Hi,

the game development indie/groups/companies appears and disappear every day, and in argentina are just a few in this business. just wanted to make a list and little review of the more relevant and still living projects, if you are looking for someone to make your game, or just want to contact them. also i know there are a lots of companies that make outsourcing, but i just wanted to list the small ones, to give them a little more of web presence.

if you have any suggestion for this list (add/change/delete any entry) just send me a email (david [AT] y-developments.info ) or make me a comment here.

be aware that the description (at least for the indies) are write  in a funny way

indie people:

Tyranus

One of the promises in the indie world (?). he usually make that strange indie games, but at the same time, suitable for all the people, experimenting with the gameplay and the user experience. have improved her art skills in the last year, but anyway all his work have the correct art for the project. he usually work on flash, using flixel, and making pixel art. he is working now in a big and secret project that could change the world (ok maybe i’m exaggerating, but will be awesome anyway )

web: http://www.tyranus.com.ar/

contact: alejandro.adrian.iglesias[AT]gmail.com

2bam (nitram_cero)

The most ugly, crazy, and beared men in the argentinian indie scene. anyway, even with all his defects, is a good guy, with crazy ideas and *usually* know what he is doing. from a personal opinion, i’m amazed from his knowledge, he knows flash,c/c++,asm (?) and how to cook the rice xD. right now is working for a company making games (i’m not sure if a can say the name, sorry ) but he will be always a indie, making those flash and pixelated games. his last work was a entry for the last CODEAR, you can see it here. he also made a flixel map editor called flan, that you can see here

web: http://www.2bam.com/

contact: twobananasandmilk[AT]gmail.com

Daniel Bermegui

The indie Super Star, some people say that is a legend, other people say that have seen hus half-hair head (the urban myths says that he lost half of the hair making a art game called today i die ) i don’t  know him too much, the last time i have seen some comics drawn by him, that i think still needs work, dunno what is he doing now, usually his project are a secret at least for me )

web: http://www.ludomancy.com/

contact: daniel[AT]ludomancy.com

Martin Gonzalez

martin is….. martin great experience making games, one of the founders of DarkSpell games, and creator WAK. he also developed  several commercial games in companies as joju games, sabarasa etc.. right now is working in vostu and making a top down killing zombies games, i hope we could see it soon

web: i think don’t have one

Puelo Games

My old friend, puelo, he also make games ! he started making clones and is still doing it but is making some original project that we hope could see soon right now is working in a innovative TD type game, and making snowboard in his 5 star resort in rio negro (?) (yes, he is a eXtreme dev )

web http://www.puelogames.com.ar/

contact puelogames[AT]gmail.com

il Mare Games

another one that i don’t know too much, anyway his work have improved a lot from their first games. dunno what is doing now.

web http://ilmaregames.com.ar/

Small groups and companies

Heavy Boat

a small company formed by 2 experienced professionals in the game industry, david roguin (another founder of DarkSpell games, that worked also in tons of games in companies as QB9) and  Juan (founder of 9a18 studio, that also worked in QB9) and also a great artist called leo, who really make amazing art pieces. they are working and making project for big and important companies, and also producing their own original projects, if you are looking for a company that could convert your idea into a reality, this is one of the best choices . also, if you are developer, is a MUST to read their devlog.

web: http://heavyboat.com/

contact: contact[AT]heavyboat.com

Killabunnies

a group of 3 people that live and work on santa fe, away from the capital of the country, but producing amazing and innovative stuff. the team is composed by Luciano Vairoli, leader and game designer, with a career developing games from the stone age (and i’m being serious here). he made games for 486 DX, and consoles as atari. the other 2 members are a as3 dev (mariano obeid) and a artist (andres miranda). his biggest hit is a puzzle game called bubba time a game that mix the control of the time as braid with salomon key. a great and polished product indeed. they are available to make projects, so, give him a shout

web http://www.killabunnies.com.ar/

contact info[AT]killabunnies.com.ar

Jengibre

a game dev company managed by Andres Martinez Quijano,  they focus to outsource and make advergames. they made great games for famous companies and sites as Taringa! and Fox. if you look for quality advergames, this is a good option.

web: http://jengibre.com.ar/

contact: info[AT]jengibre.com.ar

South Winds Games

SWG is a company focused to produce family casual games and managed by Juan Pablo Ferreyra. they have 3 successful games that you can buy here

web http://www.southwindsgames.com/

contact contact[AT]southwindsgames.com

and that’s all buddies, i hope this could help you in some way, if you want to be in this list, just send me a email or write a comment in this post

PD: i’d like that ipsilon development could be there, but we are not making games at this moment, and i dunno when we could make them again

Regards,

Shadow.

Hi,

recently come up to the net 3 important contests to develop android compatible games with flash, the prizes are good, and is sponsored by adobe, if you are interested, are this:

in FGL: ?http://www.flashgamelicense.com/sponsor_pages/adobe/? there are 30.000 USD in prizes, 150 winners.

in mochimedia: http://mochiland.com/articles/announcing-the-mochi-made-for-mobile-contest-with-adobe here are 15.000 USD in prizes, less winner tough

in kongregate: http://www.kongregate.com/pages/mobile-game-contest like 30.000 USD in prizes.

anyway, check the rules of the contest (the detail ones, the user agreement) why usually just for winning or entering a contest like this you are giving to the sponsor a non-exclusive sponsorship.

