Was it a shameless marketing ploy on my part or maybe just proof of the staying power of a good Flash game (yup)? Cyberslots is a game I made in Flash way back in 1999. Officially, now called Rocket Slots, the old version has proliferated across the Internet into so many web domains that I can not and don’t have the time nor patience to count them all. I used to license this game for $$$.

A quick Google search of just “CYBERSLOTS” pulled up a hundreds of sites that house my infamous Cyberslots for their visitors to play. None of these web sites have my permission to actually host the game, but I guess I never expressly entered that text into the game itself so that must make it OK.

I grabbed the following domains from the first 80 Google results and this list is valid as of May 2006. I looked over quite a few of the sites as some of them just pointed back to one of these sites listed below. Copy  Paste as I won’t directly link to any of them. list maker software wordpress stats


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I used the DataGrid component to create the High Score board for Plunger. I added features to auto-update the Top 25 players every x number of seconds and show a players particular rank whether that are in the Top 25 or not.The DataGrid part was a breeze, but I had a most difficult time learning how to determine ranks in MYSQL & PHP.

Basically the PHP code for determining a rank came down to the following:

$sql = "SELECT COUNT(*) FROM mytable WHERE points >=

( SELECT points FROM mytable WHERE player= '$player' )";

$result = mysql_query( $sql ) or die ( mysql_error() );
$rank = mysql_result( $result, 0 );
echo $rank;

This does not take into account players with the same score. That means if a five players all have a score of 1000, a player’s rank could fall anywhere within that range when I really want them all to have the same rank.

Fortunately, Arjen Lentz had a recent post asking readers to find a solution. Quiz: Calculating ranking (yes and there’s a prize). Read that as, “was a prize.” It is from last year.

The game Viral Plunger has been added to the Stoopid Games main page. Now, of course this is not Rocket Science, it’s Plunger. An addictive little game that can make you lose a small chunk of time faster than you would like. This game is being developed in Flash Lite for mobile phone delivery. More on that very soon.

Simplicity is key in this one button game as your only goal is stop on 1000. Sounds easy right? Well yeah, just watch the numbers and press STOP.

I am also adding a Flash based High Score Board so it can easily be customized to show your stats if one were so inclined. It’s not so much to add to the value of Plunger, but to build a framework for future games.
Sign up for a Screen Name, no email required, and give Viral Plunger a test drive.

I love board games. They fascinate me. The human vs. human interactions that take place throughout the course of a game allow you to judge your next move based on your opponents’ strengths and weaknesses. Kill or be killed with less real life consequences.

My wife and I play Scrabble every now and then. It is strange. I know after my first few placed words (CAT-FLASH-MEAT) whether I will win or lose. It might be the words themselves or maybe the attitude my wife brings to the game. Either way I think I know the outcome and either way I don’t really care. There is something magical about that time which could never be recreated with computer versions of this game or any game for that matter.

On to the goods… The download… So we have been playing with our original score sheets from the game for years and recently moved on to making grids on blank pieces of paper to keep score which is a messy. I prefer neat.

So I went to Hasbro’s website to buy new sheets because that was the logical next step, right? Well, I I found this:

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I’d give you the shirt off my back… but it’s a nice shirt.

Cloak & Dagger (1984) was a favorite movie of mine growing up. My brother and I must of watched Jack Flack and Davey conquer evil at least 15 times. Last night, as I sat watching it with my son for the first time, I found myself remembering exact lines and nudging my boy to “pay attention” when I knew something good was about to happen. I asked the boy what he thought of the movie. His exact words: “That was so cool!”

The fact that it has a game as a main character is also cool and the reason I decided to sit down and watch. I’d love to be able to plug in a Coleco or an Atari to the TV and show the boy some real games. Yeah, I’ve seen the game boxes at Wal-Mart but I think I ‘ll just go play catch with the boy instead.

Earlier this year I had the pleasure of being the subject of an interview for a high school students term paper. I find it amazing at how quickly kids these days can pick up on a subject and become “dangerous experts” in no time.

– The Interview ———-

Hope these are helpful. If you need a follow up on any of the answers, let me know.

>
> What exactly do you personally do as a game programmer?
>
As a freelance game programmer I get to wear many hats. Not only do I write the code to make the games work, often times I am the graphic designer, the audio engineer and frequently I get to design games from scratch. When creating a game, I first evaluate the scope of the project and determine all the requirements ahead of time. I gather all the graphics or create them as I go and then begin coding the game.

When a game is completed I breathe a sigh of relief and look for the next game to develop.

>
> As far as I know you, mainly work in Flash, do you want to, or plan to
> move outside of flash programming?
>
Flash has been very good to me over the years. I have been fortunate enough to work from home for the last five years building games. Aside from the fact that I have enjoyed using Flash these past years, there are several strong selling points that keep me coming back. They are: Actionscript programming language, user base and the Flash IDE.

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