I still haven’t come up with a decent working title for my farm-based tornado game. I wasn’t trying to make another Farmville, so I’m not sure I want “farm” in the name, but I guess it couldn’t hurt. At any rate, still calling it Dorothy until something better comes along. I’m pretty sure I can’t (or shouldn’t) use that name for legal reasons.

So I am hoping to spend a solid 8 hours today just tightening things up a bit. I have about 700 things I want to change/try/upgrade, but that kind of scope creep will ensure that I am still talking about the upcoming release a year from now. I think its best to just get version 1.0 out there and see if people play it, then think about new features. After all, this Flash game is really just meant to get my feet wet with the Mochi API and their network. I hope to simply use it as a means to learn what I can accomplish by publishing games this way.

So tonight I will get some live feedback from the folks at the Adobe User Group Chicago, when they kindly allow me to spend 15 minutes showing them a beta release. I’m not sure there is even 15 minutes of entertainment there, but maybe somebody will ask questions

As a Flash Developer, I rarely get to build whole web sites. When I do, I usually turn to Joomla and then go find a graphic artist to tell me what horrible mistakes I have made regarding aesthetics. But I already have a good feel for the teams “brand”, and had some good input from the major stakeholders regarding the appearance and functionality. So I took as stab at the graphic design myself, and managed to make it not suck.

Many years ago I created a simple tornado that moves randomly across the screen. You can see it in the header of this web site. For a long time I thought “there has to be an online game in there somewhere”. I have been looking for an idea that I can launch on Facebook, and it would need to be a casual game type of idea. So recently I started coding something in my spare time. Its been an exersize in using 30 minute sessions to create one new simple feature each time, and walk away. Definitely a new approach to coding for me, but one that has proved valuable in both my use of free time, as well as keeping the energy and ideas fresh.

If I had a “labs” section to my site, thats where this would belong. It’s far from finished…

With each new feature, I just let them game evolve. There was no specific road map, I just did what I wanted to do each time I sat down. I wouldn’t claim that this approach is all that practical in the world of client-driven software development. I guess thats why I really like building things for myself, and the pure love of seeing it take shape. I don’t know what this will become, but I’m having fun and thats what counts. (Try saving the cows by dragging them into the barn)

After reading Stephen King’s On Writing, I realized that some very successful people actually try to let their story tell itself. One thing I took away from the book, which I felt was really valauble, was the notion of starting my story with one simple situation. Now you may be asking, how is a Flash game a story? Well..in my opinion, it better tell a story or all you have is a lot of randomly moving pixels! The best games out there all have a terrific narrative, in addition to stunning graphics. My games don’t always have stunning graphics, so I at least need a good story. So getting back to Stephen King…I loved his idea of not knowing ahead of time how the story was going to unfold. Start with an interesting situation, in my case, a tornado touching down on a farm. What happens next? Well, who doesn’t marvel at seeing livestock getting tossed around? I don’t know where this is all going to lead, but I hope it becomes a King of a story

Michael Shaffner was nice enough to invite me back for another presentation. Last Fall I spoke to the group about the GAIA Flash Framework. This time it’s all about physics in Flash. I had the opportunity to use the AS3 port of Box2D on a very recent project that is set to launch on 1/15/10. It was a tricky package to learn, but I was able to find some great tutorials on the Web. Hopefully I can put together some coherent thoughts on how to get a kick-start into coding this stuff, and present that to the group.

The best resources I found were some samples posted by Emmanualle Feronato. He was kind enough to provide demos and code samples for many of the basic concepts in Box2D. From there I was able to produce a few class files that are generic enough to jump start any Box2D project I might want to develop. The original C++ code was written by Erin Catto, and the AS3 port was made possible by Colin Northway.

So I am planning to put something together that I can post here as well. Maybe not another full-blown SLide_rocket presentation, but some samples and a link to the web site we hope to launch soon. The AUG meetup is on January 18th, downtown.