FrozenHaddock

A Challenger Approaches

William — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 11:52:50 +0000

Hello, It's HiddenSpartan from the forums.
I'll probably throw up tutorials at some point, but not right now at 4:53 AM.

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PHP Tutorial Part II

Arxanas — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 12:00:39 +0000

Yeah, so, this is Part 2 of the PHP Tutorial. I just hope somebody reads it...

Anyways, last time I showed you the echo statement. However, the echo statement is pretty boring on its own, because you can just type whatever it is out in the HTML document. Its usefulness will be shown in time. However, I will now show you the magic that are variables!

A variable, in case you don't remember from math class, is something with a variable value. In math, you might have been solving for a variable, but in PHP, you set the variable, then do something with it later. This is how you make a variable:

$variable_name = "LOL this is a variable OMG";

Upon analyzing it, we see a dollar sign ($). That's just saying, the name after this is the name of a variable. You can call a variable something if it abides by these conditions:

1) It has to have alphanumeric (a letter or a number) characters, or an underscore (_). That's it.

2) It can't start with a number.

3) It can't have spaces.

Keep in mind that the cases (upper and lower) are different. So

$variablename

and

$variableName

and

$VARIABLENAME

are all completely different variables, and they can all hold their own values. A variable name can have an underscore (_) instead of a space, so fear not, or you can use notation likeThis to separate words. Anyways, a variable is set using the equal operator (=).

$variable_name =

says, "The variable called variable_name shall be set to the value..." You can have either a number or a string (there are more, I'll get into them later) for a variable value. So

$the_answer_to_life_the_universe_and_everything = 42;

and

$stalker_speech = "I know where you live!";

are both legal. Now, here's some things to notice. The number does not have quotation marks. Only text has that. However, if you want the text "42," you can use

$variable = "42";

It's very important that you distinguish between numbers and strings. Also, numbers can be floating-point values (that just means they have decimal points).

$pi = 3.14159;

will also work. Now, let's echo these things! Open up index.php, and copy and paste this code:

This will output the following:

Hi!
This is a greeting.
A greeting? THIS - IS - SPARTA!!!1!1one!!

However, writing all those echo statements is a pain. So we come to the concatenation operator! Basically, concatenating puts together strings. The concatenation operator is just a period (.). This is how you use it:

echo $string1." This is concatenation!".$string2;

Assuming you've got those variables up there, that will output:

Hi! This is concatenation! This is a greeting!

It's fairly simple. You can also concatenate stuff and put that in a variable. So this is also legal:

$concatenated = $string1.$string2.$string3."The end.";

$concatenated will now have the contents of those strings. As for numbers, you can add them. And subtract them, and multiply and divide. It's also fairly simple for numbers:

$number1 = 10;
$number2 = 20;
echo $number1 + $number2;

That will output 30. Same goes for the other operators.

echo 10+20-30*40/50;

The minus sign (-) is subtraction, the asterisk (*) is multiplication, and the forward slash (/) is division. You may want to look up your order of operations to evaluate this. It'll end up being the same as:

echo (10+20)-((30*40)/50);

What if you don't want to do them in the regular order? You just use parentheses (the things on either side of this parenthetical statement) to group the numbers. In case you don't remember, division by zero will cause an error. So don't do it. Now, here's some more operator things for you: comments!

A comment doesn't actually do anything in the code. It's there to help you remember what a piece of code does. You can use single-line comments or multi-line comments.

//this is a single-line comment! Anything after the "//" will be completely ignored.

You can also put a single line comment after a statement, like this:

echo 86400; //this will output the number of seconds in a day

You can also use a multi-line comment:

/*
This is a multi-line comment!
See, you can use it for any number of lines!
You just have to encase it in the multicomment
things.
*/
echo $stuff;

Let's go over one more type of variable. It's called a Boolean variable. Despite its fancy name, it's pretty simple. A boolean variable can have one of two values: true or false;

$boolean_thing = false;
$other_boolean_thing = true;

Finally, there's one more thing about variables. They're variable. This means that you can change the value of a variable halfway through your code. For example:

$stuff = "This is some text!";
echo "Value in variable $stuff: ".$stuff."\n";
$stuff = "This is some bold text!";
echo "Value in variable $stuff: ".$stuff;

So a variable can change. In fact, a variable can change types! So you can change from a string to a number to a boolean to another number. Most languages don't let you do that, but PHP is pretty easy-going.

