Play, Live, Work, Enjoy.

Patapon. This deceivingly simple and inexpensive ($19) game caused us to pull the trigger on getting a PSP for the office break room. All I can say is wow! Great stuff! Sure… it's not without its flaws… some of which have been honestly pointed out by Jim Sterling's review on Destructoid… but it has to be one of the most innovative titles out on any platform for quite some time. It takes elements of rhythm, strategy, and resource management and melds them into something that when played just right generates a real euphoric buzz.

Yes, I am an instant fan. I've even made my own Patapon ringtones (download in mp3 format)… as if I didn't have a hard enough time not hearing the relentlessly addictive beats and chants as I go through my days.

Sony has a new official website for Patapon with some nice screenshots, gameplay videos, desktop wallpapers and a demo download. Check it out here. There's a cool online Flash game here which was used to promote the European release of the game.

Here's an article on GamaSutra which praises the game and speaks to the artist, Rolito, about the artwork for the game. Apparently he had developed these characters way back in 2002. Rolito has several websites on which you can see more of his unique style of art and design. Take a look at Rolitoland, Black Polito, and the Rolitoland Blog.

Looks like SWF Object 2.0 is finally out of beta. Looks like a bit has changed… merging the existing SWF Object and UFO / SWFFix methodologies — including methods of embedding that are strictly markup based and the more traditional JavaScript based method.
Take a look at the updated documentation for more information or the article on A List Apart, "Flash Embedding Cage Match", for more detailed information on the art of the Flash embed.

A pretty cool addition on the project site is the ability to download an Adobe AIR SWF Object Generator — this nifty little desktop app takes your specific needs and spits out all the code necessary to drop your SWF on a page in style. There is also an HTML version of the code generator online.

Once again you can find the project's home here on Google Code.

JRVisuals and Jose R. Rodriguez, the company's founder, have been granted the distinguished honor of being selected as finalists for the Buffalo/Niagara Emerging Technology Awards this year. The company itself has been nominated for the Cyber Culture category. This award recognizes the organization that exudes a positive, productive and encouraging work environment. Rodriguez has been nominated for the Techie Award based on his ability to push Adobe Flash technology to its limits. This award is to recognize the IT professional whom on a daily basis is responsible for making the technology runs smoothly.

JRVisuals would like to thank its employees and clients both of which without whom we would not have had the opportunity to shine.

Just a quick post to mention this great resource. Sean the Flex guy has put up various PDF look-ups for ActionScript including AS2.0 to AS3.0 migration and AIR. Some of these are in need of updates… but the basics are there and solid. Check them out here: http://actionscriptcheatsheet.com/blog/

Great news for any old school gamers. Well, relatively old school, like before MMORPG madness hit the world of Warcraft.
Blizzard has recently released a patch for Warcaft 3 which not only has several bug fixes and some new level goodness but it also releases us from the ancient security system known in most circles as the "play disc."

By the way, if you're not familiar with Warcraft but you play flash games online, casual or otherwise, you may have played a form of Flash "Tower Defence." These games all owe their origin to a mod of this game. Give props to the original, throw down a buck and check this game out or download the free demo.

We're WCIII v1.21 compliant… are you?
Get the Warcraft III version 1.21 patch here.

Just a quick post…
this may expand into its own category as we go deeper down the rabbit hole.

As we're getting AS3 under our belt… we, along with other developers, are finding that many things are just not the same… and some things are just plain missing.

Nate Pacyga throws down some good ones on his blog… check it out here.

Our friend and neighbor, Michael Mulley, over at the College Street Gallery has recently published a book of black and white photos of Buffalo, New York. The photos are taken with a keen eye for history and architecture. You can find it for sale at the gallery or at online retailer Lulu.com.

Here is a short description from the back cover:

A Collection of the Queen City’s most impressive buildings “Buffalo In Black & White" brings the finest of Buffalo right to your finger tips. Spanning nearly 10 years of architectural discovery by photographer Michael Mulley. WIthin its pages you will find the magnificent Art Deco City Hall and the Prudential Building, Louis Sullivan’s Terra Cotta masterpiece and many more. Buffalo’s past come alive in this unique book. Whether your a long time resident, ex-pat or someone with an appreciation of great architecture this collection is perfect.

Here's a blast for from the past… but if you don't have these Flash extensions installed… you could be wasting valuable time.

Flash extensions are script-based files written in JSFL. They allow pretty much full access to the Flash IDE and FLA assets. John over at Potapenko has graciously coded and wrapped in an easy to install MXP package a variety of useful extentions. Once installed, these can be accessed through the "Commands" menu or their associated shortcut combination.

Here's a quick list of what you get:

• Set transformation point to top-left
• Pixelate position to all selection elements
• Pixelate bounds
• Get all instance names
• Instances naming tool
• Search in Library
• Replace library names
• Multi edit library properties

"The name of this class, __class_name_here__ , conflicts with the name of another class that was loaded __class_name_here__."

Well… maybe this isn't such a mystery but it is not very well documented and the experts seem to disagree about the solution. The error in question occurs when compiling a Flash movie whose class files are not locally hosted — for example, they are on a shared LAN server. Others have pinned this on the ASO file being cached… while some concur that it has something to do with the time stamp of the script file itself being out of synch.

The jury is still out over here… I've tried both clearing the ASO cache and modifying the server's internal clock with limited success. If anyone has a cure for this (short of implementing SVN or SourceSafe) let me know.

There is not much to say here. We have been Verizon customers both at home and as a small business for several years. Through those years we've had our share of issues. Area outages, missed installation dates, missed dsl-ready dates, less than professional wiring jobs, etc. We pretty much rolled with these as they came and went - I mean connectivity is not a science (or is it) so problems are bound to happen. There was even a point where our cell phone customer service was so poor we swore them off for life — and have kept to this to date.
This latest issue however has me reeling with disbelief. I will not go into full detail at this point but it went something like this (keep in mind that any day without a connection is a day that none of our employees can work to full capacity). The fact is at this point we've been down for over a week and I have zero confidence that anyone in Verizon's employ will be able to correct the issue.

You can click through below and see a detailed day by day log:
Continue reading 'Verizon No More - How they lost our business in perpetuity.'