel section of the Flash Games Dojo. These’ll sort you out, no problem.
Now start making games!
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You too can make magnificent games with Flixel
Posted by Kerry Turner on June 21, 2010
Filed under: Flash
I’m giving a talk on Flixel at Flash Brighton (here) on July 6th at 7pm. The title will be “Making games with Flixel” (or something that means the same, only pithier) and the session will be in two parts: a quick (but very informative) intro to Flixel, followed by a demonstration during which I’ll attempt to make a short game BEFORE YOUR VERY EYES.
I’ll be aiming my talk at anyone with an interest in making games and a basic grasp of object-oriented programming, so you don’t need to be an ActionScript expert to come along – and Flixel doesn’t need a copy of Flash to run, so no need to worry about that either.
If you’re anywhere nearby, do come along. If not, don’t worry – it’ll be streamed live at live.flashbrighton.org/, and you can contribute to the white heat of intellectual debate via the chat box there or on by tweeting @flashbrighton.
UPDATE: The event is now up on upcoming. Sign up! The session description, like all Flash Brighton session descriptions, is a literary pastiche by our resident copywriter. But it also serves as a handy guide to what it’s like sitting next to me in the pub after this sort of thing.
2 comments
Passenger
Posted by Kerry Turner on June 15, 2010
Filed under: Games
Another Flixel game. Did I mention that I ♥ Flixel?
Play Passenger (requires Flash Player 9 or higher)
3 comments
And you were there, except it wasn’t really you.
Posted by Kerry Turner on May 27, 2010
Filed under: Writing about games
I don’t usually post links on here – that’s what Twitter’s for, silly – but I’ve been thinking about this post by Laura Michet at the excellent Second Person Shooter for a week now. A whole week!
Michet’s idea of game-work, where she uses the Freudian concept of dream-work to understand and talk about games, instantly clicked with me. Actually, I mean more than that – I want to tell everyone I know to read this, so “clicked with” won’t do at all. It struck me? It delighted me. Anyway.
When you combine all the stuff that is in a game—the obvious stuff, like the art and the script and the mechanics, and then all the ‘latent’ stuff, like “how does this control scheme influence the way I think about the game?” or “what’s special about the actions the game makes me perform?” or “what does this game assume about its audience?” or “how did the game’s creators establish its tone and mood?” and so on, it helps you to get a more complete and holistic idea of what’s actually going on in the game you’re playing—what’s special about it, and what it’s doing to your brain.
This resonates with me for two reasons.
Firstly, it’s a much more eloquent, expansive and well thought out take on something I’ve been thinking about recently. I’ve specifically been interested in the relationship between controls and content for a while now, particularly in games where there’s a strong correspondence between the two. I hand-on-heart believe that the old joystick-wagglers were onto something, even if they didn’t quite hit the mark, and I’m curious to see whether I can follow this idea somewhere interesting. Hearing other people talking about this without recourse to the dreaded “gameplay” makes me feel like I’m not just wasting my life here.
Secondly, it’s a pleasing coincidence. The short project I’m currently working on borrows its narrative from a dream I had (no, wait! Come back!), so I’ve been thinking quite a lot about game-spaces and dream-spaces and how they relate. I want to make the game recognisably dream-like without sacrificing too much of what makes it a game – and the searingly simple point of view that, as the title of the post says, “games are dreams” is quite a freeing take on that dilemma.
Also, props for the mention of Don’t Look Back. If you don’t follow me on Twitter or have to put up with me in real life, you might not know that this game has my heart. My heart.
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Coverlet
Posted by Kerry Turner on May 18, 2010
Filed under: Games
Another short Flixel project, this time inspired by traditional textile crafts. No, really.
Play Coverlet (requires Flash Player 9)
5 comments
Enough
Posted by Kerry Turner on May 6, 2010
Filed under: Games
I decided to have a go with Flixel this weekend. Here’s what I made.
Play Enough (requires Flash Player 9)
2 comments
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