London Flash Platform User Group

30th September 2010 (30/09/2010)

Tink — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 09:54:33 +0000

Prizes for the free raffle
?

Managing a Monster Flash Project

Tink — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 22:18:30 +0000

Moshi Monsters is an extremely popular online social game for kids with over 20 million members and growing…fast!!! We will share some of our secrets in managing such a large, on-going flash project and give an account of a day in the life of a Front-End Developer at Mind Candy.

Re-Architecting the Designer-Developer Workflow

Tink — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 21:48:57 +0000

Richard Lord

Most application development follows a pattern where the designers design it then the developers build it. Any change in the design requires more work from the developers, who have to implement each change request.

It doesn’t have to be this way. By modifying the application architecture, we can enable the developer to do their work before the designer, leaving the designer free to alter the design as frequently as they wish without recourse to developer time.

This frees designers to respond to client requests in a timely manner and frees developers to work on a more strategic level, adding functionality to the tools the designers use without being bogged down in day-to-day client projects.

In this session I’ll describe this new architecture, how and why I developed it, the benefits and pitfalls of its use, and how to implement it using any of the current dependency injection frameworks.

Digital Storytelling – Creative Technology in the Newsroom and Beyond

Tink — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 09:29:38 +0000

Alastair Dant

A tour of interactive authoring at the Guardian. Topics include storyfinding, cross-department workflows, rapid development, data visualisation and open APIs. We’ll take a peek behind the scenes of several apps such as live results for the election, the world cup in words and something to ponder for Stevie Jobs.

Presentation: PDF

Flash Contracting

Tink — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 12:25:18 +0000

David Fox

Becoming a contract developer in London can be a pretty stressful decision. Setting up limited companies, finding jobs, getting paid and generally fitting in are just a few things you need to master before you can even begin to deal with crazy deadlines, difficult clients, switching workspaces every other week and the occasional piece of badly written code.

This session will show the pro’s and con’s of contract life for those considering stepping over to the dark side and for those who have already taken the plunge, we’ll be going through ways in which you can make the market work for you, dealing with recruiters, how to minimize the pain of contracting’s disadvantages and also a few tips on how to push your day rate up.

Presentation: PDF

AKQA

Tink — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 08:44:55 +0000

http://www.akqa.com/

AKQA is an independent, ideas-led agency that exists to help its clients lead in the digital age. AKQA is the first company to hold the Agency of the Year title on both sides of the Atlantic at the same time, three years running. Our team works globally because our clients do and we have offices in the USA, Europe and Asia.

Company Fact Sheet

George Profenza

Tink — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 17:45:59 +0000

George Profenza has using Flash for the past 4 years. He currently works as a Flash Developer for disturb media and has recently graduated from Creative Computing, Goldsmiths, University of London. In Creative Computing he had the pleasure of getting into Physical Computing, OpenGL, Processing, MaxMSP/Jitter and other fun tools.

26th August 2010 (26/08/2010)

Tink — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 17:42:49 +0000

Robotlegs & Signals: A Match Made in Heaven (19:00 – 20:00) – Conrad Winchester
Robotlegs is an Actionscript framework that makes it easier to write and maintain applications. It can use almost any design pattern for the application’s architecture but comes with a built in version of the Model, View, Controller and Service design pattern. This is called its MVCS reference implementation.

This talk will explore developing a small but real-world application using the Robotlegs Framework along with this MVCS implementation. We’ll look at how the architecture of the application can easily be split into separate layers that all have clear areas of concern.

The talk will also demonstrate how well Robotlegs integrates with AS3 Signals to produce what I believe is one of the cleanest application frameworks available to Actionscript developers at the moment.

Arduino & ActionScript (20:15 – 21:15) – George Profenza
This talk will be a quick intro into Arduino, sensors, actuators and communication with Flash. I will present the different options for creating visuals using data from Arduino and the pros and cons of working using Flash for this sort of projects. Hopefully, if the hardware won’t fail, we’ll have some nice demos.

Prizes for the free raffle
1 Duemilanove Starter Kit donated by disturb media.
1 copy of Flex 4 Cookbook donated by O’Reilly.

Sponsored by RGA, disturb media & O’Reilly

When/Where
Date: 26th August 2010 (26/08/2010)
Time: 19:00 – 23:00 (doors open at 18:30)
Venue: RGA, Level4, 42 St. John’s Square, London, EC1M 4EA
Tube: Farringdon/Barbican

Sign-up is now closed for this event. You will not be able to attend if you haven’t signed up. Those signed up will need to confirm their username and email address when you enter the venue.

Hands-On Unity3D

Tink — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 21:23:21 +0000

Overview
Prepare yourself to enter the world of 3D games with Unity3D!

During the first day of the course you will learn about the Unity3D interface and its main features. The training will start by examining the elements of a 3D application such as meshes, materials and textures. It will then move on to explore ways to make the objects move and animate, using the animation tool, physics and particles. Finally you will start writing some simple scripts to handle user interaction and create elements of a 2D interface.

On the second the course will focus entirely on scripting, starting with a detailed review of the scripting engine and API as well a multiple tips and tricks on how to create effective code and build 3D games & applications.

Presented by Bartek Drozdz

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Day 1

1. Unity3D editor basics
- Panels & tabs
- Navigating the 3D view
- Running and testing your game

2. Creating a world
- Modeling a terrain
- Texturing
- Adding trees
- Basic light & render settings

3. 3D objects
- Meshes
- Materials
- Textures
- Lights & shaders

4. Animation & physics
- Animating clips
- Creating animation
- Editing curves
- Colliders
- Rigid bodies
- Particle effects

5. Sound effects
- Adding sound clips
- Sound in a 3D environment

6. First scripts
- Built in scripts
- Handling user interaction
- Creating a simple 2D interface
- Making a simulation

6. iPhone and iPad
- Accelerometer
- Touch events
- Testing your apps on the devices

Day 2

1. Introduction to scripting
- Quick introduction to C#
- Anatomy of a script, the MonoBehaviour class

2. Project structure
- Strategies for structuring projects
- Accessing application elements
- Instantiating objects at runtime
- Review of standard components

3. Techniques of interaction
- Collision detection
- Handling user input
- Raycasting

4. Modifying objects
- Moving, scaling and rotating objects
- Applying physics forces
- Changing material properties
- Changing shape

5. GUI scripting
- Two different approaches
- GUI class
- Styling GUI components

6. Dynamic content
- Loading content from the web
- Understanding asynchronous operations
- Dynamic textures
- Communication with server-side scripts

7. Advanced topics
- Introduction to custom shaders
- Generating 3d objects
- Image effects & filters

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Costs
- The cost of this 2 days training is £200 + VAT (£235).
- This includes lunch.

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All attendees with require
- Their own laptops.
- A copy of Unity3D (free or pro version)
- A basic knowledge of C# (or intermediate ActionScript 3.0 experience)

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When/Where
Date: 21st-22nd October 2010 ( 21/10/2010 – 22/10/2010 )
Times: 10:00 – 18:00 (doors open at 09:30)
Venue: Leroy House, 436 Essex Road, N1 3QP (click for map)
Tube: Highbury / Angel

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Booking
- To book a place on this course please contact training AT lfpug.com.
- Maximum 14 attendees (3 places left).

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More info on our training philosophy can be found here

Martyn Jones

Tink — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 17:37:30 +0000

Before joining Mind Candy last year, Martyn spent 5 years developing websites for the Discovery Channel, casual games for the BBC, experimental animation for Hewlett-Packard Labs, eLearning applications in Singapore and gambling games for the National Lottery. Martyn is an all round Moshi Monster developer and bridges the developer/design interaction gap.