I think Chinese Chess is more fun and interesting to play then Western Chess. I made these videos to explain how to play and how they’re different.

Part 1 of 2:

Part 2 of 2:

Wikipedia entry for Xiangqi:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiangqi

More Ref on how to play:
http://www.chessvariants.com/xiangqi.html

Play online (Chinese Characters; 1 player):
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Grid/6544/cccintro.htm

Play with a friend online (Chinese and Western Symbols; IM them the game’s id so you’re both in the same room):
http://www.playok.com/en/xiangqi/#

I also found a few sets on amazon.com:

I was trying to load an image into my swf from an off site location and kept getting this:


Error #2044: Unhandled securityError:. text=Error #2048: Security sandbox violation:http://some.site.com/fbpoker/flash/home.swf cannot load data from http://www.some.other.site.com/danny.jpg.
at ClassName/FuctionName()


There are many reason you could get this error, but one of them happens to be that fact that I was using a flash.net.URLLoader instead of a flash.display.Loader

Lesson Learned.
~Danny

So you want to get serious about making flash movies and games? Great! The way to get good is with fast iteration. What I mean by "iteration" is the time it takes to make a change to your game, build the game, test your game and decided if you need to make another change.

For the most part, it’s easy to iterate with flash, you just test your movie and there you go. What I’m talking about is more advanced flash movies. I’m talking about passing parameters from the page to your swf (mygame.swf?var1=1&var2=2), calling javascript from your swf (ExternalInterface), and swf’s getting loaded in other swf’s (and you can pass params to the child swf). Basically, there comes a time when just running the movie on your computer isn’t good enough and the only way to really test your swf files is by uploading them to a server and viewing them in a browser connected to the web. After all, isn’t that how your audience is going to see it? So let’s not waste time. Here are the things you’ll need to know in order to iterate quickly when building flash movies/games.

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Danny Burbol’s How to make a falling blocks style Flash Game Tutorials

Lesson 2: Drawing Blocks & Keyboard Input

A Link To: All Lessons’ Table Of Contents
A Link To: The Original Flash Game that started all this

So here’s where we left off at the end of lesson 1. We have a couple self-contained screens that we can navigate between by clicking buttons.

You’ll notice that I changed my title text, scaled up the title screen buttons with the free transform tool (Tool bar, the black cursor with the box, under the white cursor and above the Lasso) and I’ve added an extra screen with links to these tutorials. You should be able to make changes like this if you went through lesson 1. The only thing you’ll needs is the function to call to open a web link in a new window. Here it is:

Note the: import flash.net.*;

In this lesson we are going to:

• Learn how to draw a sprite with a rectangle using ActionScript .
• Learn how to create our main loop callback event (timer events).
• Learn how to use Sprites for containers.
• Learn how to use 2 dimensional arrays as an adjacency matrix (the game’s board).
• Learn how to detect simple keyboard keys presses.
• Learn how to rotate our game’s pieces using some simple vector math trick.

I’m also not going to be going in to as much depth as I did in Lesson 1. Lesson 1 was a “starting from nothing” introduction to flash, but here in Lesson 2, we’re going to build on what we’ve learned rather than reiterate all of it. So don’t be afraid to pop open Lesson 1 and review a couple steps when you feel the need. I know it’s annoying, but realizing you don’t quite know how to do something and having to go dig up the info is actually a great way to train yourself to remember.

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Danny Burbol’s How to make a falling blocks style Flash Game Tutorials

Lesson 1: Intro to Flash/ActionScript 3 and App Screens

A Link To: All Lessons’ Table Of Contents
A Link To: The Original Flash Game that started all this

This is a Flash tutorial for introducing some of the basics parts of ActionScript 3 that you’ll need to make any Flash Game. It’s presented with a goal in mind. We will be using these building blocks to set up a basic framework for making some simple games screen that we’ll be able to switch between by click on buttons on the various screens.

