Here’s one of my old games being controlled with brainwaves in a homebrew EEG device cobbled together by Italian Hacker Mastro Gippo:
Category Archives: Videos
Wii Paint
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);
}
Dinky Bomb – multiplayer game
Back in 2002 some colleagues and I built one of the web’s first and most popular online multi-user Flash games, Dinky Bomb.
After the dotcom we were working for folded (NOW.com / Gamer TV), Dinky Bomb was apparently sold to EA and subsequently acquired by Atari, who have unfortunately done little with it. Gone for now, but not forgotten – there are a few YouTube videos out there, including this one, which features Dinky Bomb as part of a TV game show from way back then… good times!
A Dinky History
Dinky Bomb was an online multi-player Flash game, built for the converged service Gamer TV many years ago (2002). It was one of the first real-time multi-user experiences on the web in Flash technology (originally Flash 5, connecting to a Java socket server backend using Flash’s then new ‘XMLSocket’ capability).
It grew to become one of the most popular web games, with all of the Dinky Bomb servers almost always full! A special level was built for the TV game show ‘Hi-Score’ which you’ll see in the video above. Since then, Dinky Bomb has been redeveloped into ‘Dinky Bomb Deluxe’, using a different lobby system and a Java-based physics engine. This was shortly before Gamer TV closed its web arm to concentrate on TV, selling off much of its content to a third party. Subsequently, Dinky Bomb has been acquired by Atari, who have done nothing with it :/
The team at the TWI (IMG) run NOW.com / Gamer.tv converged services, which designed and built the original Dinky Bomb game were:
- Liam O’Donnell – concept, programming, game design, level design, sound design, animation
- David Pharo – game design, level design, interface design, character design
- Chris Reinke – character design
- Tom Butler – logo design
- Ciaran Tuohy – server backend
- Stuart Law – server backend
- Sungsoo Lee – additional graphics
- Fran Atkinson – thought up the name Dinky Bomb (thanks Fran 🙂
It’s unfortunate that I was kept out of the loop about Dinky Bomb’s sale and redevelopment – not a lot has happened with it since, but you can read more about this here.