Real Life

AS3 & Flash / Programming / Real Life — 40 Comments
21
Apr 10

Flash is my platform.

Hi, my name is Troy. I’m a Flash Developer.

Like many people my age, I first experimented with Flash during college. It was the 90′s, the web was new and exciting, and honestly we’d try anything.

I got into it deep. I created the site OpenSWF.org. I maintained an updated SWF file format spec and built a Java-based player. In fact, this was pre-ActionScript, so I even designed an extension mechanism that leveraged Java’s dynamic class loading to allow on-the-fly, distributed updates to the player itself.

Then, I graduated from college, I got married, I got a grown-up job; I left my childish Flash ways behind me and got serious: C++, vector units, video game consoles, multi-million dollar projects.

Five years later I read an incredibly influential whitepaper from Scott Bilas, former Bungie engineer, based on his GDC 2005 presentation: What About Flash? Can We Really Make Games With It? I fell back in love.

Within a year I set out to launch my first (and only) startup, Mockingbird Games, with the goal of making game making as fun as game playing. Much like YouTube, we leveraged the Flash Platform to deliver our core experience to as many people as possible.

For the last 3 years I’ve been developing on the Flash Platform all day, every day. I’ve designed and built a flexible game architecture, a large and complex web application, and many games and apps for clients such as MTV, Paramount, Disney, Mattel and Hasbro. Me, myself and I programmed every single line of code. Millions of people have played these games and used these apps, and tens of thousands of games/levels have been made with just our apps.

During those 3 short years, the Flash Platform has gone from v8 to v10, from ActionScript2 to ActionScript3, from purely interpreted to a modern, JIT’d virtual machine, from a vector-only renderer to a high-performance raster/bitblit renderer. We’ve gotten a declarative markup language for building apps, a high-quality UI framework, multiple free & commercial IDEs and an open-source compiler.

I can write an app for the Flash Platform, compiled with free, open-source tools using a free, open-source SDK, and it will run on Windows, OS X, Linux, Android and iPhone with zero changes. I don’t need anyone’s permission to do this, or anyone’s blessing. My app sinks or swims based on its quality, including not only the work I’ve done but the work I’m building on top of, the Flash Platform itself.

Amazingly, I could have done this 4 years ago with Flash. In fact, in 2006 I could have used a freely available compiler (mtasc) and free toolchain (swfmill) to produce a SWF that would still work today, unchanged on these platforms. But I digress…

I’m not alone in my experience: there are thousands of Flash developers out there building fantastic interactive content. Fantastic webapps like Picnik, Audiotool, Playcrafter and Balsamiq. Even more fantastic games like Canabalt, Machinarium and Club Treasure World. And about a hundred thousand more examples.

There’s something all of these examples have in common: their monetization and distribution are entirely within the control of their developers, and they are freely accessible by virtually any modern desktop computer. For me, this is the definition of an open platform.

Furthermore, many of these apps were built with freely available, open-source tools. They’re all published to a bytecode format that’s documented, well-defined and backwards compatible. They run on a player that’s freely available and is actively being maintained, improved and migrated to new platforms. For me, this is the definition of an open platform.

Flash has provided some unbelievable shoulders for me to stand on. I have used Flash to make my livelihood, to create my dreams and to share them with millions. I’ve used dozens of others languages and platforms over my last 20 years of programming, and none have done as much for me.

I support Flash. I’ll defend its role in the modern web. Flash is my platform.

Real Life — 6 Comments
13
Apr 10

Tax the Top, or Tax the Bottom?

Conventional Republican wisdom is that cutting taxes on the rich stimulates the economy because of “trickle-down” as they spend and hire as a result of the added income. I don’t know if anyone has definitively shown this to be true, and I don’t know if you can. But here’s a thought experiment (which admittedly may be too simplistic):

Imagine $50,000 in “tax cuts.” Should we give that benefit to the top income earners, middle income earners, or bottom income earners?

Consider an extremely top earner earning $500,000 a year. Does the $50k change their life? No. Are they likely to spend it? Not immediately, and most likely not in a stimulative fashion. Does the tax cut reduce their burden on the government? No, because they’re already not a burden, i.e. they aren’t leveraging Medicare/Medicaid, welfare, food stamps, etc.

Now consider two top earners making $250k a year each. They get tax cuts of $25k each. Does it change their lives? Probably not. Are they likely to spend it? More likely, sure, often times on debt or major purchases (home, car). Stimulative effect? Minor, but some. Reduced burden on the government? Not really, again because they’re not likely utilizing expensive welfare services.

Now consider four middle earners making $125k a year each. They get tax cuts of $12.5k each. Does it change their lives? Probably doesn’t change their lives, but it can make some big differences. Credit cards get paid off. Down payments on a home get made. Car gets paid off. Or, if stuck in savings, now someone who more than likely didn’t have a significant savings “buffer” now has a few months of money to help them whether the storm. This buffer saves them even if they lose their jobs, or have emergency medical expenses, or wreck their car. Again, this earner is less dependent on welfare, etc., but they’re now less likely to ever need it because they’re in a “safer” spot financially.