And that's it. Let's hope for a third part.

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PHP Tutorial Part I

Arxanas — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 01:51:19 +0000

This is a colloquial PHP tutorial. You need to know the basics of HTML and how the internet works.

So. PHP. Awesome. What is PHP? It stands for "PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor." It doesn't make sense when you think about it, but you can ask Wikipedia for more details. Now, we raise the question as to why not to use plain HTML. Well, you can't have dynamic content without some sort of server-side scripting, such as PHP, ASP, JSP, or something else.

Now we wonder what "server-side" means. Server-side means that the server runs the script (in our case, PHP) then sends it off to the client's browser (the end-user, like you reading this). Anyways, to get started, you're gonna need a server with PHP installed. If you don't have one online, you can download PHP and Apache to run a server on your computer, if only to learn how to work PHP.

So, for our Hello, world! page. Get on your server and make a new file - "index.php". Start editing it, and put this in there:

Firstly, if the actual text

shows up, that means that PHP is not enabled on your server.

Anyways, if you know the basics of HTML, you'll know what all the tags up to "" ends said script. So this would be a dummy script that does nothing:

Of course, if that's what you're going to use PHP for, then you've just wasted some space on your server by installing PHP. So let's get to more useful stuff. As in the HTML document, the PHP script reads:

So we see the PHP script start. Then we see the echo thing. Echo is a function that outputs something to the HTML document. You use it like this:

echo "LOLOLOL I just outputted something!";

Now, note the quotations marks (") before and after the outputted text. The quotation marks denote a string. A string is just a fancy way of saying text. So, if you have:

"Text and stuff goes here!"

That's a string, with the content "Text and stuff goes here!" You can also use single quotation marks ('), like this:

'Text and stuff goes here!'

But you can't mix the two, or PHP will complain about it. So this is invalid:

"Double quotations then single quotations does not work.'

Now, here's a question. How do you put a real quotation mark into the string? Because, if you do this:

"LOL text like "stuff" is awesome"

PHP will complain about this. Why? Well, it can't tell the difference between quotation marks. It'll interpret that statement as:

"LOL text like "
stuff
" is awesome"

It will split it up into two strings and the word stuff. Since PHP doesn't know what stuff without quotation marks means, it'll explode throw an error. So, long story short, put a backslash (\) before the quotation marks, like this:

"LOL text like \"stuff\" is awesome"

The same goes for single quotation marks - you use \' to put those in a string. Echo-ing that will just have this on the screen:

LOL text like "stuff" is awesome

Anyways, back to the hello world. You do this:

We've discussed what the , as well as the echo and the quotation marks. Now, there's a semicolon (;) at the end. That means to end the statement. Let me get one thing straight - the tags can have multiple statements, like this:

and so on. There's multiple echo statements, and it'd be a hassle to put them all in their own tags. But, PHP distinguishes between the echos using a semicolon. A semicolon just mean, "this statement is done, go to the next one." It's a really common mistake for beginners to forget a semicolon. You need a semicolon after every line! Fortunately, if you forget, PHP will have a relatively obvious error, something along the lines of

Error: Expected a ; on line 3

You'll find that you probably forgot a semicolon on line three of the HTML document.

Now, there's a few more thing about echo. Echo will output HTML code to the page. So if you use:

echo "This is some bold text!";

it will indeed output bold text, instead of the actual <'s and >'s. If you need a link, then you can do this:

echo "Google rocks!";

it will output a link to Google. Note the \"s! That is one place where you might need to use it. Otherwise, PHP will complain, for the reasons mentioned above.

Now, if you try this script:

You'll get something like:

Hello, world!I like typing random stuff!I just lost THE GAME.This is PHP.

