So for the past year I have been working hard as part of a team on developing a Flash game called Quantum’s Run for the Department of Education, Queensland, Australia. This game was created to help primary school students understand physics by creating a series of challenges that develop their learning of friction, forces, gravity etc. Read more

You may have noticed that the original C++ version of Box2D is now up to version 2.2.1. As of version 2.2.0 there were a few additions, one of which being a b2RopeJoint. For ActionScript 3.0 users the only choice to incorporate this feature was to use the Alchemy generated Box2D port. Developers using Box2DFlashAS3 by BorisTheBrave unfortunately did not have this as the port is of version 2.1a. That is, until now.

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In the previous screencast I showed how to install and setup HaXe and NME on a Windows 7 machine and compile to Flash and Android. This time I will demonstrate how to install and setup HaXe with NME on a Mac OS X machine and compile an open source project called BunnyMark to the iOS simulator in Xcode.

Note that you can only compile for the iOS on a Mac OS X as the compiler generates an Xcode project that Xcode then compiles.

If you have read my last post then you will know that I am endeavouring to increase my focus on mobile development. This lead to one reader mentioning an API called NME that allows code written in HaXe (very similar to AS3) to cross compile natively to Flash, Android, iOS, webOS, Windows, Mac, Linux, and HTML5 targets.

As the code is natively compiled (c++ for Android and iOS) the performance is perfectly acceptable for physics based games. This is in contrast to Adobe Air’s export to Android and iOS that has a Virtual Machine interpreting the code thereby causing poor performance.

So far I have ported a couple of earlier Box2D tutorials and successfully ran them on my Android phone at a smooth frame rate. I was also able to get it working well with the iOS simulator.

If you are interested in programming with NME then I thought I would post a screencast tutorial to demonstrate how to install and setup HaXe with NME and compile a simple HelloWorld application to Android and Flash.

Being a new year (as well as a being a while since my last post) I thought I would let you know what I have been working on and what content you can expect to see on this blog in 2012.

For the past six months I have been working on a 2D game engine that I have developed from scratch. The goal of this engine is to allow absolute freedom and ease in creating game content. So far I am pleased with the results of it, even if it is quite rough around the edges.

Without going into too much detail of the engine, it is based on a Component Based Entity System architecture. I have found using such a system allows for more freedom at the game logic layer and makes game changes easier to implement. Expect to see a few posts coming up explaining the architecture, the benefits and how I used it in my game engine.

Of course with all this game engine programming I have been using  Box2D  to power the physics and so have been experimenting with it. One of my aims was to to create a rope in the Box2D world, for which Box2D is notoriously difficult to get right. My latest creation is a climbable rope to go alongside my shooting out rope. Again, expect to see a few posts on this as well as other bits and pieces to do with Box2D.

In other news, you may be aware Adobe has pulled out of supporting Android devices with Flash Player. I feel that this unfortunately signals the decline/end of the Flash player. Rather than being too dismayed about this, instead, I see this as an opportunity for me to branch out and increase my skill set.

The first technology in my cross hairs to learn is Android development. With the marketshare of the Android platform increasing, the open nature of the development environment, as well as the similarity of Java to ActionScript 3.0 it looks like an exciting platform to target. This means that you can expect to find more Android related tutorials popping up here, including a Flash to Android tutorial series!

So 2012 is shaping up as a big, challenging, and exciting year!

Hope you enjoy.