And suddenly there was Flixel, a free and open-source gameengine. Very well designed, fast to step into, made for ActionScript 3 and very versatile. The engine was released only some weeks ago, but the community is currently submitting first games. Time to talk to Adam Atomic: The guy who wrote this genious piece of software. Let’s jump right in!

Flixel and a little code-example.

Why did you made Flixel? Where did the inspiration came from?

Flixel is probably my most selfish project ever! The whole idea behind it was just to make it easier for me to make and distribute the kinds of games that I like to make. After my third game I had most of the bits and pieces that I needed, and figured with maybe a long weekend I could clean it up enough that maybe other people could use it too.

Is there any deeper open-source related philosophy behind Flixel, or was is a more practical decision to do this thing?

Read more »

Yesterday I came upon the website of a hacker-legend: John T. Draper aka Capt’n Crunch, who did Phone Phreaking in the 60ies and 70ies. One of the real ancestors of what we nowadays call “hacking”. He linked a documentary about the early days and the development of hacking.

Let’s name the “Homebrew Computer Club” as one of the (of not the) first hacker-space ever made, that led to a highly influential movement within the computer-market. Steve Wozniak was part of that hacker-space and he is really embracing the hackers way of thinking. At him we see, that this don’t must develop into illegal kinds of activities, but let to a highly influential company, we still now today under the name Apple.

Hacker-Spaces are still relevant, if not much important now, than in the past. The documentary gives a good insight into meaning, methodology and cultural impact of the hackers-movement.

You will possibly enjoy this experiment on BBC news as much as I did. A 13-year old boy replaced his iPod with a Walkman, the “iPod of the past” – a bulky piece of portable technology his father used to carry around. Some of the refreshing statements:

“It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape. That was not the only naive mistake that I made; I mistook the metal/normal switch on the Walkman for a genre-specific equaliser, but later I discovered that it was in fact used to switch between two different types of cassette.”

Some of the results of this experiment:

“Throughout my week using the Walkman, I came to realise that I have very little knowledge of technology from the past. I made a number of naive mistakes, but I also learned a lot about the grandfather of the MP3 Player. (…) Did my dad, Alan, really ever think this was a credible piece of technology?“

Go on and read the whole article. There are more conclusions ahead. And cool pictures as well.

Well, a heartening short movie about growing up. It was a student-work on info-graphics at the Vancover Film School, made by Jr. Carnest. (via)

Records and process voice at Ableton Live. See the second tutorial at Torley.com

Torley once again made some very lovely video-tutorials. This time, he teaches us how to make some freaky alien voice recordings, some topic that should be also interesting for videogame-designers. So much fun watching this. Should be also much fun doing it. Thanks!

Yeah, brilliant cartoon, that has got some insights into the gaming-market, almost as a by-product. Have Fun.

Fantastic new chip-music magazine. The name is hard to remember: STFUAJPGM. But the music will last. The focus is set on freely distributed music within the chiptune community. The first episode features a selection of precious chip-tunes and small interviews as well. Keep an eye on it. It will be worth it!

PS: The first track from Shnabubula in the first episode seems to be obviously inspired by the ancestors of Tetris music. For a deeper background, watch this video, and also follow the links in the description of the video (on YouTube), for example this one. Thank you guys so much for this great stuff!