There's no line break or spaces! For spaces, just add a space to the end of the string. However, for a line break is a bit trickier. Either you can use the
tag, which will have HTML put a line break for you, or you can use \n. \n is a magical series of characters that is pretty much the same as pressing Enter on your keyboard. Either way, it should work. For example, this will now do what you would want:

";
echo "I like typing random stuff!\n";
echo "I just lost THE GAME. ";
echo "This is PHP.\n";
?>

Note that you don't need a space between letters and the "\n". Anyways, on that weird sequence of characters, I bid you a good day, and I do hope I can get a second part out soon, because this is really a useless use of PHP.

THE END.

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If you haven’t already guessed…..

Dazza_13 — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 09:50:26 +0000

FrozenHaddock has not had ANY updates for about 2 years now. We did leave it in the hands of a few loyal community members, but with no updates at all this has not obviously worked out.

So yeah, this is pretty much a post saying that FrozenHaddock is now inactive. The site will remain here and you can access all of the tutorials and you never know the odd new one may creep up, but don't count on it.

The original admins, being Tom (GeneShark) and myself are running 2 other websites however. These would be:

MOREtotheGAME.co.uk - A gaming/movie/etc review website
TurtleStomp.com - A podcast about gaming

Both communities for these are a live and well (at the moment). If you needed to contact us in anyway the easiest way would be through our IRC channels on the appliedirc network (#moretothegame/#turtlestomp).

Or email us at

tom [{at}] turtlestomp.com / moretothegame.co.uk

daryl [{at}] turtlestomp.com / moretothegame.co.uk

Goodbye FrozenHaddock, it may have taken 2 years of no activity and an email remaining me of you sitting there gathering dust, but you are now actually announced as inactive.

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WP-Mochi

Tazzydevil XIII — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 14:28:24 +0000

(Ok, so the post editor in Wordpress is still playing up, so apologies if this is formatted oddly)

I have installed and played with Emanuele Feronato's WP-Mochi plugin/theme and you can see the results by clicking the banner above.

It still needs tweaking, and I'll get back to you with a proper post on it soonish :)

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HTML Basics

Arxanas — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 12:00:05 +0000

This is a lengthy tutorial about HTML basics.

Prepare yourself.

Origin

HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language. That means that it's text with uncanny abilities to manipulate time and space, and present to you web pages. It's based on a tag system, like XML. Obviously, you don't see these tags everywhere; they represent content that your browser shows you. This tag system works like this:

element content

What that means is that the element type (in those weird greater-than/less-than brackets) define a type of object to be displayed on the page. The most basic type is the element, because that starts any html document. The element content, is obviously, the element's content. For example, if you put some text in the html, that's what pops up on the web page. The thing is, once you open the tag, you've got to close it, which is usually done by putting a tag just like the opening one, except with a forward-slash in front of its name, like so:

MY TEXT IS HERE LOLOLOLOL.

Basic Tags

So, yeah, as you may have guessed, there's more than just an HTML tag. There's the head and body tags, script tags, text-formatting tags, style tags, and a bunch more. However, you can nest those tags. Nesting is when you put one tag inside another, like so: Wee! More text is here! REMEMBER: The tags MUST be in the right order! First in, last out! So this would be WRONG: Even more text!. Although a web browser would probably still display that correctly, you still shouldn't.

Here's some basic tags:

This is the paragraph tag, for guess what? Paragraphs! Note that between paragraphs, there's an involuntary line break that the browser renders.

This is where fancy HTML describing stuff, like META (don't ask about that, that's too complicated to get into right now) goes, but other stuff like scripts can go in there.

This one's very hard to guess ;). It defines a script, by default in JavaScript, which is part of what makes those HTML pages so snazzy.

This is where all the content goes, like text and pictures and flash and whatnot.

This is a line break, which is equivalent to pressing Enter or Return in a text document.

Empty Elements

Now, I am going to explain the weirdness of the br tag. Obviously, it would be rather annoying to have to go when there's NO CONTENT IN IT. So to make sure that no idiot DID try to put content in it, those W3C people or whoever felt like making this fancy stand-alone tag, called an EMPTY ELEMENT.

Saving the dang thing

Now, let's try actually MAKING an HTML document.

