Truly the most exiting project I have ever worked on. Let's see, to start of with, a Papervision 3D Monster Truck racing game... excuse me while I take a minute to consolidate myself....

Challenging it was yes, but working on such a project with such a awesome team at HelloComputer (were I work) was a hard yet fulfilling start to 2009. The site was build for the PlayUk Lottery as a mechanism to distribute vouchers and support the overall campaign.

The truck was modeled in Maya, exported as Collada and and used in PV3D. To achieve the great looking textures for the truck, they were baked in Maya, this allowed us to have great detail without using dynamic lighting materials which uses much more processor power than normal BitMapMatererials.

Have fun playing the game, racing, drifting and jumping corners.... Space is for jumping.NumPad 1-9 does some cool view changes. It's a shame we could not use some of the F keys.. ;-) 

http://www.ownthemud.com/

Another little game site I worked on in early 2009. Coffee is a critical part of my day and I had great fun working on a game were you had to build your own types of coffee. Including Cappuccino's, Cafe Latte's, Filter Coffee's and Espresso's. The most interesting part was to create mechanisms to simulate each process in the making of a coffee. Selecting the blend is the first one, were you have to select your blend according to the order you have received. Adding coffee, just stop the moving bean in the middle. Adding milk, balance to poor and fill your cup. Frothing, mmm, those frothing cups can be quite tricky to manage. TIP! slow mouse moments...

This game was build to promote the different types of Blends that House of Coffees have to offer.

With previous releases of your AIR application you needed to provide a certificate  obtained by a corporation and us "individuals" had to go without having our applications signed. Now all you need is an government issued ID to pbtain your own certificate.

http://chosensecurity.com/products/tc_publisher_id_adobe_air.htm

Check out this unique tool, used for making mockups in seconds. I have used the online demo version and am definitely getting my hands on a copy of this. The tool allows you to create mockups of website layouts, application and so much more. It has a very easy to use components panel. Just drag and drop and save. The best feature of this tool is the way it auto aligns the components when dropped on the stage. Once you have a layout, just save and edit whenever you want.

"Never waste a minute

Mockups For Desktop allows you to work on your UI wherever you are, regardless of your Internet connection. It works on planes, at coffee shops, and wherever you like to do uninterrupted work. Import and Export features ensure seamless integration with all the other versions of Mockups, for when you get back online. Plus you can load and save multiple mockups files, use all keyboard shortcuts and lots more."

read more..

A new version of feedalizr has been launched, and has been rewritten from the ground up.

New feedalizr features:

• Offline support - SQL Lite is used for offline storage, meaning all data that has been retrieved, is stored and is available offline.
• Full twitter support - feedalizr is now a full twitter client, allowing replies, favouriting and direct messages.
• De-duplication - this is handy if..... ie, you are a friendfeed subscriber and you have a twitter account. Without de-duping, this would have meant that you would see the same entry in your friendfeed stream as well as in your twitter stream. Duplicates are now flagged, and are displayed in a minimized view. This works across all duplicate content, be it twitter/flickr/jaiku etc.
• Better memory management. Adobe Air apps have the reputation to be memory hungry, but feedalizr is optimized to run as lean as possible.

I work for a company called MIH SWAT. For the past month or so, myself and a couple of talented team members, have been working on a Adobe AIR application called feedalizr. We are very proud of the latest version 1.1.0 alpha.

A summary

• Reads your friendfeed stream in a easily readable format.
• Notifies to of new/updated entries via a toaster.
• Posts new friendfeed entries
• Comments on other user's entries.
• Liking and unliking other user's post.
• Twitter integration - change your twitter status.
• Flickr integration - allows uploading of photos, tagging and managing privacy settings.
• The latest feature that we are most proud of, is the ability to record and view videos in the app.

We are really interested in your feedback, so any comments, suggestion etc. will be appreciated.
You can also use getsatisfaction.com to give us feedback.

Checkout this awesome post on Adobe AIR resources. The post lists everything from AIR applications, tutorials, code resources, articles, getting started pages and third party integrations.

101 Adobe AIR Resources to Add to Your Toolbelt of Awesomeness

Just read this on RockOnFlash, amaaaaazing.

"PaperWorld3D is a Realtime 3D Multi-User Application Framework built for the Flash Platform."

and.....it's opensource

* Creating modular game components which can be created, shared, edited, updated and extended by anyone with some knowledge of flash.

* Skinning mechanism allows designers to create new or replace exisiting graphical assets wihout touching any code.

* Multi-lingual content, allows users to choose a language to view the game in and switch languages at run-time.

* Connecting to and communicating with Red5 to allow multiplayer interaction and communication, database access or connection to any other application running on your server.

* AI - Steering Behaviours, Decision Making etc. etc. allow you to create complex behaviours for NPCs.

Damm... It's here people. Adobe have released the official version of AIR. Check it out at: http://www.adobe.com/products/air

I am a bit disappointed that the runtime's size has increased by 3mb, but never mind what is a few seconds (depending on your speed) download time between friends.

20 Teams, 44 Days, 48 Matches, 64 hours of rugby, and its ours, the William Web Ellis trophy is coming to South Africa for the second time, and will stay here for the next 4 years. We are the only team in the 07 RWC not to loose a match, and deservingly so. Percy Montgomery is the tournament's top point scorer, and Bryan Habana equaled Jonah Lomu's try scoring record (8) in a world cup. Bryan also won IRB player of the year. All facts that emphasize that we are a world class team.