Software, Fitness, and Gaming – Jesse Warden
Software | Fitness | Gaming
Preface
I attended and spoke at the 360 Flex conference in San Jose this year. Before the high fades away, I wanted to post what I learned last week for a few reasons. First, to share with others. Second, to share for those who didn’t attend, but might if they feel they’d gain something from it. Third, a growing number of Flex devs, albeit really small, feel they don’t gain much from conferences. I wanted to show a potential counterpoint to this in hopes it’ll convert them back.
Preface
There are a lot of good articles already written & screen casts about memory management in Flash Player. Â I encourage you to read them first before reading the below. Â I cover memory management in a large application using a PureMVC architecture, typically on top of Flex.
Continue reading “Good Memory Management When Using PureMVC”
This is a long post, so I’ve provided a short version, and content links to relevant sections if you want to skip around.
Short Version
I’ve built an AIR application in my spare time using Flex that helps you play Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition faster. It took 6 months in my spare time and cost around $50k to build, and $40 a month to maintain.
See and download it here.
It was created in response to my new players, who are tech saavy, having a slow time getting a game going. I copied the design metaphor used in MMORPG games, as well as creating an online database via Django of user submitted content to help the process go faster, as well as supporting house rules. In doing market research, I found my product is for a younger generation, and this makes it challenging to market. I used an Iterative/Agile development process to ensure it got completed.
The app had 3 goals: make money, make our games quicker & easier, and prove to myself I could execute. I succeeded in the latter 2, and failed in the making money… so far.
Continue reading “AIR App: Powerz – Play Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition Faster”
The Agile Chronicles is a set of articles documenting my experiences using an Agile process (Scrum) in software development on my current Flex project.
This entry is about utilizing branches for each developer in Subversion, Merge Day, and how while cool, it’s an ivory tower process.
Note: This isn’t a tenet of the Agile methodology itself, it’s just something that works well when you have a bunch of developers collaborating together rapidly, and a specific workflow our client requested we follow.