R4-DS
entertainment :: the nintendo DS homebrew revolution
the nintendo ds is an awesome portable gaming system. i have the ds lite, its thin, weights under a pound, has two super bright backlit screens, pretty sweet integrated speakers, the classic nintendo plus d-pad, four front buttons, and two shoulder buttons. the bottom screen is touch sensitive, which makes for some awesome gameplay. the touch screen is sick, but a lot of people can be put off by it. so tons of games let your switch between the touch motion and d-pad motion.
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chiptune albums to rock out
entertainment :: releases by phlogiston, nonfinite, and starscream
nectar by phlogiston - nectar is 2 EPs in one. part one, Croquel Adventure, continues in the chip-tune tradition of short, fun, pure NES songs. while part two, HEAT, transports you to an 80's vision of the distant future. the album is a tour through a vast dystopian cityscape where high-tech low-life roam the streets. and the lines between man and machine have been washed out.
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two free video game fonts!
art :: metroid and ghosts n' goblins
i have been wanting to make a metroid font for a long time now.NARPASSWORD00000 is made from the classic nintendo NES game metroid's password screen. the font also includes some dingbatz made from the games sprites. but i decided to go the extra mile and create the rest of the full international character set. the fonts name is a reference to a special backdoor password hidden in the game. click here to download.
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custom flex skins
code :: customize your components
creating web-applications with flex 3 is great. there are a ton of pre-made components, and an open-ended architecture to allow you to create your own. built into flex is also a variety of options to change the visual styles of the components. today i will talk about two different types of customization. first, the simplest method, is using css to style your components. next, the more advanced technique, is creating component skins. for this example i will be using flash cs3.
with in a flex mxml application, css is natively understood. so by utilizing the tags, we can create a variety of styles for an application. personally, i don't really care for the eclipse/flex built in css editor, but since flex uses valid css, any editor can work!
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nonfinite - northbridge
entertainment :: free new chiptune album!
my pal nonfinite has finally released his long-awaited album entitled northbridge. listening brings you right back to your childhood (or your whole life in my case :P) sitting in front of the tv wasting the hours away playing video games an enjoying their repetitious bleep-bloop style beats. and nonfinite has his sounds on point! by using a homebrew gameboy cart called LSDJ he produces his new music on old hardware, giving him that pure old skool "chip tune" sound. grab your copy of the album here, FREE! nonfinite also does custom gameboy mods, check out his store
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CanvasView3D
code :: my native papervision3D flex component
after my last post about creating an actionscript project that extends the basic view, i got to thinking... my flex canvas3D is getting a bit outdated. these days i just make canvas then add my viewport3D or a basicView to it. so why not create a new UIcomponent that extends basicView? why not indeed...
introducing my new class, called CanvasView3D! this little flex gem makes setting up papervision3D in an MXML setting simple. by creating the CanvasView3D component, and initializing it to a local variable, you will automatically create a scene3D, camera3D, viewport3D, and a basicRenderEngine, all the core components of any PV3D application!
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papervision3D 2.0
lab :: code name - great white
well the time is finally upon us, for all of you who aren't avid mailing list readers, papervsion3D 2.0 alpha (code name: great white) has been released for testing. and the team bringing real-time 3D in flash has gone all out this release! this versions new features boast shaded materials, custom shaders, the new ascollada (now with animation support), frustrum culling, multiple viewports, rendering to scene, and more...