Here’s a link to my falling blocks game, it’s the reason I started making this tutorial.

I’ve been programming console games in c/c++ for years, but Actionscript 3 is pretty new to me. So rather than gloss over everything, I plan on making a more in-depth “how to” for people who have some programming knowledge, but are new to Flash and AS3.

A work of caution to artist and non-programmers: Making game with Flash using AS3 doesn’t *involve* programming, it *is* programming. This tutorial can’t teach you how to program, I’m sorry, it’s just a topic all to itself, and it’s a huge topic at that. So use your best judgment as-to whether or not you want to go through with this tutorial, I don’t want to waste your time or make you frustrated. Also, if anyone reading this had some good links for helping others learn some the the basics of programming and programming practices, please leave a comment so others can benefit. (Thanks!)

By the end of this tutorial we will have a flash application that shows a few screen and lets you click buttons to go between them. For example: a “someone presents” screen, a title screen, a credits screen, and a game screen that we can click buttons to go between.

So by the of this tutorial, you will have a framework, something like this:

Elements I’ll be explaingin in this tutorial:

• Make a .fla file
• Make a few movie clips (one per screen)
• Make a few buttons (for switching screen)
• Make a .as file
• Make a class
• Hook flash to automatically run ActionScript
• Hooking up movieclips to work like classes in ActionScript
• Hooking up buttons to work like member variables of classes in ActionScript
• Catch Generic Flash Events
• Make and Catch Your own Events

Elements I won’t be explaining:

• I won’t be explaining “how to program”, but I will be volunteering as much insight as I can about the Actionscript I’ll be showing. Regardless, if you don’t know what a “class” or “event” is and you’ve never heard of “public”, “private”, “extends”, or “override”, please stop now. You will be disappoint about halfway through this tutorial. Instead, go check out some programming tutorials and come back to this one later.

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I know this is supposed to be an art blog, but as soon as you introduce a computer, the lines between art and engineering start to get blurred. Regardless, I found this Flash AS3 Memory Leak to be such a landmine that I just had to post it somewhere for other people to hopefully find and breath a sigh of relief when they realize why their flash game slows down and grinds to a halt the longer they play it.

Okay, no beating around the bush. Do this code once a frame (or more!) and you’re flash game will grind to a halt.

mySprite.graphics.beginFill( 0xFFFFFF );
mySprite.graphics.drawRect( vPos.x, vPox.y, vSize.x, vSize.y );
mySprite.graphics.endFill();

This was my “DrawBlock” function for my falling blocks game. I see these three lines posted all over the web in tutorial and in forums. –Worse, I often only see the first two lines and no endFill(). The above code eats memory.

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After working in grays and black for so long, color feels like a breath of fresh air.

After much searching on amazon, I found the set we use in class:

Our instructor showed us the powered color that her master used to use. They are brilliant, vivid colors. Half are from rocks that have been grounded into dust and half are organic –but almost all of them are poisonous. Which makes sense, all the brightest colors in nature usually warn predators of poison.

Because half the colors are minerals and half are organic, if you see ancient paintings, half the colors will still be bright and vivid (the minerals) and half the colors will be fading away (the organic colors).

Another interesting not about these powdered colors is that since they are nothing but dust, they need to be mixed with a type of glue to get them to hold together and actually be usable to paint.

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Seriously, pass this post on to everyone you know. I’m furious because I know they just screwed me. but the average person who’s never bought a domain name before won’t know the difference. I HATE seeing companies screw people just because they know they can get away with it.

if you have a domain name you’re thinking about getting NEVER search for it using NetworkSolutions.com!! they will lock the domain as if a customer is buying it (ie, you) and then try to charge you $35 for it! when the going rate on other sites, like godaddy, is $9 or $10.

but since I searched with NetworkSolutions first, now GoDaddy can’t register it because NetworkSolutions put a lock on the domain… all GoDaddy can do is offer to “buy on back order” for $20.

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