Finally, consider 16 low income earners making $32k a year each. They each get tax cuts of $3.2k. Does it change their lives? Significantly. Simply spread out over the course of the year it’s enough to make the difference between being in the red at the end of each month and being in the black. A family of four could move from a 2 bedroom apartment to a 3 bedroom apartment. Healthcare insurance becomes a possibility. Medicaid is less necessary. Food stamps are less likely. Overall quality of life shifts subtly but significantly from sinking to staying afloat. And all the money spent is most likely spent at local businesses, subject to sales taxes, benefitting the local community, and directly employing other low wage workers.

Simplistic, sure. But certainly a more compelling and detailed argument than simple “trickle-down economics.” In the case of the top earner, the tax cut is more like a bonus, a cherry on top of an already comfortable, ultra high quality standard of living, with the most likely beneficiaries being other high income earners in the form of commissions on investments, etc. In the case of the bottom earner, the tax cut represents a make or break amount of money, the difference between a livable and poverty lifestyle, a reduction of secondary costs to the government, a healthier, lower-stress population spending money at the local level.

In all cases, the surface cost to the government is the same $50k in loss tax revenues. I think it’s pretty clear which category benefits the most people to the greatest extent.

Movies / Web Dev — No Comments
23
Oct 08

Text-to-Movie

Text-to-Movie by xtranormal. Very cool. Reading the “about us” page sounds familiar. They’re clearly wanting to do the same thing with movies that we’re doing with games.

Nice metaphor they’ve taken advantage of is the notion of a “script” (i.e. typed dialogue and stage direction) as a fundamental component of movies. People get that, they can wrap their heads around it. I think we’re close to finding the same thing with games, but the metaphor is not quite as concrete yet.

Music — No Comments
5
Oct 08

Monkey: Journey To The West

Monkey: Journey To The West (the album) from the team behind Gorillaz. Cool.

Real Life — No Comments
4
Oct 08

Three guys walk into a bar…

Here’s a rough draft of a joke based on an exchange I just read on reddit:

Three guys walk into a bar. They order some beers and start talking about their high school years. The first guy says, “I spent my time on BBS’s searching for porn.” The second guy responds, “That’s funny, I don’t remember any BBS’s having a search feature.” The third guy says, “His BBS’s didn’t either: why do you think he had to spend so much time on them?”

Hmm… it was funnier in my head! Revisions welcome in the comments!

Seriously, though, our modern web world orbits around search in a way that not too long ago was completely foreign.

AS3 & Flash / Indie Game Dev / Mockingbird / Real Life — 1 Comment
23
Sep 08

Richard Garriott’s Asteroids

Richard Garriott’s Asteroids as seen on the Colbert Report. I knocked this up in Mockingbird in about 10 minutes. Very hackish, just downloaded a Garriott picture from Wikipedia and an Asteroids screenshot, cutting out the various pieces. Dead simple.

Movies — 1 Comment
5
Sep 08

How to read a movie

In simplistic terms: Right is more positive, left more negative. Movement to the right seems more favorable; to the left, less so. The future seems to live on the right, the past on the left. The top is dominant over the bottom. The foreground is stronger than the background. Symmetrical compositions seem at rest. Diagonals in a composition seem to "move" in the direction of the sharpest angle they form, even though of course they may not move at all. Therefore, a composition could lead us into a background that becomes dominant over a foreground. Tilt shots of course put everything on a diagonal, implying the world is out of balance. I have the impression that more tilts are down to the right than to the left, perhaps suggesting the characters are sliding perilously into their futures. Left tilts to me suggest helplessness, sadness, resignation. Few tilts feel positive. Movement is dominant over things that are still. A POV above a character's eyeline reduces him; below the eyeline, enhances him. Extreme high angle shots make characters into pawns; low angles make them into gods. Brighter areas tend to be dominant over darker areas, but far from always: Within the context, you can seek the "dominant contrast," which is the area we are drawn toward. Sometimes it will be darker, further back, lower, and so on. It can be as effective to go against intrinsic weightings as to follow them.

How to read a movie – Roger Ebert’s Journal.

Programming / Real Life — No Comments
1
Aug 08

I guess I’m a hippie.

In the Perforce Software Newsletter, Robert X. Cringely writes about 3 types of programmers: nerds, hippies and lumpen programmers. I’m definitely a hippie. And I can’t wait until we can hire a few nerds to do my bidding… ;-)

Real Life — No Comments
29
Jul 08

Guilty as charged.

47 Hats – Stop Stealing.

Programming / Real Life — No Comments
19
Jul 08

Domino Logic

Fairly brilliant geek stuff…

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