Regards,

Shadow

Hi,

when i installed the new 9.10 ubuntu in my new notebook, i realized time after the problem with the clicks in some flash app’s. was really troublesome, like see youtube videos or any other flash app i wanted to use/try.

today, after like 6 months with this problem i found the solution on this blog (in spanish). basically you need to edit the npviewer like this:

sudo gedit /usr/lib/nspluginwrapper/i386/linux/npviewer

and add this line before the last one:

export GDK_NATIVE_WINDOWS=1

save it and restart any browser that you have running

Regards,

Shadow.

Hi,

i wanted to write some posts explaining the ways to get money from the web development, and for this first article i going to start talking about flash games.

just a little warnings, all of the exposed here is what i learned from other blogs, forums and people that are in the industry, i tried some methods and other i do not, so, take it as an opinion and not as a fact, i learned with the pass of the time that anything in business is a fact, everything that you think going to go okay could go wrong and vice versa, the only thing you can do is read, learn and try it yourself.

Flash the low entry platform

in my opinion flash is one of the best tool to start with the game development, and here i going to list the most important reason:

1. learn curve is not too big as other languages
2. have a lot of tools and functions for graphics operation
3. exist  a market for the flash games today
4. you do not need to put a penny to develop in flash, you have great IDE and compiler to create your games
5. there are lots of libraries ready for your animation, physics, network etc.. management

Flash games, how to make money from it?

there exist several ways to make money from it, you just need to see what fit better for your capacity of development and the games that you are aiming to make.

game sposnor: the game sponsor consist in that the game portals, pay you a fixed amount 1 time to put her logo and link into your game. there are several types of licensing, exclusive, non-exclusive etc.. each of them have different amount of revenue and obligations from the developer, usually is a common agree between the portal owner and the developer. the only and best portal for this, is flashgamelicense.com, there you can upload your game and the portal are able to test it and send you a offer to sponsor it. also recently has been launched the Mochi Fund, a sponsor program controlled my mochimedia. this is usually the most secure way to get a good money from your games, maybe it take a while to find a good sponsor (up to 1 month) but it can worth the effort

micro transactions: this type of revenue come directly from the user, you offer the game for free but the users need to pay to access extra content (as levels, custom character etc..). it usually have success in multi player or premium games, and you have several already made solutions for this as, gamersafe and mochicoins. the problem with this system is that the charge you 30% to 50% of your revenue and at the same time is not easy make a balanced game with the enough free content and attractive pay content, is usually used for mid-big projects

outsourcing-clone game: maybe this is the most hated of all the way to make money. if you are just starting and need fast funding to continue or want fast money, this is the short path. is like working as a freelancer, usually the portal owners request you to make a game “like this” with new art and maybe some change, you usually have a low rate but is secured money why you are just doing what the portal want and he decide all the game design stuff.

in-game ads: if you want to make your own creations whiteout taking in consideration standards or already proved gameplay, this going to be maybe your only option to make profit from your game. there are 2 main ads network, CPMstar and Mochiads, i used mochiads and is very good but the problem with this type of revenue is that you need to have a lots of gameplay (we are talking about millions) to make some hundred bucks and if you released a game with ads, is difficult to find a sponsor that want to pay a license for it.

donations: maybe this is the most “indie” way to make money from your games. of course that from here you can’t even expect get any money, as it depends from the willing of the people and that depends in the target of people that is reaching your games. usually is very good used for non-conventional games (and not only made it in flash).

Conclusion:

basically here i detail the different revenue sources that you can get making flash games, but at the end just depend of what is your capacity of making games and what you are aiming (make original games or just make money from it). is proved that the art and the original ideas can make a lot of money, but is just proved by a few smart people that was able to find the balance between art and diversion.

i hope this post has been useful for you in some way

Regards,

Shadow.

Hi,

today i wanted to share the final and absolute way to embedded fonts in as3 for flashdevelop or flex, why is something that is not real clear when you search in internet and like you usually don’t get warning and that stuff when something is wrong, is hard to diagnostic the problem.

this is an example class using a embebbed font:

package{

import flash.display.Sprite;

import flash.text.TextField;
import flash.text.TextFormat;

public class test extends Sprite{

[Embed(source = "C:/7theb.ttf", fontFamily = "7th Service",fontStyle="normal", fontWeight = "bold", mimeType = "application/x-font")]
private var theboldfont:Class;

public var txtFormat:TextFormat = new TextFormat();

public var textTest:TextField = new TextField();

public function test(){

txtFormat.font = new theboldfont().fontName;
txtFormat.color = 0xFFFFFF;

textTest.embedFonts = true;
textTest.defaultTextFormat = txtFormat;
textTest.text=”Testing font”;

}

}

}

now, let analyze the code:

