Yes I'm still alive! Development on Beat Me Up Too has been consuming all of my time. The game is a little behind schedule; I'm expecting it will come out in the beginning of August now. Setting up your own Flash server from scratch with only ssh proved to be a little more difficult than I originally thought! (Some of your may have noticed when I switched servers that Beat Me Up stopped working temporarily) Perhaps I will make an article on how to do it so other Flash developers don't run into the same problems...
That's it for now, back to programming...

Amber has posted another great dev journal for Beat Me Up Too on 61 FPS, this time I got to interview her. This week also features a bonus random cloudburst.

2008-07-15
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Server migration successful!
And there was much rejoicing throughout the land

2008-07-14
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Notice

I will be changing servers today from Spry to VPSLink so there may be some downtime for willperone.net and Beat Me Up.

2008-07-08
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I've been working for myself for 5 weeks now and new realizations are still dawning on me. I've noticed an ever increasing frustration when deciding whether to buy things or eat out or go on a drive. After much thought I realized that my frustration was actually coming from my lack of knowing how much money I actually have. When I was getting a steady paycheck working as an employee I could easily say that I have $X this month to play around with because my paycheck was $Y (which I know I will get month after month) and I have $Z in bills to pay.
When I started my company howeve>>>

2008-07-07
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Beat Me Up Too Development Journal Part 4 has been added to 61FPS by my awesome artist Amber. This one is centered more around my history and how I began making games. Check it out.

2008-06-28
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The Beat Me Up Too artist Amber has been blogging our development progress on Beat Me Up Too on 61 FPS. All you Beat Me Up fans can check out the latest article in the series here.

2008-06-28
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Very few Flash games are networked these days even though the vast majority of console and PC games are. What's going on here? Let me enlighten you.
To get any sort of decent network functionality working in Flash (I'm talking Sockets here, not that URLLoader crap) there are some pretty ridiculous hurdles to overcome:

Most Flash programmers are not good programmers. It doesn't help that Flash CS3 is too easy to use. By that I mean that designers are now programming games, not progr>>>

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iongion s if that's not enough, the server must also have a 'crossdomain.xml' file on the root of the server that also allows you to access its content. Yea, I'll just go ask my webhosting company for that.... using socket server, you can forget about normal hosting sollutions. did you try using flash media server hosting ? it can be viable solution for your issues, you can built interactive games much easier with fms than with sockets, it does synchronization by itself and all the kitchen stuff in network games programming
Lucas Araujo Well, now you have the nonoba.com and their Multiplayer API: http://www.nonoba.com/developers/multiplayerapi/overview
Frédéric Dénommé OK I'll bite on this one. I made a multiplayer flash game in 2001 called Underground. It was about breakdancing and tagging subway stations on a map and it used LoadVariables in Flash 5 and it worked pretty good. But as you say - sockets are usually the way to go now. I remember making a few sockets tests in 2002-3 without too much trouble (two players moving on a map - didn't go very far in DEV but the basics worked great). Why is it hard to use crossdomain.xml? Why is it hard to use port 843 (i don't remember having trouble). I had used a PHP socket server tutorial and had managed to tweak it pretty easily. Of course - some hosting might limit you on that - but it's not a problem with the technology per se. So yea - I would say the main reason was lack of advanced web/backend programmers in Flash back then. But is this still a problem really? I have a hard time believing things could be worse FIVE years later - no?
Will To clarify, it's hard for the beginner but more of just a pain in the ass for advanced programmers to set up. As far as the crossdomain.xml thing goes, the frustrating this is how Adobe seems to randomly change the specs/requirements for the crossdomain and the only way to find out about it is that your stuff suddenly doesn't work.
James Hofmann This isn't a Flash networking problem, really - Flash has its share of bugs and issues(most notably, there's an outstanding bug in which failure to connect for the security policy means you have to refresh the page, as it'll cache the failure and never try again) but the biggest problem is that network programming, and especially multiplayer network programming, is just plain hard. You can make very few assumptions about the state of everyone connected to the game: whether their connection is still alive, how much bandwidth is available, how much you can trust them, how well they will predict and sync when given limited information about state. There are annoying limitations that come from the security requirements, for sure - it's quite a baroque system - but once the connection is established and you have settled on a transmission format things become a lot smoother.
BlogReader It's my opinion that if you can't make a good game, don't distribute your game, keep it to yourself and have fun with your friends. I stopped reading there. Games in flash are meant to be fun casual ones. If everyone had to wait for Perone's blessing on if their game was a "good" one (WTF does that mean) there wouldn't be many out there.
Will This is an article represents my opinion, you have every right to disagree and of course 'good' is a very nebulous term. I do think that independent developers are responsible for a lot of the innovation in the game industry but there are also the developers that essentially copy existing games or pump out half assed game after half assed game expecting to make a quick buck. Naturally we all start somewhere; when I began making games 15 years ago, they all pretty much sucked but hell, they were my games and I was proud of em. Given today's insta-depolyment technology however, I don't believe I would have released them to the masses.
Raul http://www.showdowninteractive.com/ check it out! we did'it for the one show festival of this year Saludos!!

2008-06-23
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This is now my 3rd week of working for myself and I've noticed some interesting things happen. There is a subtle ever present stress that people have when they have normal jobs as an employee especially in the software industry where most people are salaried [they get paid the same amount of money no matter how much they work; this is a common way for companies to exploit their workers without paying them for it... but that's another blog altogether].
I noticed last week that my face looked somehow younger and I began to analyze why. It was then that I noticed that somet>>>

2008-06-05
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Around the same time I decided to leave Loopt and start my own company, I also decided to start taking gymnastics.... and yes I'm 27 years old. I had always wanted to do gymnastics but my situation was never conducive to take it. I've played many sports in my day: varsity soccer and varsity wrestling in high school, Dux Ryu Ninjitsu, Chito Ryu Karate, rock climbing, weight training and even some boxing but I've always felt that one of my biggest strengths wasn't being taken advantage of: my flexibility, balance and high strength to weigh>>>

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