I had to give a wrong answer to get the job

Back in 2007, I was searching for a software developer job at various companies. At one of these companies, the best strategy to get the job was to give a wrong answer. If this seems weird to you, let me explain what happened. When I arrived at the interview, there were 2 other guys present. One would be my direct team lead, which was also the technical lead, and the other was his manager. It Read more…

Haxe development environment setup

Haxe is an awesome programming language for making cross-platform games. And I’m sure it will only gain in popularity. But setting up a proper development environment is not easy. The Haxe ecosystem is still maturing.  There are a lot of very nice things happening. But unfortunately, some basic things are missing. Which makes it hard to get started. So I hope this guild can help you. Since I’m currently moving the ActionScript 3 codebase of Read more…

Indepth look at 2D game engines for Haxe

(Updated on 16/9/2017, after receiving more info at the Haxe Summit) So you want to make a cross platform 2D game using Haxe. Good choice! But what will you choose as game library? Preamble There are a tremendous amount of Haxe game engines out there, so I’m limiting my discussion to the most alive and kicking 2D engines. So I won’t be covering Flambe for example, which has its last commit in 2015. Remark that Haxe is Read more…

Searching for the right game development platform

This post is part of the series moving aways from ActionScript 3 and Flash. There are a lot of programming languages and game libraries available to make electronic games. So which one will I pick to port RPG Playground to? To find out, let’s first define what I need. Must Haves Supports Web Browser games The major advantage of RPG Playground over other game editors is that you can use it straight in your web browser. No download, no installation, Read more…

Moving away from ActionScript 3 and Flash

Adobe decided to put the final nail in the coffin of Flash. Unfortunately, my RPG Playground has been using Flash for some time. The reason is that it allows my users to make games inside their web browser, without the need to download anything. But it seems that if you want a web game nowadays, the only way forward is to use HTML5. It was already clear years ago that at some point I will have Read more…

Zombie company feeds on old Flash games

The Discovery Today I was wrapping up my new release of RPG Playground. But when testing, I suddenly saw the following screen: Which is pretty strange, because I don’t have any ads in RPG Playground whatsoever. After this initial screen, some other advertisement appeared at the bottom-left of my RPG making software: This obviously needed some further investigation! The investigation RPG Playground is built using ActionScript3, and generates a Flash application (I can feel you programmers shivering Read more…

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger

Last year in November I made a post about how my life was turned upside down, and that I was going through a rough period. Well, I’m happy to say things are much better now. And the future looks even brighter! I’m working on RPG Playground again, with full passion. It gives me great joy to see how much fun you have, creating your own games, even when I didn’t release any new features for Read more…

Broken dreams

Sometimes I feel like a juggler who tries to keep too many balls in the air. The older you get, the more things you build, and the more balls you have to juggle. A wife, kids, a job, a home, a passion, finances, friends, hobbies, … . Some balls are really fragile, and you do everything not to drop them. They are so important you can’t imagine that they will ever scatter on the floor. Read more…

A Different Entity Component System

When programming Rabbit Wars back in 2007, I ended up with huge objects for each of my game entities. They handled player input, AI, moving, shooting, health points and rendering. I didn’t like it, it drove me mad. But then I came across this Evolve Your Hierarchy article. Since I was still in the middle of programming, I refactored my game entity code to use components instead of multiple inheritance (just like the article described). It worked great, my code was readable again.

Rabbit Wars for PocketPC

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RPG Playground has a new website with blog

I reworked the one-page website of RPG Playground to a full blown product website, including a blog. This also means that all releated news regarding RPG Playground will be published on the RPG Playground blog, and not on this Koonsolo blog! So if you were following this blog because of the RPG Playground related posts, make sure you follow the new blog instead! All info regarding this can be found in this RPG Playground blog Read more…