You've outed me! Well, this may or may not come as a shock, but making working Flash versions of the games has been my goal since I started collecting them. It's one of the reasons I've been collecting them so fiercely - so I can bring all 12 to the world online. I've actually specifically been working on a Flash version of Rock Tour for a little while now! (been working a bit on Ghostly Estates as well). I'm something of a Flash junkie, as a search in Google Groups will show: http://groups.google.com/groups?q=%22gary+fixler%22

This has actually quite often happened to me, where I've been quietly working on a surprise thing in the background, and then had to come out with it when someone came up with the same idea :) The weirdest one ever (to me, at least) was when I was working on a method to create plantlife realistically using L-Systems in Flash for export to 3D formats that could be imported into Maya and other languages, and then 1 week after I got this fairly involved idea (and had much of a working library of code up and running), someone name Jon came up with the same idea in the Flash newsgroup, and announced that he would be starting up the same idea! More amazingly, he did this about 5 times over the next few weeks with every secret idea I had been working on at the time, and none of them were even remotely related. It got me paranoid, wondering if he was stalking me or something, but I guess we were just on multiple similar wavelengths.

What I've done so far, for the most realistic experience, is take 7.1MP images of the Rock Tour board in a nice setup, with the board and game held firmly in place with double-stick tape (only on the plastic areas!) so my hands wouldn't move them. It's almost 250 images, and just shy of 1GB of data (about 4MB each). It's always best to start with far greater resolution than your planned output for the best image quality. I've then been going in image by image and removing just the pieces and the area of the board they effect with their shadow, and color/specular reflections. These will be stored in a pieces movieclip in Flash, pre-aligned with their proper offsets. The reason for doing all this is not only for photographic realism of the boards, so you really feel like you're playing on the board, but also so the player doesn't have to view it from an unnatural top-down view. it will feel more like they're playing it from a natural seated position, while everything will still be readable. This necessitates some other things as well, like pictures where the pieces overlap in that POV's viewplane.

I've worked up a bit of the logic, too, on how the game will know how the rules work, so I include the option of either free play, wherein you can cheat, or do whatever you want with the pieces, like invent your own game, or have the computer only allow you to move the pieces to the valid places, if you want to have a cheat-free game. Some other things I've been experimenting with are getting a true-to-life version of the slider snap and spinner noises (this is very difficult, as the spinner noises especially aren't in the frequency response of most microphones), working with the 3D model and timed photographs to get appropriate looks for the blurred spinners, and realistically slowing-and-stopping spinners.

And of course, the reason I started building the 3D model was so that I could use some of the 3D engine stuff I've build in Flash in the past to have all sorts of sweet things happen. These include when you're choosing the game you want to play, having an interactively spinning version of the currently selected game spinning on the right, with info and such on the left, as happens in games like Tony Hawk, where your skateboarder is spinning on the right, and you can manipulate the spin to check out their outfit and board. Another thing I wanted to see was when you select the board, having it spin down from where it is in 3D, while the board is unfolding itself, finally coming to rest and fading into the position of where the photographed versions of the board are. Yet another idea I want to get in there is having multiple views, which of course requires taking hundreds of photos again from a new location while carefully moving the pieces around, but that's the kind of obsessive behavior I'm all about :)

I have also taken all the photos for a test run of Ghostly Estates, with the 3 pieces and the yellow item piece in every possible position, but I didn't like the lighting or setup for that one. This actually prompted me to start researching lights at my local photo store so I could get a mini product stage set up for cool lighting. I've been heavily considering putting a few recognizable 80s memorabilia pieces around the boards, so it not only feels like you're playing the Flipsiders, but are in fact, trapped in the 80s while doing so.

Anyway, sorry to jump all over the idea, but I have actually been working on it pretty heavily since January 10th, and felt that your announcement of the idea seemed like a good time to spill some of the beans.