First off, HTML is PURE TEXT. Guess what? That means you can edit it in a text editor, like NotePad, ScITE, Crimson Editor (which I really like), or anything else that strikes your fancy. So, start out by making a new text document. Now you can put any HTML code in it, and then save it. Now, it's important that you save it as an HTML file. This is done by an horribly easy process, once you do it the first time. See that extension, like "Untitled1.txt"? Well, just change that txt to html! Now it should be called "Untitled1.html" (of course, you may want to change Untitled1 to something else, but I'm going to refer to it as that for the rest of the tutorial).

Okay, first of all, if any Windows users are out there, you may encounter some problems. In the folder, or Desktop, or wherever you saved it, it may say "Untitled1.html.txt", which is not gonna work. So this is what you've got to do (if you run Windows- I'm not sure if this happens in Mac or Linux, or how to fix it in those).

But try this first: Save it as type "All Files (*.*)" and add the extension manually. So after changing the type to all files, save it as Untitled1.html. Thanks, Brett Page, for that method, because that saves a whole lot of work. But if that fails, then read on.

First, go to that Control Panel thing. If you run Vista, you may want to switch to Classic View for a while. There should be an icon called "Folder Options". Open that up. As you may have foreseen, it will present to you a window. This window should have three tabs at the top (although in XP, I can't be sure, since I'm running Vista). Go to the tab labelled "View". There should be a sort of box at the bottom called "Advanced Settings", with a load of checkboxes, radio buttons, and other assorted goodies.

Scroll down until you find the checkbox with the option "Hide extensions for known file types". Uncheck that thing. And poof, the deed is done! Press OK or Apply, doesn't really matter which, and get out of that window. You can also get out of the Control Panel, now, and you Vista users can set it back to "Control Panel Home".

Now go back to "Untitled1.html.txt" and get rid of the ".txt" so it reads "Untitled1.html". If everything worked right, Windows should give you an annoying error, "If you change a file name extension, the file may become unusable. Are you sure you want to change it?" Say yes.

Now, try opening it. If this is the first time you've opened an HTML file locally, you'll get some message box saying Windows doesn't know what the heck to open the file with, so check the radio button labelled "Select from a list of installed programs" and press OK. Then find your default web browser, click it, and press OK to that. It should then open up in your web browser. If you had any text in that, it should pop up in the web page. When you want to edit it, right-click it, select Open With, and choose your text editor.

The Image Tag

Now back to the image tag. In "Untitled1.html", type something like this:

So let's make this image tag work! This image tag is only gonna know what image it needs if it has a SOURCE.

Like this:

Of course, this source could be anywhere on your computer, or even on the internet (just type the full URL, like http://www.google.com/intl/en_ALL/images/logo.gif). But it's important to know how to access this image relatively. The way I just showed you was an ABSOLUTE path, meaning that no matter where this HTML file is on the computer, it's always gonna have the same image. But relatively means that the path is RELATIVE, so depending on where the HTML file is, the image file's path is gonna be different.

The basis of the relative path is the ".." operator thing. That means that it goes one directory up. So if you said the source was "../lolcatz.jpg", that would mean go to the folder above an look in there for lolcatz.jpg. Also, the single dot operator thing, ".", means just the current folder. This isn't really handy until later, with really fancy scripts, but you may want to remember it now.

A Real Example Type Thing

Now, back to an actual HTML document. Start out with the opening HTML tag, that starts any HTML document. And then make a body tag (we'll be skipping the head tag, because that's more stuff for the web browser itself, not much for the user). Now you've got:

Amazing. Now, let's put some text in, using the

tag. Enclose some text in the paragraph, like "This is my picture:" or "ILIEKZ LOLCATZ". Whatever you feel like. Now close the paragraph tag (remember, first in, last out!). Now, because we feel like making a line break, we use
.

And now for the semi-final part. An image. Using your mad HTML skizzlez you probably haven't gained throughout this tutorial, make the image tag, and make an ACTUAL IMAGE on your hard drive, or internet. I'm not gonna be checking these, so it doesn't matter. Now close all the tags that need closing.

