news 18-06-2008

An update! I hope the 19 month wait was worth it! You can breathe now! And hasn't the time gone quickly. I am now leaving university and then... hopefully entering employment somewhere soon. So the theory goes.

It's been years since I last created a game, so today I knocked together a simple Flash game to teach myself ActionScript. This was created completely using only FlashDevelop and the Flex 3 SDK without giving a single penny to Adobe. ActionScript 3 is an OK programming language. It's the first C derivative brave enough to abandon C's broken type declaration syntax. Mandatory type declarations are quite annoying though, expecially since I spend most of my time these days in Python and Scheme which are free from such nuisances. I was disappointed to find that it's not possible to create MovieClip animations programmatically. In order to display the borders around the board pieces I had to clear and redraw them each time, instead of simply flipping between two frames. I'm not sure if it's possible to import vector graphics created in something other than Flash, probably not.

This addictive little game is called SameGame and I was first introduced to it on a Psion Revo (that version was called Cascade). If nothing appears above, upgrade to Flash Player 9 already.

I'm really jealous of these guys. Their games are oozing with class. Brilliant and original concepts, gameplay, characters, graphics and music. Utter class in a bottle.

news 25-11-2006

I've started a blog about programming languages and my current effort at implementing a Lisp interpreter/compiler which I hope to use for experimentation and my final year project. It's over at shaurz.wordpress.com.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with iogopro.co.uk from now on. It has faded into obsolescence. It's funny, the site has always been in a bloggish format before that sort of thing was hyped and popularised. You might remember the original purpose of this site was to show off my games created with "Klik & Play" and "Click & Create" (see Clickteam) under my "Iogopro" pseudo-corporate brand name. Hence the domain. I still have fond memories of messing about with these programs.

It might never have happened. The story begins when I glance at the back cover of PC Format magazine laying on the kitchen table, on a lazy weekend afternoon, advertising that the next issue featured a free full-program cover disc of "Klik & Play" which you can use to make your own games. Make you own games! Fuck yes! This was in my pre-programming, pre-Linux days, running Window 95 or 98 (after messing with MS-DOS for a year), when I was still fiddling about with any software I can get my hands on, especially anything to do with animation and creating little programs (I had a brief foray into Visual Basic). I used PowerPoint 97 for animation, but none of than naff built-in crap; instead, each slide was a separate frame designed by-hand, configured to automatically move to the next frame in a fraction of a second. Real animation. I even designed 3D animations using the pseudo-3D depth effects you could apply to any shape. But Klik & Play was the most amazing thing ever to me then.

The magazine was monthly, but it was almost two months old! My dad and I searched high and low and eventually we found a copy at some random off-license. Close call! Bloody hell, this was exciting. I quickly set to work bringing my Peter Pineapple character to life on the computer.

Once we finally got internet access, with FreeServe dial-up, I met a few people on-line who later published some of their own games on my site. I also used to chat with Mr Nutz (forgotten his real name!) of "Nutz Software" (another little "Klik Company" as they were known in the day) on ICQ (uh oh!) before all this new-fangled MSN Messenger malarkey. I regret that I did not get to know them very well, or meet them in person. I also regret that we did not collaborate on games or the website. I think I let them down. What can you expect of a 13-14 year old though...? I guess I was quite a perfectionist control freak back then, still am - but not so much.

Well, back to mid-naughties. I am currently limited to serving static pages with the freenetname madasafish hosting. I might transfer the domain into my full control and get my own server up and running more permanently. Can I afford co-lo?

That's it for now.
Luke McCarthy