I'm excited to be able to announce that Killer Space Worms, my first ever iOS game, has been published on Apple's App Store and Google Play.
This game is an homage to Asteroids and has its roots back in 2008 when I coded Space Balls using the venerable APE library. This version uses the Nape Physics Engine and, because it's written using Adobe AIR, allows me to use a single code base to deploy to web desktop, iOS and Android.
The controls for touch are pretty self explanatory. Less so for desktop: your spaceship points at the mouse pointer, the mouse button fires and the space bar thrusts.
Being able code in ActionScript and deploy to such a diverse ecosystem opens up a whole new universe of development for me. I've already started creating a touch based network node user interface and successfully deployed development versions to iPad and Nexus 7 (please forgive the shaky camerawork!):
Here's a slightly less shaky version:
My day job is creating business applications for banks and advertising agencies. The ability to use AIR to deploy software to touch devices opens up the opportunity to create applications such a media booking systems and business activity monitoring dashboards for tablets.
If your initial reaction is "why would anybody want to book media on a mobile device?", take a look at this article. My own experience is that a well designed touch interface can be a lot more immediate and a lot more enjoyable that a mouse driven interface. Imagine sitting in a swanky post production suite and rather than the Nuke operator being stuck at a desk, they are kicking back on a Ligne Roset Togo using my touch network node UI above.
Finally, a word about Flex. As a framework for building applications, I still feel it is unparalleled. I code with it everyday and it is an absolute joy. Both of my touch applications use it and there are no performance issues. The Flex team have just released 4.12.0 with improved memory and performance, improved mobile skins and iOS7 support and over 80 bugs fixes.
So, if you fancy blowing up angry metallic killer space worms, courtesy of some cross platform ActionScript goodness, here's your chance....
