K, here is Podcast #4.  This time we discuss two thrilling game ideas, and then we get into our Top-10 Predictions For The Midcore/Casual/Retro Game Industry.

Also, this podcast marks the first time we bumper the podcast with music from our vast library of songs created for games and other online projects.  This week's featured song is "Salty Fries".

Download The Podcast Now!: http://www.8bitrocket.com/podcasts/gamestorm4.mp3

have been working on a few new projects that require speed and blit operations. This has given me the opportunity t to research and re-fine my methods. At one time I used arrays of bitmapData objects, pre-cached from movieClips. Those were especially needed when I was working with designers who were not savvy with tile sheets. The array is fast and efficient, but it uses a lot of memory and is redundant when you also have a sprite sheet in memory. Also, since arrays are passed by reference, I ran into some problems accidentally writing over the original array of data when I wanted to run matrix transformations in-line while the games were running. Sometimes I would corrupt the original sprite data and I couldn't figure out why. So, after quite a while using arrays, I switched to mostly blitting directly from sprite sheets to the canvas. The sprite sheet pngs acted pretty much like arrays, the only draw back being that I had to do all of the work to pre-render my rotations, scale and other transformations in Fireworks and then bring them into Flash manually...

ack in May 1977 my dad told my brother and I that we were going to see a "sleeper" film at the theater. Star Wars was out the same week, but we would have to wait months to see that movie. Instead of an adventure filled with Rebels, Imperials, droids, and Stormtroopers, we were thrust instead into the C.B./10-4/Trucker/"F-The-County Mounties" world of Smokey And The Bandit. Sure Burt Reynolds and Sally Field were great in the movie, but for some reason, as 7-year old, I related to Snowman, played by Jerry Reed. He was the guy who drove the truck filled with Coors beer that Burt Reynolds was so eagerly trying to blaze a trail for in his black Trans-Am. For some reason, I saw a lot of myself in Reed's character. Even at that age, I knew I would never lead the pack or get the girl like Burt Reynolds. Instead, I had the sneaking suspicion that I would be a "right hand man" kind of guy, who would get beat-up in bars of life, but still remain loyal to the cause...just like Snowman. Jerry Reed also wrote the theme song, "East Bound And Down" , one of the greatest theme songs ever recorded. Just last Saturday, out of the blue, I found myself singing this theme song to myself and thinking "man, wasn't this song just f*ckin' great." Yes it was, and so was Jerry Reed. You can hear both below.