1)the EMBED tag:

maybe this will be the most common source of the problems when you need to embebbed a font. in the example, the font have 5 parameters:

source: this is where the font file is located, as you see, even it’s windows. is needed to use / and not \ as is commonly use for this OS

fontFamily: this is basically the fontFamily that the font belongs, to know it just open the font and you will see it

fontStyle: this is as the word say, the style of the font, can be normal, italic etc..

fontWeight: this could be bold or normal

mimeType: for fonts is always: application/x-font

also there are other properties that can be defined:

fontName: this is the name of the font, if you open the font you will see it and you can define it (some times is necessary but other times broke the code and the font is now showing, like the example i put here)

usually the use of this tag is something of try and fail thing with each font, some fonts will work with all parameters, others you just need to ignore them or you put the wrong family name, weight or style.

then following with the code, we are setting the  textFormat.font instancing a new object from the class “theboldfont” that is the one that keeps the properties of the embebed font. in the same line we access to the fontName property that the class have to assign this value to the textFormat.font property.

them, line below, we set the property embebedFonts to true in the textField object and the defaultTextFormat to the textFormat previously defined. i tried to use the function setTextFormat for this also but didn’t work, maybe is why i’m using flash develop but i do not know why

and we are done ! you have embebbed your font and should be working

if not, check and play with the properties of the embed tag, adding/changing/erasing the attributes.

i hope it help you to save some hours of work

Regards,

Shadow.

Hi,

something weird that happened to my 2 days ago, i was working in a component that load images in a slideshow gallery, and like can load images from other url’s that are not where the swf is hosted, you can’t access the content of the loader for the security policies of flash, so the only way to show the loaded images is getting the loader (and in bulkloder the Loader-get(ID).loader don’t work also).

the solution was easy, just update your version of bulkloader to the last revision where this bug has been fixed

just i wanted to share this tip so someone else don’t lose time searching for it

Regards.

Shadow.

Hi,

today in this post i going to explain how to use this helpful class that have the purpose to call and receive the return of javascript functions from the flash enviorment.

Basically the function that make the trick is call(), this static function let you call any existent javascript function in the current document and get the returned value if exist.

in an example:

Flash side:

import flash.external.ExternalInterface;

var result:String=ExternalInterface.call(“alertFunction”,”Hello World”);

trace(result);

Javascript Side:

function alertFunction(message){

if(alert(message)){

return true;

}else{

return false;

}

}

As you see, in the flash part we are calling statically the call functions and passing as first parameter the name of the javascript function and secondly and string, that are the parameter required by the javascript function. there is no limit in the amount of parameter that can be passed to the call function and going to be passed to the javscript function when is called. also as you see, we are storing the value returned by the javascript function in a variable also to use it later.

it’s useful method to manipulate html info or elements from the flash using this function as a bridge.

as far as i know, it work also on actionscript 2 but i’m not sure. also this work on the major browser that have javascript supported but again, i’m not sure if it work in all (example: IE6, IE7 etc..)

i hope it help you to use this function and if you need more reference, just look at the adode docs

Regards,

Shadow.

Hi,

the other day i was thinking to make a site where you play a random game each time you visit.

so, i have registered a domain and set it up:

Rand Games

need to do a lot of more work on it, i’m still thinking some features i can add and a proper design for it (that need to be light and at the same time, look nice)

As soon i make some changes, i going to post it here

Regards,

Shadow.

Hi,

the last days i was working on a API for project. for that, i was needed to set a OAuth system. all went perfect but i have a problem when i wanted to use the API in a AJAX app.

as you already know, AJAX it’s a technique where you use javascript to request info to a page and show it to the user. as you also know, javascript it’s executed in the user machine, and for OAuth it’s a problem :s

no matter what how it’s implemented the OAuth system in the API that you need to use, you need always to send the $consumer_key and the $consumer_secret encrypted in the signature, also depending of the type of request, also need to send the $token and $token_secret, for that, you can’t include in any javascript way (or in a swf) any of this vars why compromise the security of the consumer, why any with this data can access to the protected resources as you.

for that, the solution it’s to create a bridge between your AJAX/FLASH app and the API/OAuth server.

the process it’s simple, create a php with a code like this:

<?php

//check if the one who are making the call to the bridge it’s trusted

//for that you can use a filter ip, an authenticated session or any method that fits your needs

$consumer_key=”lalala”;

if($trusted){

//making the request

$result=$OAuth->request($url_of_the_server.$_GET['service'],

$consumer_key,$consumer_secret,$_SESSION['token'],$_SESSION['token_secret']);

echo $result;

}

?>

of course the code can be diferent depending of your client library and stuff, but basically that are the steps to make the bridge:

1)check that the one who call the bridge it’s trusted or ahiterized, checking a sesssion var or anything what you have

2)make the request using the $service var that define the service to call to the service

3)print the result of the call and it’s done

i hope this give you some help at the time to use OAuth and REST with ajax and flash

Regards,

Shadow.

Hi,

today i’m really happy it’s available for download in several format the new version of the flash plugin for linux it’s a great update, why if you are a developer, can develop and enjor the new improvement of this version, and if you are user, the same but better

i already installed it and i noticed a better performance than the version 9.

so, dont waste more time, go now and update your plugin

http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash&P2_Platform=Linux

Regards,

Shadow.