About Penguin Blood Ninja Fiasco

No relation to tux.
2004-02-11

um...why?

I'm something of a GNU/Linux/Open Source advocate(but I hate that word). I did my Switch to Linux animation, and hadn't done anything sufficiently Linuxy in a while. I'm a computer programmer along with being an animator, and I've released a bit(not as much as I'd like) of code under the GPL in different projects. Now that Linux has some corporate respect, there has been a lot of corporate backlash, fud, and other silliness. And don't forget SCO, which has resulted in so many people having to spend their time stopping their unfounded claims. Some people either just don't get it, want to exploit it, or want to pervert it into their own monopoly.

I'm something of a socialist. Making money is good, but so is sharing. If you can make money and share, that's great. The GPL is a great foundation for that. But some people just can't seem to come to grips with sharing, and get angry in a corporate way. They pull out their lawyers, or disseminate FUD, saying that Open Source is substandard, or is an evil commie virus that will take your children in the night. And that's just not true. Its just that you aren't going to make a lot of money with open source software, you'll make money with what you do with it. That's why right now the biggest Open Source companies(arguably IBM, Sun, and Apple) are hardware companies. Software is becoming a commodity to other products. You don't make as much making ketchup and mustard packets as you do the burger. And some software companies, afraid of or losing ground to Open Source are forced to look at their product and go "Where's the Beef?"

*ahem*. Anyway. This animation/game is about that. Deep symbolist tome, huh?

The Code

This is my first flash game, and there are a couple people's code that I looked at/used in order to write this. So I'd like to thank Robert Penner for his great easing equations. I'd also like to thank Outside Of Society for some hints on the scrolling code.

The code was all written and debugged using Macromedia Flash on Red Hat Linux 8. I use the CrossOver Office plugin to run Flash on my linux box. This is the first full project I've coded fully on Linux. I was pleasantly surprised, and had very few problems other than those I've already talked about in my Flash On Linux articles. The ActionScript works as expected, I've suffered no file format corruption, almost everything is emulated faithfully.

The Type

I also wrote my own bitmap font engine in ActionScript and bitmap font slicer in Java. I wouldn't be able to write my own swf files from java without the great work of Dmitry Skavish of JGenerator fame. Oh and the great fonts came from Codeman 38, Moonstruck, and Daniel GuldKrans' fonts page. And again I used Robert Penner's easing algorithms to move them around. I shall be fixing a couple bugs in my font slicer, then I'll be putting it up here by the end of the week, so others may relive the 8-bit glory days!

The Music

The music is courtesy of a couple unknown artists in the High Voltage SID Colletion. While you're there, get the SID plugin and check out the amazing Arkanoid riff. If you are into old chiptunes like me you should also check out the massive MicroMusic.net and NewBleep.com. For those confused why I'd use such abrasive bleepy cheese as the music: Its all about the sine wave. :)

The Graphics

I draw using Paper and Pencil 1.0, works great. Then I scan and color using my Wacom Cintiq 15X in Photoshop on Windows XP. Ironically enough, my main computer is broken, so my Wacom is connected to my Tablet PC. The animations and graphics are my tribute to Ninja Gaiden II, Bubble Bobble, and Final Fantasy Tactics Advance.

Thanks for playing!