Toaster Bro alpha: 10 days later
Did I mention my new game, "Toaster Bro"? Play Toaster Bro alpha version 1!
(You will need Flash Player 10.)
Ten days have elapsed since I shared this version with friends (who are unwittingly being used as play testers). It's time for a "wrap-up" meeting, because I want to examine what went wrong/right, and instead of a meeting it's a blog post:
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8-bit NTSC artifacts using Pixel Bender
By request, here's a quick 'n dirty test harness, and sample code, for NTSC artifacts in the style of the 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System (NES):
Click the animation to change scale & scroll speed.
Source code & .fla: nes_ntsc.zip
The .pbk code is not optimized yet. The code is fairly explicit, I tried to explain how it works in the comments. Blargg's pages have better explanations tho.
The test harness lets you select two flavors of the effect. The numbers 8 and 12 denote the width of the lowpass window used for applying crosstalk. 12 is more processor-intensive, but will look "smoother", which may not be what you want. The mathematics can be reduced to a few (long) lines, which should reduce processor overhead; I want to do this in the future. unic0rn left some nice comments suggesting more routes to optimization.
The filter still needs some tuning. Areas of solid (non-black) color have diagonal stripes in them. I believe that normalizing the strengths of the filters will fix this.
To be continued...
Tweetcoding: Round 1 Winners
Hooray, I'm a runner-up in the first Tweetcoding contest. My entry "Ghost Marquee" placed in the top 4. The code extracts certain bits from a string of jibberish, 6 bits at a time; when arranged on a grid, the bits form a message.
Also I had 2 notable mentions with Sea Sphere and 3D Sketch. I figured my entry The w00t Quilt would have placed, but perhaps I'm just easily hypnotized...
I think the strongest entry was Diagonal Snake by @tomee6, which is (not coincidentally) also one of the winners. Move the mouse to attract the snake; you lose when the snake crosses itself or touches you. There's even a death animation. Amazing.
Here's looking forward to round 2...
Tweetcoding!
The challenge was steep: Build something interesting in Flash, using 140 characters or less.
Check out the rules, and the results. Oh man, I was hooked.