We apologize to anyone who is trying to access the FRB site. We are experiencing problems with Dreamhost (our current host) affecting SVN and PHPBB – and perhaps other parts of the site. We have sent numerous emails to their team so we hope this gets resolved soon.
–Vic–
I’ve just been notified that there are two more games on the Windows Phone 7 marketplace using FlatRedBall.
The first comes from Duad Duck – a game titled Food Battler. For information on this game, check the FlatRedBall page here:
http://www.flatredball.com/frb/docs/index.php?title=Games:Food_Battler
The second game comes from HapaFive game – a name you probably recognize if you’ve been keeping an eye on FlatRedBall games. Their newest game is “Cargo Crush”. More info here:
http://www.flatredball.com/frb/docs/index.php?title=Games:Cargo_Crush
It’s great to see FlatRedBall helping more people make games. Thanks to both Duad Duck and HapaFive for supporting and using FlatRedBall. Best of luck on the marketplace!
–Vic–
I’ve just finished a November update to FRB. As always there are a few small fixes here and there, but mainly the release was made to fix some issues that users reported on the installer. Please let us know in the forums if you have issues with the new one. Thanks!
–Vic–
HapaFive games is crazy! They’ve just released another game on Windows Phone called Bobble Biker. Congratulations on another FlatRedBall release!
Here’s the FRB page with more info:
Bobble Biker page on FlatRedball
–Vic–
Over the past few months we’ve done something very bad – we haven’t had a release since July of 2011. This is the longest that FlatRedBall has ever gone without a monthly release since we first started offering FlatRedBall MDX over 6 years ago. So why did this happen?
Of course one might initially guess that this means FRB is on its way out – that activity is dropping and the developers are moving on to other things. For those who suspect this is the case, it is most definitely not. In the past whenever we’ve seen apparent lack of activity from the developers (myself included) it usually means we’re doing more with FlatRedBall, not less. These past few months have been no exception. So what’s new?
Of course, you probably have noticed we have a new chat room. Big thanks to Torsten for once again researching a fantastic chat solution and implementing it for us. Since Meebo removed their public chat room support earlier this month we were a little concerned that we’d have to move to a client that offered less than Meebo, and for a few days we did when we used an IRC client. However, now that we’ve found this new chat system (offered by http://hot-things.net/) we’re extremely happy. It’s better than Meebo in almost every single way.
Also, we now have a new FlatRedball installer. We’ve decided it’s finally time to scrap NSIS. While many may praise NSIS’s flexibility and efficiency, I must say that working with it is incredibly difficult. Part of it may have been that the installer was written by a lot of different authors, but even when we focused on refactoring the code we still ended up with something FAR too complicated. As I was working on the October release the NSIS installer failed to install the FRBDK and I decided it was time to cut our losses. The new installer is a combination of a Winforms application for launching individual installers as well as using Visual Studio’s “Setup Project” for installing the FRBDK. It’s definitely a work in progress and we expect the next few months to have improvements to the installer. Let us know what you think.
But wait, these last few months couldn’t just been about a new installer and chat room right? Of course there are plenty of engine changes, and as always those can be found in the change long. But the superstar here is Glue (and related technology). Here’s some things to look for:
* Added support for scripting in Glue for UI (huge feature here!!!)
* Glue now attempts to create valid default values for variables when you tunnel. Before now tunneling in to a variable would wipe out the value of that variable if it had a default value from a file (like .scnx) or if it was set in the Entity itself.
* GlueView now has a more intelligent camera system understanding what is 2D and 3D, and it even remembers your old camera settings when you switch between Screens/Entities.
* Added in-Glue support for 2D Scenes. This speeds up UI development.
* LOTS of improvements in Screen/Entity importing and exporting.
* FRBDK Updater is official and works great!
* Glue indicates if a variable can interpolate or not with icons next to the variable in states.
* Added lots of bug fixes and new functionality to make refactoring in Glue easier to do.
* Lots and lots of improvements to the plugin system
* States now set relative values on attached objects; unattached on free-floating. Makes states work more as expected.
…And that’s just the big stuff. We’ve literally had hundreds of smaller features and bug fixes go in to this next version of Glue. We hope you enjoy working with it and keep the feedback coming – we’re still reading it and making FRB better every day!
–Vic–
A year ago or more I mentioned that FlatRedBall was going to be used on a game that was being developed at Wahoo. It’s finally been announced! Here’s some info:
This is a huge step for FlatRedBall, and I’d like to thank the Wahoo and Microsoft teams for being totally awesome to work with!
–Vic–
What a year it’s been! We’ve just released another game: SteamBirds on Windows Phone 7. We’ve brought all the great improvements to the original Flash version that came to Android to Windows Phone 7 including extra levels, 3D graphics, and a local vs. mode. If you have a Windows Phone 7, check out the trial.
Thanks to everyone who has been involved in a project.
–Vic–
Congratulations to Ahn Games on releasing “Combo – red moon rising” on the Xbox 360. This game is built using FlatRedBall, making it our 9th (wow 9!) FRB game on the 360. Congratulations on the release. Check the game details page on FRB:
http://www.flatredball.com/frb/docs/index.php?title=Games:Combo_-_red_moon_rising
If you’ve ever had to wait a full month for a bug fix…well, no more! FlatRedBall now has a build server creating daily builds – technically it may be more frequently than daily depending on check ins, but the point is you can get the most up to date version right away just by visiting the direct downloads page. Here’s a direct link:
We’ll be integrating this into Glue in the coming while so keep an eye out for it.
–Vic–
I’m a little late on this one but HapaFive Games just released their third (wow 3 already!) Windows Phone 7 game using FlatRedBall. I’ve downloaded and played it and it was a blast! Give it a shot, it’s free.
Here’s the FlatRedBall Games page on it:
Tumble Heads page on FlatRedBall
–Vic–
