Game packaged with AIR running on 3 different mobile devices

Posted on June 23, 2012 by Liam O'Donnell

I just tried packaging a game, written in AS3, for my iPad, PlayBook and BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha device – works pretty well!

Worm Stomper game running on iPad, PlayBook and BlackBerry 10 from Liam O'Donnell on Vimeo.

Lurpak Breakfast – how it was done

Posted on August 20, 2011 by Liam O'Donnell

I thought I’d give a quick insight into how the animation effects in one of my projects were acheived.

Scott Bedford, former Creative Director at Carlson Marketing, posted this video of a project we worked on a while back, for the Lurpak Breakfast campaign. I created all the animation prototypes for the various effects used throughout the site, some of which can be seen here. The site won two DMA awards, but I’m most proud of the crumbs animation and the code-generated interactive steam effect – similar to the one you’ll see on my homepage.

Techie Breakdown

Crumbs animation. 1000 Bitmaps random position themselves until around the edge of the bread mask shape, animated with simple mouse interactive physics – force, velocity, momentum and friction all tweakable
Steam effect. Perlin noise moving through another perlin noise BitmapDisplacementFilter, to which user generated displacement can be applied, then all blurred
Egg Timer animation. Particle system with basic physics and just a draggable mask
Do Not Disturb tag. Maths-based animation for the swing only, the rest is old-school timeline animated
Fry-up triple banner. Three banners synchronise object positions/velocities using LocalConnection to send packets with a TTL applied to avoid a feedback loop
Spinning letters. TextMetrics used to break a populated TextField into separate letters, each one animated into a simple 3-D engine I knocked up, with simple physics used to achieve the swirl motion
Hang-over breakfast. Just a blurred mask, though I prefer my version from my original – alpha a blurred copy of an image over the original for a proper hazy effect
Other animation. Uses a combination TweenMax, maths and frame-by-frame, e.g. pancakes, bedroom door
Not mine: Wise-crack banner, breakfast tray messenger banner, down tools drawer, coffee bean counter, flapjacks, emails

A History of the World

Posted on January 19, 2010 by Liam O'Donnell

I just returned from a trip round SE Asia to see my last project launch. Called ‘A History of the World in 100 Objects‘, it’s a joint venture between BBC Radio 4 and the British Museum to chart human history in a new way. I developed the concept for the Flash 3D object explorer with the guys at GT and built it using Flash 10′s native 3D capabilities. Users are able to explorer objects from throughout human history in a sort of 3D timeline and even make history by adding their own. Here’s the TV advert for the series:

Since it is expected to grow to up to 10,000 objects over the next 5 years, I used all the tricks in the book to optimise loading, rendering and memory management – which will bore most people to tears, so that’s for another time. Check out the Flash site itself here.

Mind control

Posted on December 3, 2009 by Liam O'Donnell

Here’s one of my old games being controlled with brainwaves in a homebrew EEG device cobbled together by Italian Hacker Mastro Gippo:

Multitouch for the masses

Posted on June 10, 2009 by Liam O'Donnell

Just spotted a video on James Alliban‘s blog of how to make your own cheap multitouch table. It’s a lot easier if you’re not initially bothered with projecting your image back into the table – otherwise you’ll need a projector (which I don’t have) and a camera capable of infrared (which some webcams may already do without requiring modification). I for one, will be having a go…

Wii Paint

Posted on May 11, 2008 by Liam O'Donnell

After getting my Wii remote hooked up with the WiiFlash Server, I knocked up this quick Flash demo which draws the blobs of infrared light the Wii remote detects (it can track up to 4 blobs at once), just like the Wii console’s sensitivity setting dialog does. I just gave each blob a different colour and clear the graphics on pressing the ‘A’ button.

Here’s the code to get it working – requires WiiFlash Server:

import org.wiiflash.Wiimote;
import org.wiiflash.IR;
import org.wiiflash.events.ButtonEvent;
import org.wiiflash.events.WiimoteEvent;
import flash.events.*;
var myWiimote:Wiimote = new Wiimote();
myWiimote.connect();myWiimote.addEventListener(WiimoteEvent.UPDATE, onUpdated);
myWiimote.addEventListener(ButtonEvent.A_PRESS, onAPressed);
function onUpdated (pEvt:WiimoteEvent):void {
var ir:IR = pEvt.target.ir;
var irWidth:Number = 400;
var irHeight:Number = 400;
var irSize:Number = 4;
if (ir.p1) drawCircle(ir.x1*irWidth, ir.y1*irHeight, ir.size1*irSize, 0xff0000);
if (ir.p2) drawCircle(ir.x2*irWidth, ir.y2*irHeight, ir.size2*irSize, 0x00ff00);
if (ir.p3) drawCircle(ir.x3*irWidth, ir.y3*irHeight, ir.size3*irSize, 0x0000ff);
if (ir.p4) drawCircle(ir.x4*irWidth, ir.y4*irHeight, ir.size4*irSize, 0xffff00);
}
function onAPressed (pEvt:ButtonEvent):void {
graphics.clear();
pEvt.target.rumbleTimeout = 50;
}
function drawCircle (x:Number, y:Number, size:Number, colour:Number=0xffffff):void {
graphics.beginFill(colour, .2);
graphics.drawCircle(x,y,size);
}

The Power of Infrared

Posted on May 7, 2008 by Liam O'Donnell

I started playing around with using the Wii remote as an infrared tracker to work with those cheap keychain lights you get – just like Johnny Lee suggested. I’m looking to start building interactive installations using novel forms of interaction, such as sound, webcam motion and perhaps 3-D techniques I’m thinking up.

The Power of Chi?