Your final product should look something like this:

OMG LOLCATZ

Now we open it. Save and get out of the text file, right-click it, select "Open With", and choose your default web browser. You will probably see some words, a line break, and a picture. And that concludes this amazingly lengthy basic HTML tutorial. (yay! no more reading for you!)

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How to get out of a creative block

Tazzydevil XIII — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 00:59:54 +0000

Colour by adotjdotsmith, on Flickr.

We've all been there, haven't we?

The need to develop, but no idea where to start. Idea count down in the region of times I've successfully run cross country without complaining (For those who even pondered that for a second, that's approximately... none), and you don't know what to do about it.

Well, if you've stumbled across this post through a search engine, you've started right. Research is a great way to get ideas and get out of a creative slump.

If the next time you open flash, you end up staring at a blank stage for 10 minutes, close it again. Open up your browser of choice, and surf on over to one of the larger games portals. Have a look at what's doing well right now, as well as looking at the brand new submissions. You're bound to find a feature, gameplay element, idea amongst them that you think you could apply to a new game. (Note: Don't outright copy games, but developing on ideas they've touched upon is a great way to start a new game)

If you can't find anything here, why not check out some retro games? They can often be addictive, fun and easily portable to Flash.

Also, try checking out some independant developer sites (Hey look, you're doing that now!) and read some game development blogs (You're doing that too, good job!). A good place to start with searching for new Flash blogs to read would be FlashGameBlogs (Another brainchild of the FGL team)

Of couse, if these ideas dont' manage to get you out of your slump, try this:
Close your eyes, mash the keyboard and cross your fingers. It's better than doing nothing ;)

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Procrastination and Meatspace

Tazzydevil XIII — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 23:35:33 +0000

Rails by FrozenHaddock, see more on Flickr

Many apologies for the severe lack of content here recently. I can assure you, I'm not dead.

To start with, I was merely a lazy teenager recently discovering *gulp* actual social interaction and taking exams, then general Meatspace issues interfered with my access to a computer with a copy of Flash.

However, I have computer access now (Admittedly still no Flash, but I'm hoping to return to my trusty home machine soon) and I intend to get the blog moving again! I'm sure I own enough creativity to write without a copy of Flash for now... :)

Thanks to the forum-dwellers for keeping it alive in my absence, even though we had an attack of spam. You guys rock.

This post does't have much interesting, so I'll leave you with one of my photographs for now. It's a habit I've gotten from my personal blog, and I like the effect. I'll try and include at least one relevant image with each post from now on, though as this doesn't have much of a theme to it, I raided my Flickr account. I hope you don't mind.

- Tom, Frozenhaddock Admin

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Flash inspired music?

Tazzydevil XIII — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 22:48:03 +0000

Remember playing Pandemic 2? Remember sitting there watching the Earth crumble before your mighty infecting powers? Remember buying a new keyboard after you hit the last one too hard after Madagascar closed it's ports for the 50th time that night?

Well one person sure does.

Ben Forbes: Singer songwriter, friend of mine and nerd.

His latest song to be released online is all about Madagascar and their pesky ports... go and have a listen!

Anyone else know of any flash-inspired music?

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AS3: Avoider game, part 12, and a new project

Tazzydevil XIII — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 12:11:55 +0000

The latest post at MichaelJWilliams' blog brings his AS3 Avoiding game tutorial to an end with part 12 ...or does it?

This final segment details garbage collection, the nitty gritty part of game development that's important to you, but doesn't bother the players that much, until they notice the lag that inevitably comes from leaving each of those enemies onstage...

Anywho, it's a must-read and a nice tie-up-the-loose ends post, and this series of tutorials is once of the best out there.

Now, why may it not be coming to an end?

Myself and Michael shall shortly be launching a new site geared around the wonderful Avoiding game, hosting both our tutorials amongst other things, and we'd love for you to get involved! Perhaps you have an avoiding game you've written and want to show it off, or you want to share the secrets to that interesting feature you've worked in, throw us an email or hit me up in the comments for this post and we'll get back to you. Stay tuned for more information :)

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