For those of you who’ve been following along at home, late last year I made the first version of Nonogram Madness in Flash using the Flixel framework. Since I knew I would have to learn both a new language and a new programming framework to create anything on iOS, I decided to re-work a previous creation. I thought since the core logic had already been programmed, porting would be relatively straightforward.

Obviously, in the end it was a bit more complicated than that. There were lots of unexpected challenges, such as dealing with touch-based controls, as well as creating all-new puzzles. It’s been the most ambitious project I’ve done in my spare time to date, and I’m actually pretty proud of it.

In fact, I enjoyed the process so much that I created an LLC to publish the game under. The company is called Ganbaru Games, and while right now it’s not profitable at all, I’m hoping that perhaps if I get enough decent games out there, I can take advantage of the “long tail.” The word “ganbaru” means “to try ones’ best” or “to work hard” in Japanese, and that’s the philosophy I’d like to bring with me in game creation.

If you’d like to show your support for my game-making efforts, why not follow @ganbarugames on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook?

(If anyone cares, let me know what you think in the comments. The puzzles kinda progress in difficulty, but they haven’t been balanced at all, and some of them are pretty bad. There, you’ve been warned.)

The “in progress” title screen of Nonogram Madness. Yeah, I decided on a name.

Makin’ another game! It’s a nonogram game, inspired by Mario’s Picross (read more details about the whole genre at Game Set Watch).

Admittedly, nonograms aren’t for everyone. I enjoy them, however, because they’re simple logic puzzles that have a visual component… they’re more interesting to me than the straight-up numbers of sudoku. When I explained the concept to Chandra, she seemed interested! It’s my goal to make something that she’ll play through =]

One thing I’ve learned about myself during its development is that I can get really bogged down working on more than one thing at a time. My personal programming time is so limited that having two active projects slows things down considerably. Plus, if a project takes too long, I lose motivation pretty quickly. When waking up early in the morning, one has to be excited about what one is doing (an aside: tips for waking up early).

package {
  import flash.display.Sprite;
  import flash.events.Event;
  import flash.utils.getTimer;	// for getTimer()

  // Set SWF FPS, etc.
  [SWF(frameRate='30', width='200', height='200', backgroundColor='0xffffff')]

  public class AnimationExample extends Sprite {

    // For frame rate info
    public var ticks:Number = 0;
    public var framesPerSecond:Number;
    public var frameTimer:Number = 0;
    public var currentAnimationFrame:int = 0;

    // For animation
    [Embed(source="run-1.svg")]
    public var animationFrame1:Class;
    [Embed(source="run-2.svg")]
    public var animationFrame2:Class;
    [Embed(source="run-3.svg")]
    public var animationFrame3:Class;

    public var character:Sprite;

    public function AnimationExample():void {

      // Create new sprite for animation frames
      character = new Sprite();

      // Add frames, hide all but the first one
      character.addChild(new animationFrame1());
      character.addChild(new animationFrame2());
      character.addChild(new animationFrame3());
      character.getChildAt(1).visible = false;
      character.getChildAt(2).visible = false;

      this.addChild(character);

      // This will call the animation function
      this.addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, enterFrame);
    }

    public function enterFrame(e:Event = null):void {
      // getTimer() provides # of ms since Flash Player started
      var currentTicks:Number = getTimer();

      // Figure out how many seconds each frame is displaying for
      var secondsPerFrame:Number = (currentTicks - ticks) / 1000;

      // For the heck of it, you can also determine FPS
      framesPerSecond = 1 / secondsPerFrame;

      // Set this var for the next iteration
      ticks = currentTicks;

      // Increment the timer
      frameTimer += secondsPerFrame;

      // Compare the frameTimer value against the number of seconds you want each frame to display
      if(frameTimer > 0.5) {
        // Reset the frame timer
        frameTimer = 0;

        // Hide the first frame
        this.character.getChildAt(0).visible = false;

        // Move the last frame up to be first
        this.character.setChildIndex(this.character.getChildAt(2), 0);

        // Show the new first frame
        this.character.getChildAt(0).visible = true;
      }
    }
  }
}

Download the code, .swf, and (bad) graphics.

In addition to the setChildIndex() function that swaps the depth of each animation frame, there’s also some code that obtains the current frame rate, which helps set the speed of the animation. In some games, the motion of all the characters can be limited by a number derived by the frame rate, which helps ensure that the game runs the same speed on different computers. This isn’t totally necessary in Flash, however, since it’s possible to limit frame rate by using [SWF(frameRate='XX')] at the beginning of your Actionscript package.