I’ll be speaking at IGDA Switzerland in Bern in few weeks,

a great opportunity for me to talk about the Flash Platform as a gaming platform, to share the experience I had making the engine of Wazzamba and to meet new people I only “met” in twitter or in their blogs

The meeting will take place in february 25th at “Nothing” (great name guys ) hq in Wabern, you can find more info here in IGDA Switzerland blog.
See you there

Flash on the beach is each day closer and I started to plan my own schedule.
Each choice has been quite hard because of the high quality the conference is offering, the good thing is that even if I’m not 100% convinced to be attending some sessions I’m sure that I can switch to another one with the same or even higher quality

sunday:
papervision3D workshop by seb lee-delisle

monday:
Richard exposes all! – Richard Galvan
Casual game architecture – Keith Peters
Visualizing the voice – Chuck Freedman
Who’s a bright spark then! – Mike Jones
Cybernetic art revsited – Dr. Woohoo!
Telling Stories – Hillman Curtis
Epiphany – Joel Gethin Lewis

tuesday:
3 minute wonders – many (looking forward to Michiel van der Ros 3D optimization for MMOs)
Quick as a Flash – Grant Skinner
Leaving the sandbox – Joa Ebert
Application Frameworks – Richard Lord
More than bending pixels – Paul Burnett
Unconventional Webapps – Des Traynor + Eoghan McCabe
Choose your own adventure – Craig Swann

wednesdey
Play with vectors – Koen de Weggheleire
Connecting the dots – Mario Klingemann
Work/Play – Seb Lee-Delisle
Flashed Fashion – Andy Mcdonald
Research realtime graphics – Ralph Hauwert
Space – Joshua Davis

I’m getting in Brighton on saturday 19th, you’re allowed to poke me

Just posted the first episode of a cool tutorial on building RIAs with Cairngorm and Doctrine (a PHP ORM). This episode is about client only, next one will be about server side development.

Have a huge coffee cup and take a read
Here’s the link

Great news! Cross communities events work in Italy too and this is going to be an awesome one.

What
All4Web is a whole day of conference, completely free, completely geeky,  and completely across as many RIA technologies as you can count.
There will be great sessions about both server side and client side technologies such as the Adobe Flash Platform (and obviously Flex and AIR), JavaFX, AJAX, Microsoft Silverlight, Adobe Coldfusion, J2EE and so on
Who
Many talented guys from every corner of Italy (and Switzerland) representing their usergroups and discussing about their favourite technology.
Involved usergroups are

• TheFlashMind (Adobe Flash Platform User Group)
• CfMentor (Adobe ColdFusion User Group)
• ExpressYS (Microsoft Silverlight community)
• Flex Gala (AUG Italy)
• Italian Agile Movement
• JUG Milano (Java User Group)
• pizze-ria (Rich Internet Applications community)
• UGIALT.NET (Microsoft .NET platform community)
• UGIdotNET (Microsoft .NET platform community)

Take a look at the agenda to have an idea of what a great event it’s going to be

Where
In Milan, at the University “Bicocca” (Edificio U6 Piazza dell’Ateneo Nuovo 1) (google maps here)

When
May 8th 2009, from 10AM to about 6PM.

Furthermore….
There will be a great debate about “RIA vs RIA”…just to start the day…(I can’t wait!!!!)
There will be lots of gadgets
There will be a lot of technology fighting!
IT’S COMPLETELY FREEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!
To get the broadest audience ever all sessions will be taken in italian.

…and finally…I’m back on the stage ready to speak!

I hope to see you all there

Yep, i made my submission to 25lines contest just few days ago (right in time ), so (as Sakri did some days before me) I’m publishing my code. It’s an easy terrain generator…

Actually, I think it can be somehow improved both in lines of code and actual performances, so feel free to edit or tell me “you’d better to do that this other way…”

What’s going on is:

• generate a shape filled with a gradient to create a reference color for differents “height”
• generate a perlinNoise everyframe for dataprovider use
• detect each perlinNoise pixel depth according with its main channel value (blue in this case..)
• generating a vector of Bitmaps to be employed in the view

/**
 * 25-Line ActionScript Contest Entry
 *
 * Project: Random Terrain 3D Generator
 * Author:  Piergiorgio Niero (aka pigiuz) piergiorgio.niero[at]gmail.com
 * Date:    11/24/08
 *
 * Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
 * of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
 * in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
 * to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
 * copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
 * furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
 *
 * The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in
 * all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
 *
 * THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
 * IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
 * FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
 * AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
 * LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
 * OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN
 * THE SOFTWARE.
 */
 
// 3 free lines! Alter the parameters of the following lines or remove them.
// Do not substitute other code for the three lines in this section
[SWF(width=800, height=800, backgroundColor=0xffffff, frameRate=24)]
stage.align = StageAlign.TOP_LEFT;
stage.scaleMode = StageScaleMode.NO_SCALE;
// 25 lines begins here!
var _bd:BitmapData = new BitmapData(50,50,false,0x0000FF);
var _points:Array = new Array(new Point());
var _vxCont:Sprite = Sprite(addChild(new Sprite));
_vxCont.x = _vxCont.y = 400;
var _vexels:Vector. = new Vector.((2500),true);
var _hMap:BitmapData = new BitmapData(255,1,false);
var _gradient:Shape = new Shape();
_gradient.graphics.beginGradientFill( GradientType.LINEAR,new Array( 0x4267F9, 0xF9EAB0, 0x9EF07D, 0x8DF273, 0x9D5E1E, 0xFFFFFF ),new Array( 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1 ),new Array( 90, 105, 110, 120, 145, 185 ),new Matrix(0.2456396484375,0,0,0.0006103524625,127.5,.5));
_gradient.graphics.drawRect(0,0,255,1);
_hMap.draw(_gradient);
addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME,generatePerlinNoise);
function generatePerlinNoise(e:Event=null):void{
	_bd.perlinNoise(25,25,1,0,false,true,4,false,_points);
	Point(_points[0]).y+=1;
	for(var v:uint=0;v<(2500);v++){
		_vexels[v] = (_vexels[v]==null)?generateVoxel(v):_vexels[v];
		_vexels[v].y = Math.pow((_bd.getPixel(v%50,Math.floor((v/50))) & 0xFF)/255*6,3)*24*.24;
		_vxCont.rotationX = mouseY*.1;
		_vxCont.rotationY = (_vxCont.rotationY-(90/stage.stageWidth*(mouseX-stage.stageWidth)+45))*.5;
		_vexels[v].bitmapData.floodFill(0,0,_hMap.getPixel(255-(_bd.getPixel(v%50,Math.floor((v/50))) & 0xFF),0));}}
function generateVoxel(v:uint):Bitmap{
	var b:Bitmap = new Bitmap(new BitmapData(24*.5,24*.5,false,0x000000),"auto",false);
	b.x = v%50*24-(_bd.width*24*.5);
	b.z = Math.floor((v/50))*24-(_bd.height*24*.5);
	return Bitmap(_vxCont.addChild(b));}
// 25 lines ends here!
 
enjoy ;)

Here’s the next great meeting from Actionscript.it community!

Join the party, we’re going to share together our nerdy love for Adobe Flex!
Just compile the widget and submit that form