Glen Rhodes

Outside my hotel room window - Empire State Building peeking out.

I’m sitting here in the internet cafe at the hotel, The New Yorker Hotel, for Flashforward. What an amazing conference so far. I did my talk today – it was lots of fun. Everyone was really responsive and I didn’t even notice that I had gone 15 minutes over my 1 hour.

New York city is also amazing at this time of year. It’s so busy at lunch there’s hardly room to walk, but it’s better in the evening. Haven’t done much sight seeing yet, but I’ve walked up along Broadway, Madison avenue, 5th ave, and seen a bunch of things. Here’s the view from my hotel room. That’s the empire state building 3 blocks away.

Times Square

Here’s a book I wrote a chapter in recently, and it’s a book I’m immensely proud to be a part of.

This year I had the honor of writing a chapter in a truly amazing book. The book is called simply “Introduction to Game Development”, published by Charles River Media, and it is a whopping 1000 page hard cover.The book is written by 27 of the worlds best game designers, developers and artists. I did the chapter on Flash games. This book is the first of its kind – it covers every facet of game development yet it is not lacking in detail. (continue reading…)

by Glen Rhodes

Creating games with Macromedia Flash MX 2004 is a rewarding endeavor for aspiring and seasoned programmers alike. With its quick download time, cross-platform deployment, ease of use, and power, Flash is quickly becoming the program of choice or online game development. The use of vector graphics also makes the games scalable for any resolution from full screen to cell phone.

Intended for both game and Web developers, Macromedia Flash MX 2004 Game Development teaches developers how to maximize Flash for the creation of online and standalone games. The entire development process is covered, from design, story and character development, to the physics and motion of a game, audio issues, optimization, and deployment. As you work through the book, you’ll create eight fun games as you learn and apply the tools of Flash. After completing these projects, you’ll be ready to produce your own high-quality games, and you’ll have the skills needed to take on more complex games. (continue reading…)

One of the most influential games on the PC of the last 25 years was undoubtedly Castle Wolfenstein.  So, when Flash 8 came out with the ability to create high speed bitmap graphics, I just had to put myself to the challenge, and make it playable online!  Click here to play it!

The engine is available to be licensed, and can be customized in a variety of ways. Click this link to see full details.

WolfenFlash 3D

This is an old favorite of mine, and so I simply couldn’t resist putting it in.  Click here to play it! It may seem a little old, or “retro”, but remember that’s the point. To accurately represent the original game.

click to play

A game I created with for Disney Online, which was essentially a very fancy Mahjong themed for a popular TV show, with all sorts of special bonuses. This was created for their TV show, “Jake’s Dragon“.

Intro Screen

Title Screen

The game in action

I did a talk for this particular conference all about Flash game development, and specifically optimizing games, and also participated in the third “IronFlash” competition, defending our title from the year earlier. IronFlash was essentially, 3 hours, to code something with a really cool theme, live on stage in front of lots of very patient people.  That year, the theme was “Diversity in Flash”.

Read on for pictures. (continue reading…)

For this conference, I did a talk on developing good Flash games.  It was a packed house and I had a great time giving my talk and sharing my ideas.

The main stage venue where I did my talk.

After my talk, in a lounge area, answering questions from attendees.

I also took place in the IronFlash competition for the first time that year with my teammate Craig Swann. Basically we were given a theme, and then had 24 hours to come up with the content, and then live on TechTV, we had to code a really cool experience to match the theme.  The theme that year was “Diversity in Flash”, and we won, and became the IronFlash Champions.

All the "IronFlash" equipment being given to the participants.

This talk was on, surprise, games.  I showed a few things about how games should be done, what to do and what not to do. In fact, the presentation SWF itself is here to be enjoyed, just read on to view it. At frame 51, it becomes interactive, so use the arrow keys to move the ball around. Remember, this was accompanied with a talk, so hopefully the slides speak for themselves. Enjoy!

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I did a talk on games at Flash Kit in 2001, when games were just starting to become feasible in Flash. Ironically, the talk was on games in general, but also on how one would integrate them to 3D – which was simply not done at the time. It was a lot of fun, in Los Angeles, at the big convention center next to the Staples Center.

My aspect on the talk was on the relatively new concept of Multiplayer gaming in Flash. Read on to see what I wrote.

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