Blog

In my latest effort to expand our client base I have registered with Elance - the online freelance market place. Whilst we have gained what appear to be a handful of genuine long term clients it has on a whole been a pretty dismal experience. The vast majority of Elance clients seem to expect everyone to work for $10 or less per hour and to be easily bullied into doing more work than is being paid for. Amongst the greedy masses stand a few shining lights that never fail to generate a smile. Brightest of these is Valentino1124. He gives 'grandiose' a whole new meaning - now if only his budget...


Read More

Finding sound effects to suit your game can be painful and frustrating. Sfxr by DrPetter is a fantastic little tool to quickly generate unique and useful sounds with a retro vibe. Plenty of little applications exist to build sounds through the usual attack, sustain, decay, frequency controls. Sfxr's real power is in the Generator menu that randomly creates a sound effect appropriate to typical gaming needs. Download the original here. Try the online flash version here.


Read More

Most programmers (Flash and otherwise) are familiar with the increment operator '++' which is used to increase the value of a variable by 1.


Read More

The NSTeens team at the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children came to us a few months back with an idea for a game to teach a range of strategies for dealing with cyber bullying. Taking inspiration from a popular game the simple idea was that players would need to deploy a range of weapons, which represented the strategies, in order to protect their school from a Zombie invasion.


Read More

The second half of the free software list presented at the AUGSA meeting:


Read More

I gave a presentation to our local (South Australian) Adobe User Group a little while ago on the top 20 free software products that we use on a regular basis. Here's the first half of the list:


Read More

Another major project we have been working on for Six Red Marbles this year has gone live. The Maths Galaxy introduces kids to a fun, intuitive learning path through basic math concepts and procedures. Kids are put in control of progressing at their own pace and the avatar character supports them through an Adaptive Curriculum Engine when they need support or advancement.


Read More

We have been working on the Image Explorer application for almost a year now and it has finally gone live. Developed on behalf of Six Red Marbles as one of their trio of self funded projects: It is a fun, whole‑brain learning adventure. It encourages children to make their own discoveries by probing, investigating, and following their intuition and natural curiosity. It's full of opportunities for children to creatively express themselves and show what they've learned"


Read More