The Motor2 AS3 physics engine makes it really simple to create platform games. I have made a prototype game that only use BoxData and LineData (used for the jump through platform). There is really no functionality except walking and jumping, but then again it is a prototype.

The wall-jump bug is a feature! Or … the wall-jump feature is a bug.

UPDATE: Use the arrow keys to move Mario.

I stumbled upon a surrealistic flash game called Polcarstva. The game has got really nice graphics and music and you get a relaxed experience. There are no instructions when you begin so basically you have to guess what to do. Its just one of those guess-where-to-click games. There is probably a bunch of usability experts who will go berserk but I think it works good in these kind of games. While playing I once again realized how important music is to set the mood in games. I have made a lot of games without sound and they are not as good as they could be. Play the game at www.polcarstva.net

Polcarstva (music by Sigur Rós)

I have been playing with a AS3 platform game and wondered how to make jump-through-platforms like the ones in Super Mario Bros. I found out that you can create a LineData body and set doubleSided to false. This allows you to jump through the platform on your way up.

// a, b, infinite, doubleSided
var lineData : LineData = new LineData(
    new Point(0,0),
    new Point(100,0),
    false,
    false
);

When you are working on an actionscript project with a generated swf in Flex you sometimes need to pass the work to someone else for review. If your swf is loading another swf you will not be able to get the files to work correctly. As soon as you copy the files to a local folder you are going to have problems because of the security in Flash player. If you run the html-file Flex created you will get an error:

Error #2044: Unhandled SecurityErrorEvent:. text=Error #2140: Security sandbox violation: file:///Users/mattiaswargren/Documents/Flex Builder 3/my-project/bin-release/Main.swf cannot load file:///Users/mattiaswargren/Documents/Flex Builder 3/my-project/bin-release/assets.swf. Local-with-filesystem and local-with-networking SWF files cannot load each other.

This is just the temporary solution to get it working in a local folder.

1. Right-click your project and select properties.
2. Select Actionscript Compiler.
3. Write -use-network=false in the textbox for Additional compiler parameters.
4. Next time you run this project it is ready for local use.

I have been playing around with the Motor2 physics engine which is based on the Box2d engine. I really like this engine and think it has a lot of potential for actionscript game developers. Box2D has great documentation while Motor2 does not have any documentation at all. My advise when you start to work with the Motor2 engine is to have the class files rather than the swc files in the project. This will help you get a look into the code to check the parameters and methods.

Google Code
http://code.google.com/p/motor2/

Google Groups
http://groups.google.com/group/motor2

Box2D Documentation (may help)
http://www.box2d.org/manual.html

In 1994, Justin Hall started a blog. I will start one today. Yeah, I am a tad late. By the way, I am a Flash and Flex Developer at Hello There and I love to make games.