The up and the downs of everyday lifeDec 3rd category: blog | tags: xmas system stroke particle flash
Sunday 23rd my Grandmother had a sudden and quite severe stroke, although we were told she would recover and we will see the damage after 5days of recovery - her brain swelled which meant there was nothing they could do. After an entire week of around 100hours at the hospital by her side and with family, she passed away the following Sunday. I think she would have been quite surprised and happy over the turnout, at some points during the day there were 40 of her family all around her. It was an extremely hard time, although I feel mostly for my Uncles, my Mother and especially my Granddad.
On another lower note Christmas is coming up fast, I’ve yet to do any of my shopping - and with my car deciding to quit being able stop I’ve been struggling to keep up with everything.
Now to a slightly happier theme - over the past couple of months on and off I had been working on a Flash game engine, originally to force myself to learn AS3 and pull myself away from ActionScript2 - it’s been going extremely well and I recently finished the basis of my particle system. I have to admit AS3 handles the particles like a dream, and without slowdown I had 1000 particles generated every 1/6th of a second. If people are interested I could post some snippets of code to help anyone trying to create their own particle system, hopefully it would shed some light!
To put a test into action, I very quickly created a rocket projectile particle, that spawned smoke particles at its rear as it fired across the screen - I was amazed how well this looked, and it really does demonstrate how good Flash is becoming for a small games development platform.
Other Blog posts
The up and the downs of everyday life
A few weeks go by so fast when you’re hard at work
Fable2, rob and destroy? or be the hero everyone wants you to be?
Tag cloud
Links to friends and sites that I read
Leezon (http://www.leezon.com)
Portfolio of my best friend Chris Gardner, an amazing photographer and also a fellow designer
Chris Tufnell (http://www.crazymac.net)
Blog of a good friend of mine that works in the games pr industry, he reviews a lot of games and shares his unbiased opinions to the world
Matt Holden (http://www.imholden.com)
Matt is an awesome pencil artist, and is moving to digital vector art more recently with the creation of his eagerly awaited comic Tamashii City!
Mazy (http://www.mazy.net)
Morten Hedegren 'mazy', is an extremely talented map designer that ive known for many years, and now works for IO Interactive in Denmark. His blog is always a good read, full of various reviews and opinons
Ryans GobLog (http://www.ryansgoblog.com/)
Ryan expresses his views on video games which makes for a good read and also does a fair bit of webby stuff too
CGTalk (http://www.cgtalk.com)
CGTalk is a huge community for extremely talented designers, ranging from all types of media medium. If you want to see how far people push digital art, here's definitely the place to go, it'll blow your mind 
Mapcore (http://www.mapcore.net)
General gaming development community site, although focused upon level design and development. Lots of really nice guys on the forums, and definitely a great place to get good constructive criticism.
456 Berea St. (http://www.456bereastreet.com)
Another great resource for articles related to web development, just like above - it's a must for your RSS reader to keep up to date with latest development technology
A List Apart (http://www.alistapart.com)
A List apart is full of useful information for web designers and developers, very good articles on particular aspects which have definately answered some of my questions in the past
Addedbytes (http://www.addedbytes.com/)
Yet another great resource from a UK developer, his cheat sheets are particulary useful to have a print out of and leave on your desk!
Four-Kings (http://www.four-kings.com)
Four-Kings LTD are UK's first pro-esports team. I designed all of their clothing (pre Packard Bell sponsorship) which is worn across the globe at professional gaming events like The CPL.