Flash webcam motion detection game starring Felipe Massa

First of all I would like to thank my friend Rafael Fonseca (Rodox), for the idea for this game, and to Mauricio Ricardo from Charges.com.br, for let me use his illustrations for this game.



On this game your objective is to help Felipe Massa to avoid the “flying objects” on the race. To do this, move your head and body left and right, Felipe Massa will try to imitate you. To a better playing right click it then press "Go Full Screen".

It was done on a hurry, so if you get any kind of error, I’m sorry... :D

http://watchout.hvilela.com/

Enjoy it!

Java MMO game engine using Darkstar and JMonkey

I have a huge “to do” list, full of tasks that follow the “When I have time, I will...” pattern. Well... today I decided to stop lying to myself and face the truth: I will never have time.

As my first action as a truthful timeless guy I will publish a Java MMO/MMORPG game engine that I implemented almost 2 years ago using Darkstar and JMonkey. I was supposed to publish it when I had time to clean the code.
I named it Hengine (Henrique... engine... got it?) and published it at Google Code. Be my guest to use it the way you want and mail me in case you need help.



Regards!

New layout

I wasn’t satisfied with my blog layout. For me it was to complex and with too many elements, so I decided to create a simplest version.
As long I had no time to code it, I stole borrowed the code from one of my friend’s blogs, and then I basic just changed the colors did a total reformulation of it.

What do you think? Better?

By the way... Thanks Otávio :D.

Playable webcam Breakout (Arkanoid) in Flash

I would love to have more free time, but unfortunately I haven’t.

I’m creating new features to the flash motion detection library as: Real-time background removal/replacement, advanced body detection, visual effects (fire, snow, water…), but while it’s not ready, I’ll post an improved version of the last playable game that I posted.

http://breakout.hvilela.com/

Enjoy it. Your opinion is really appreciated.

Bézier Curve through 3 points

Some days ago I had to do a Flash application where the user was able to select an image area by dragging some points around. The points should be anchors to create curves that pass through those points.
My first thought was that I wouldn’t have problems by using the curveTo method of the MovieClip class as long this method uses 3 points to create a curve, what was exactly what I needed.
The problem is that this method uses the Bézier formula to create the curve, and the Bézier curve does not pass through the second point, as you can see above:

I strong believe that I wasn’t the first one to have this frustration trying to create a curve on Flash, because that I decided to post the solution.



The formula above is the Bézier formula. Using my second point as B(t), 0.5 as t (the middle of the curve) and isolating the P2 I came to this code:

p3.x = (0.25 * p0.x + 0.25 * p2.x - p1.x) / -0.5;

p3.y = (0.25 * p0.y + 0.25 * p2.y - p1.y) / -0.5;

moveTo(p0.x, p0.y);

curveTo(p3.x, p3.y, p2.x, p2.y);

P0, P1, P2 are the 3 points used to create the curve, P3 is the generated point to replace the P2 on the curveTo method.
Here is the result:

I hope it helps someone! :)