Bracket: Another $25

I posted another bracket (2009) onto Kongregate. 250+ players this time. The changes I made after last season to get the scoring data from the results xml file has made the management side of things much easier. Essentially setup requires that I have to update the teams, copy the database table, and turn it on. Then add games to the results xml with a date/time (add as you go or all at once). And then once the tournament begins, lock out new players with a switch. After each game (block of games) I update the score/winner/loser values and run a script that updates the scores.

Fixes I made this year:

• Don't accept Kongregate guests
  
• NoCache code for the results and score data
  
• show date of the game until current day - then show time. Or score if it exists
  

The next big change will be to automate the results; I imagine I can find a sports page someplace that I can get the scores/winners.

And if I run it again, I need to figure out a way to get 100x the users. That will reveal another set of bugs to fix.

I'll likely want to rewrite the client too. I no realize the value of some fancy tweens to make the app seem cool. People love effects.

And now the bad news: $5. That's the current total I made. spider solitaire is starting to bring in that much per week (with I think mostly spider traffic and not real players). The source for all of this is still out there so if you are interested, search for it.

Flash 9

I finally upgraded to Flash 9 and ActionScript 3.0. My work still requires AS2 and so don't expect tons of AS3 stuff. But I'm ready to join to bleeding edge of technology again.

Project: Bracket Challenge

I created my own basketball bracket and ran the tournament at Kongregate.com. The Flash part was easy. The server (mySQL) was simple. The challenge was tracking the winners and losers and all the admin stuff. And so rev 1.n has better tools.

I released the entire project under the zlib license today on MountAbbey.com at Bracket Challenge. This is my first real code release for the site.

Coding is more fun than running a tournament. I came in 30th of around 300 -- most of them one time users. I was hoping for 2000. At least next time, I'll have the bugs removed.

Games: Square Nine Update

Square Nine is still doing great at wiicade. It has a 3.3 rating and 4500+ games played. I think it was a fine addition.

Games: Klondike, Spider, Fours Solitaire

This last week, I put together my first pass at a card game engine.

The card engine supports Decks, Cards, and Undo. Decks can shuffle, add/remove cards, set drag/drop restrictions, and draw in various ways. Cards have info about themselves and can be moved about. The Undo engine allows moves to be undone.

The classes were used to build three solitaire games: The Classic Klondike, Spider, and Fours. The current implementations work but are not heavily tested. The most obvious piece missing is polish.

The game itself just has to layout the positions for multiple decks, establish the drag/drop restrictions, create undo behaviors, check for victory, and in the case of Klondike -- write the autocompletion routine.

Klondike, the last in this series, was working in about 4 hours with 4 more hours of cleanup and refactoring to the card and deck class.

I hope to add animation for the cards next. And the games need sound and general polish. Likely in August.

Note: I used a deck of SVG cards from David Bellot. I was disappointed that Adobe Illustrator would not convert them to the Flash format. I expect to replace the cards and card backs as they are way to big (a bitmap for each one) and look bad (because they are imported from a bitmap).

Flash: Testimonials

I put together a testimonials movie yesterday from a Craiglist request. The request was a little old (mid-June) but it seemed like a simple enough project that had potential widespread use. Here is the demo. The donation route hasn't been working and so I think perhaps the freelance one will.

Framework: Cards

The card game framework is finally underway.

One of the first steps is to get card images. For now, I am using a free SVG deck and sliced up the image using SliceImage. SlideImage was really nifty and saved me at least an hour of cropping out each of the cards from a composite image.

The other thing of note is that I am trying both a scrum for one and Test-Driven Design. Every day there will be some refactoring too. How extreme of me!

I expect to release the framework (for Flash 7 because it must run on the Wii) when I am done with the first game using it.

Game: SquareNine

I just released a new Flash mini-game: SquareNine. It was built with the Wii in mind so it plays nicely on that system. If you like it, head to WiiCade.com to vote for it. It needs to have a 2.5 or higher rating to survive its probation period. It needs a 3.4 or so to be on the first page of the puzzle games.

If you are reading this an either want the source or to post it on another site, let me know.

Improvements over my last mini-game (Slider) is a preloader, sounds aren't on the first frame (sound movieclip with stop() on the first frame and the sounds loaded in frames 2 through N), and a really nice visual score history/meta game. My art still needs help though.

Flash: Training at cartoonsmart.com

Cartoon Smart has a bunch of training videos on Flash and drawing and actionscript. I haven't actually watched any yet. I plan to and will write up reviews once I am done. Anyone else seen these?

Hmmm. Some of the training is free. But most of it apparently costs money.

Monoface

Mono face is a brilliantly simple idea. A bunch of headshots and you get to flip through different parts.

Games: Slider on Wiicade

I released Slider onto Wiicade.com last week and made it past its probation period with a rating of 2.7/4.0. Over 1000 sessions have been played so far. The Flash project was resurrected to see what type of results I could expect from wiicade and the opera browser on the Wii.

The puzzle game is a solid implementation of a classic. The first time I played the physical puzzle I concluded it was going to be really hard and thus went about writing a computer program to solve it. Unfortunately a bug in the code led me to the incorrect solution that the puzzle was unsolvable. The next week, after I told this story about the unsolvable puzzle, a co-worker quickly found the solution.

The most obvious change made for this version was the addition of an easy and half-way mode that makes the 116+ move puzzle more accessible to first time players. The easy mode requires just 17 moves and the half-way point is around 62 moves. I didn't add any logging functionality to trace the success rate of various users.

However, the second major change was to give out colored stars when a user completes one of the puzzle modes. A big gold star is awarded for the perfect solution. Large silver stars go to users getting close. And everyone else solving the puzzle gets a bronze star. The ratings may not be obvious enough to motivate a second attempt though. I suspect if I showed the number of moves actually required, Type A personalities would try again. Another limitation is that the stars are not persistent. However, I think that this is a really good first pass at ranking system.

The third change was to add sound. A quick prototype changes into a polished product with some quick sounds. The sounds are not great but enough.

The traffic to SiriGames hasn't been changed much but I expected the growth to be slow.

Flash and Flickr: Clock

This cool Flickr Flash clock inspired me to read about the Flickr API with ActionScript.

This reminds me of human clock.