applets and flash
This page contains links to a bunch of Applets and Flash files that I've mucked around on over the years. Some are not complete. There is a description of each applet or flash file, a link to launch it (launches in a separate, appropriately sized browser window) and a screen shot.
When I play these, I sometimes get a problem with the music not turning off if you close the window. You have to close the parent window when this happens (which is a pain - not sure how to fix this).
BlockedIn is a block oriented game that I made mid to late 2001. It was based on an idea by a friend of mine called Dave Anderson (he did a WAP version of it).
Like Tetris, you move pieces using the arrow keys as they fall. Match pieces (i.e. place pieces next to a like piece) to get points. Matched pieces disappear and can cause other pieces to fall. You get extra points for combinations when these chain-reactions occur. You won't get far in the game unless you plan chain-reactions. You need the big points that chain reactions provide to get the points to clear later levels.
Hint: You can slide pieces sideways into other matching pieces as they fall.
Make sure you click the applet part (the blue square) a couple of times so that it has the focus. Otherwise it won't capture key events. Note that the applet is just the square part in the middle of the window (the edges are just images to make it look like it's running in a Palm Pilot). I've also created a MIDP version of the game that I can play on my phone when I get bored.
It features rock music from Beavis and Butthead, some crap sound effects that I had and Stimpy.
Creatures is an applet that models three competing life-forms. Plants (shown as green dots) grow based on their access to sunlight (i.e. the number of neighbours they have). The less neighbours they have the more energy they get and the faster they will spawn a plant near them. Herbivores (shown as blue dots) can move and feed on an nearby plant (reducing the plant's energy but increasing their own). Once they reach enough energy they will spawn another herbivore. Carnivores (shown as red dots) behave the same as herbivores except that they feed off herbivores rather than plants (they don't kill the herbivores in one go - just nibble on them).
The lightness or darkness of the creatures respective colour depicts how much energy it has. Bright creatures have lots of energy. When creatures spawn children they divide their energy between themselves and the child. The simulation moves pretty quickly (you wont be able to follow an individual creature). Also, the landscape is wrapped. This means that when a creature disappears off the top he appears on the bottom. The same for left and right.
Initially creatures are placed randomly. Since plants are scattered and don't have any initially defined borders, the herbviores will be able to have unfetted access and go into a feeding frenzy. A second or two after the herbivore population explodes (and before the herbivores are able to destroy the last few plants), the carnivore numbers catch up. They will basically demolish the herbivore population and in the process kill their own food supplies. When the bulk of herbivores and carnivores die, the plants fill in the spaces. This is the end of the apocoyptic phase. Initially lots of scattered colours, then a rush of blue, followed by a rush of red then followed by a renewal of green.
A few herbivores and carnivores will survive and the simulation will enter into a more stable state. The herbivores will eat away at the plants but now the plants have defined edges and can't be devoured instantly. The carnivores will keep the herbivore numbers in check and the plants will constantly expand into blank space. It's quite fun to watch in my opinion. The world will end with either total plant domination or no life at all. This might take 30 seconds or ten minutes. Click the applet to restart it.
Solar System is an applet that models the solar system. It just uses Newton's laws. Actually, all I did was grab all the facts about planets from the NASA site such as their volume, density, orbital distance, speeds etc. Then I just applied Newton's basic gravitation law to get the force acting the planet. Then I just used basic physics formulas for force and mass etc. All done using a delta time unit (i.e. the time between each frame). That was all I needed to get the planets oribting. I have no idea how accurate it really is - it's probably wildly inaccurate.
I didn't want to polish off my Relativity books from uni to model it correctly. I understand there are obversable differences between Newtons laws and Einsteins. i.e. Einsteins correctly predicts Mercury's exact position whereas Newtons is slightly out or something.
You'll start with a view of the Sun and maybe two or three planets orbiting. Everything is to scale. If you click the applet (so it has the focus and can capture key events) you press the 'h' key to bring up the commands. 'h' again hides the (h)elp. Press 't' for the current time-scale. Initially 1 second is 1.73 weeks. You can speed this up or down by pressing the '.' and ',' keys. Actually, I did a bodge job of the calculations. If you increase the time to like 1 second equals 1000 years then it doesn't do as many calculations as when it's real time say. This is an easy way to make the planets fly off or get them into elliptical orbits. I should really fix this up at some stage.
You can pan with the arrows keys and zoom in and out with '=' and '-'. The planets only look like dots from a distance. They will be balls when you get close. Panning and zooming gives a better sense of scale. You can also lock the view to a particular planet to see what everything looks like relative to that planet.
It's all 2D modeling. There is actually a z component in real life. I need to model the planet's moons, ceres, eris, some of the centaurs etc. There's quite a lot to the solar system if you include the Kuniper belt and the Oort cloud. Anyway, for a rainy day...
After September 11 there was a number of Osama flash videos created (generally with Osama getting blown up etc.) I thought that I'd create something. I didn't get that far into it but I think you can see where it's going. I didn't use a very good picture of Osama. It's based on the constant polling that Fox News are always doing. I like the idea of voting multiple times to affect the vote as well.
This is a flash version of one of those sliding puzzles that you see. You have to click a tile near the blank space so that it slides into the blank square. When you've made the picture you've won.
This is a flash version of the game of Frogger. I got this basic version up and running fairly quickly. That's because I haven't added any collision detection or game logic other than running around and random trucks and logs being created and run in their lanes. You can play this for a while in the belief that you'll die if you run into something. The illusion dies pretty quickly when you try and jump on a log however.
This is an applet version of Tetris that I built. It features music and laugh from Beavis and Butthead and some fleshy pictures that I used as a watermark and some suggestive sounds when you clear a level. Other than that, it's just Tetris.
This is an applet that models a hand-held puzzle that my friend Morgan owned. I can't find the source code though I suspect thats a good thing. I built it before I knew about jar files and packages.
Still, it's an interesting puzzle. The pieces are knobs on a piece of wood that can slide. The pieces will collide unless they are laid flat. There's one spot that you rotate pieces. You have to try and flatten all of the pieces so that you can slide them out.
Use the left and right arrow keys to slide all the pieces and use 'a' and 's' to rotate the piece over the one spot that allows pieces to rotate. I just had a crack at it and I got under one minute.
A flash basketball game. Well, it's not actually a game. You can throw a ball around but it doesn't count if it goes through the hoop and there's no collision with back-board etc.
A JavaScript version of John Conway's Game of Life. I use animated trees for life and death. It doesn't work anymore for some reason.
