Category Archives: Standard Grade Computing Studies

2. Software Development, 6. External Sites, Computing Higher, Standard Grade Computing Studies

Flash Games Development

We have just been sent a list of Adobe games development website that might be useful to you in the future. Have a look at them in your own time, some of the links do not work inside school.

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/games.html

Resource wise there are the Adobe gaming evangelist blogs:

http://blog.flashgen.com (Mike Jones’)
http://www.flashrealtime.com (Tom’s)
http://www.theflashblog.com (Lee Brimelow’s)
http://www.gototandlearn.com (also Lee’s)
http://www.duvos.com/ (Enrique Duvos’s)

Also there are numerous Flash gaming site both for Flash games and as resources. The biggest Flash gaming site is probably Kongregate – http://www.kongregate.com –  (if fact they have just launched a Flash arcade app for Android).

Developer resources tend to focus around engines / frameworks. So you have the following resources

Pushbutton Engine (http://www.pushbuttonengine.com) – I have a few articles on my blog about PBE
Flixel (http://flixel.org) – Lee has done a good video tutorial on this
Papervision3d (http://www.papervision3d.org)
Away3D (http://www.away3d.com)

1. Computer Systems, Computing Higher, Standard Grade Computing Studies

Binary Numbers

Computers store all data as binary, numbers are easily stored this way.

Humans work with a base 10 numbering system (we have 10 fingers), however computers can only store data using electricity (on and off) which is base 2.

This article explains binary in a simple way

128  64  32  16  8  4  2  1 are the headings at the top of the binary numbers so 10001000 would be 128+8 which is 136

Practice here before attempting some bingo

For you exams you will be required to show the working for binary conversion, however, you can check this by using a calculator that has a binary function. The calculator below was found in a local pound shop, you can check if your calculator has binary by checking the buttons for BIN, OCT, DEC, HEX.

You can make a little Binary Calculator with the attached file. The photographs show it in action, simply fold the flaps to make the binary number and add the numbers shown. (teachers note that for 2’s complement just change +128 to -128)