-gary

--- In mbflipsiders@yahoogroups.com, "Jesse Thompson" <jesset@...> wrote:
>
> Hello!
>
> Welcome Aboard Superstarlet oh four. :)
>
> Since you've arived there appears to have been a flurry of
> information. As Gary mentioned, your collection is truly astounding.
> Espescially seeing multiple copies of some of these titles in your
> photo, I can actually hear people taking out their wallets ;)
>
> Short of owning them all, I could imagine the next best thing would be
> having these objects digitally realized. I know that Gary has modeled
> most of the working components of flipsiders in 3d. I think getting
> some high-res scans of these other games would also help in that end.
> I could imagine for instance importing such images into Flash
> presentations and making working versions of the games on the computer
> that way.
>
> The scans you have uploaded into the pictures section of the group are
> tres cool by the way! Are your originals higher resolution than how
> they display in the pictures section? Yahoo always downsamples
> whatever you put there. You can also upload them into the files
> section if you choose however, where they will luckily not be
> downsampled. :)
>
> So what think everyone else? High res board scans + (instructions x
> flash programming) = cool flash versions of the games?  I could fill
> in much of the "flash programming" part of the equation.. another part
> that would be helpful might be music and or sound though. Flash things
> just get inexplicably cooler when you add music and/or sound, and
> that's something I'm bad at. ;)
>
> And, I guess something I might try then would be to do that with Rock
> Tour or something since I have all the parts of the equation for that
> game. I'll let ye know. :)
>
> - - Jesse
>
> On 28/02/06, superstar <superstarlet_04@...> wrote:
> >  i'm highly doubting that the '93 games were flipsiders. they must have been
> > another
> >  similar game. there's too much info missing about them.
> >
> >
> >  --- In mbflipsiders@yahoogroups.com, "gary_fixler" <yahooSIGNUP@> wrote:
> >  >
> >  > I agree. What are they hiding? Was there some great Flipsiders War,
> >  > and the wounds are still too deep for anyone to want to revisit that
> >  > dark chapter? I think they're just trying to generate hype, and darn
> >  > it, it's working.
> >  >
> >  > -g
> >  >
> >  > --- In mbflipsiders@yahoogroups.com, "superstar" <superstarlet_04@>
> >  > wrote:
> >  > >
> >  > > i will not believe these actually exist until i see them. since
> >  > anjar,
> >  > > hasbro, MB or the inventor won't comment, the illusiveness
> >  > > makes them way more appealing... and frustrating.
> >  > >
> >  > > --- In mbflipsiders@yahoogroups.com, Gary Fixler
> >  > > <yahooSIGNUP@> wrote:
> >  > > >
> >  > > > Hmmm... When I got this email, I went to Jesse's mbflipsiders
> >  > > Yahoo!
> >  > > > group to reply, but though the screen says "49-78 of 79," the
> >  > > 79th
> >  > > > message isn't there. Did you delete it?
> >  > > >
> >  > > > Anyway, yes, that was my thread on BGG, wherein I was trying
> >  > > to get
> >  > > > any more info I could. I've been meaning to get that info over
> >  > > here,
> >  > > > but now that I see the dates over there, I can see work really
> >  > > has
> >  > > > gotten in the way, and time has flown past!
> >  > > >
> >  > > > That's my thread on BGG you found, which I started up when I
> >  > > noticed
> >  > > > the product ID numbers on my Flipsiders. I figured they could
> >  > > be used
> >  > > > to help track down the total number of Flipsiders out there, but
> >  > > as I
> >  > > > didn't have too many at the time, I still needed much help.
> >  > > Alfonzo
> >  > > > Smith was able to fill in some additional product IDs for me,
> >  > > > including that of the mythical Prom Date! He did duplicate the
> >  > > number
> >  > > > for Gold Fever and Road Rally as you can see, but I didn't want
> >  > > to get
> >  > > > pushy, since he had been one of my best sources of info
> >  > > already.
> >  > > > Unfortunately, with the common nouns used for the naming of
> >  > > the new
> >  > > > Flipsiders he listed, there was little I could search for online.
> >  > > The
> >  > > > only really oddly (and thus easily searchably) named one was
> >  > > > Caterpillar Causeway, but all that finds on Google is a few
> >  > > random
> >  > > > things, and now my thread on BGG. I searched out the rest, to
> >  > > no
> >  > > > avail. They are non-entities online, sadly.
> >  > > >
> >  > > > Since I've procrastinated long enough getting that info over
> >  > > here,
> >  > > > let's complete things. Thanks for the gentle nudge :) I will post
> >  > > the
> >  > > > info finally right now in a new thread with an easily findable
> >  > > topic
> >  > > > title.
> >  > > >
> >  > > > -g
> >  > > >
> >  > > > > i found this quote from someone on boardgamegeek about
> >  > > the 1993 flipsiders:
> >  > > >
> >  > > > > "I had a friend who was fond of the Flipsiders series so when
> >  > > they were discounted after
> >  > > > > being discountinued I wound up collecting them. When I
> >  > > catalogued my collection I was
> >  > > > > surprised to notice that the series was released by two
> >  > > different publishers. The ones with
> >  > > > > the 1988 copyright were released by Milton Bradley. The
> >  > > ones with a 1993 copyright were
> >  > > > > released by Diversified Specialists, Inc. (who?)
> >  > > >
> >  > > > > The newer games are:
> >  > > > > Caterpillar Causeway (#144172)
> >  > > > > River Run (#144185)
> >  > > > > Prized Pony (#144186)
> >  > > > > Alien Assault (#144200)
> >  > > > > Gold Fever (#144178)
> >  > > > > Road Rally (#144178)
> >  > > >
> >  > > > > There is a sticker on the back of these games that says
> >  > > "Distributed by West Coast
> >  > > > > Liquidators, Inc. Domiguez, CA 90220." This leads me to
> >  > > believe that the games were just
> >  > > > > dumped on the market and sold below cost."
> >  > > >
> >  > > >
> >  > > > > i've never heard or seen of any of these titles, ever. like
> >  > > aliens, do they really exist?
> >  >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >  ________________________________
> >  YAHOO! GROUPS LINKS
> >
> >
> >  Visit your group "mbflipsiders" on the web.
> >
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> >
> >  Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service.
> >
> >  ________________________________
> >
>

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