PORTFOLIO
Welcome to my portfolio! I started my adventure in computer programming by making creative websites for my music. My first web page was in 1999. I bought Frontpage 2000 and thought that that was a redicualous way to make a web page. I immediately began hand coding html and javascript. I had learned the Basic programming language on an IBM PC in the 80's and I did a little Visual Basic in the 90's. By 2002 I was looking for Flash.
Micropede
Micropede was conceived in December of 2003. I then spent the next 9 months developing a collision detection engine for the game to run on. I suffered a computer crash in October of 2004 and took a break from programming for a couple months. When I got back into it, I studied PHP and put Micropede on the shelf for a while. Well, it stayed on the shelf for over 3 years. Now that its done, it's funny how close it was to coming together in 2004. That's the way it goes sometimes. I am very excited to see this game working. I'm fine tuning it almost every day now. It was originally designed to be played with the mouse, but now I realize that the best way to play it would be with a game pad. When the game nears its final version, I'm going to package it up as an exe so the game pad can be used with it. I'm very proud of my collision detection class and the potential it has for making all kinds of arcade games. Here is a tilting maze game that I made with collision detection in about 20 minutes.
Grand & Benedicts
In the fall of 2008 I created an all Flash portfolio site for Grand & Benedicts. The site took about a month to do. It includes a picture gallery inside a password protected part of the site called "Portfolio". The username is grandben and the password is portland. I set the time on some world clocks using php to get the correct time and adjust for daylights saving time. I also sent some emails with php.
Fablevision
In March of 2007 I started working full time for Fablevision as a Flash developer. With them I made educational games for kindergarden through 5th grade. Their clients
included Learning.com, Scott Foresman, Outside the Classroom and recently KCET and The Jim Henson Company. Sid the Science Kid is posted on
pbskids.org. That site went through three versions. The first was all xhtml, css, javascript that I was solely responsible for coding. Then the preview site came out in July. The
full launch of the site is on Labor Day 2008. Most of the Flash work was coded by me and one other developer. Almost all the html work was done by me and it eventually involved a little bit of ajax too. We were accustomed to getting rich art from Fablevision's Boston
office. Learning.com also posts some of the games we did for them. I was solely responsible for about 40
Flash games and minilessons for them. I did the xhtml/css/javascript for two courses, AlcoholEdu and GreekLifeEdu, for Outside the Classroom. I created about 40 templates for them that were then given to an asp developer.
InMusicWeTrust.com
In 2006 I did some php work for InMusicWeTrust.com. I made a dynamic front page for him and a tool for him to create his music articals. The main thing he wanted
was a way to upload his pictures without having to ftp and hard code them into his html pages.
Games
Flash based games have been fueling my programming since 2003. I spent most of 2004 working on a collision detection engine that I could use to make arcade style games.
Before I was completely done with my collision detection engine, I realized the importance of php and databases. I made
picsToPuzzles.com in the spring of 2005. In the end of 2005, I made a clone of the game Snood.
I also included a level designer for those who wish to make their own levels. Right after that I made a Flash and php
Scrabble game. The Scrabble game was most impressive using custom Flash 5 scroll panes and list boxes. The Scrabble game also has a chat feature.
In 2006 I wrote my first artifical intelligence script. I programmed a Backgammon game with a computer
opponent. The computer opponent plays a medium difficulty game. I think I would have to program it different to make the computer a better opponent, but it
works pretty good for my first attempt.
In 2007 while I was working for Fablevision, I got the idea of combining Snood with Tetris. I programmed the game over a weekend in about 12 hours. I call it
Shape Shooter. It's a great combination, however it is too hard to play without the cheat line.
I have not found a good solution to that problem. I should also mention my first game Bumper Bubbles.
It is an astreriods type game with two ships. The ships bounce off each other and off bumpers, kind of like pinball. It was made in the
summer of 2004.
Applications - Actionscript 3
I learned a big lesson when I made my Scrabble game; custom scroll panes and list boxes come in handy! When Actionscript 3 came out, I got up to speed by making a new window. The example below is fully interactive. I've done some work on this in Feburary 2009. I added drop down menus with sub menus and added the ability to open applications up in the new windows. Yes, this is a little overkill, but it is a good example of object oriented programming. The top drop down menu is acting as a task manager. Each application has its own window manager class. There is a global cursor manager class. All the windows are using keyframes for skins. Because of the Flash 9 gotoAndStop bug, I've turned this into a Flash 10 application. That is nice that Adobe solved that one. There is still a lot of work to do to make this package better. I've spent 3 to 4 weeks on it so far.
Games - Actionscript 3
And here is my collision detection rewritten in AS3. The core of it took about 9 months to program in 2004. I turned it into an Actionscript 3 class in the summer of 2008. Then I finally made Micropede, the game it was written for, in January of 2009. You can really make any kind of Mario game with this engine. Below is the example version of it. I've got a couple more adjustments to make to it and then I'm going to offer it as an open source solution.
All objects are draggable.
More
I have done a few other applications that deserve mention. These are all linked on my old Portfolio. First up
is my wavSequencer program. I learned how to write wav files with php. I used a Flash frontend to pass data to php to write a wav file and send it back to you as a link.
I also have two other animation applications, Blinkies and the Laser Grid. Both are pretty simple, but both include php file saving and browsing. And of course my old
portfolio includes my Flash 5 scroll pane and drop down menus.