Metaballs, everyone’s favorite computer-generated globby blobs , have been around for a while. They’re the product of a rush of innovation in computer graphics during the 1980′s by the likes of Ken Perlin, Bui Tuong Phong, and Jim Blinn, when computer graphics began recognizing the need for organic shapes and shaders. The algorithm has been implemented countless times and can be astoundingly efficient and simple; the hardest part is finding something useful for them. Here is our take on it.

This episode is a bit of a catch all for some other random things that we wanted to cover in this series, like multiple file libraries, async functions, and Flash access from C. The hope is, by the time you are done reading this post (along with the last 4) you will be able to start build swcs of other libraries, or even creating your own directly in C. If this ends up being the case, please let us know, we would love to see what you guys make! Anywho, on with the show…

In lieu of the recently awarded patent for “Radial Menus”, we decided to put together a little experiment. We have created a simple game that uses various forms of Pie Menus for its main interaction. Stats are collected and charted as the game is played by others. Please have a play and help us collect some data so that we all can see if any sort of conclusions can be drawn.

Good News! Facebook changed again! So… this is our follow up post in response to the Authentication changes Facebook made to the Canvas/IFrame apps. We created a new index page that takes care of everything for you, and will continue to work with our old Flash setup. See the example here: http://apps.facebook.com/hookfbloaderexample/
Download Source here: http://labs.byhook.com/facebookoauth/FacebookCanvasOAuthExample.zip

Facebook’s Like Button in Flash: A Tale of Broken Dreams and Tortured Souls

It all started so innocently, “Hey, can we implement The Like Button in flash?”. Seemed like a very average and reasonable request. I mean really, how hard could it be? Its all just http requests right? Shouldn’t be an issue… Turns out its like agreeing to step into a ring with Kimbo Slice, assuming that anyone with a name like “Kimbo Slice” couldn’t possibly put up much of a fight.

In the end we found a solution, but it came at a price…
Here is a working example:
http://labs.byhook.com/hookconnect/HookConnect.html

There has been quite an onset of controversy surrounding Facebook as of late. Privacy issues, security issues, leaked IM messages, chats that can be seen by people not involved in the chat, Zynga threatening to leave, and the like. Seems like just the right time to jump in head first and make some wall spamming apps don’t you think? So we figured we would sit down, see how it works, and try to come up with an easy way to allow for flash apps to talk to the all mighty Facebook API/Data… So here goes nothin’!

Ah, the mouse scroll wheel. It used to be so simple, and so obvious. Couldn’t we have just left it alone, and come to some gentleman’s agreement on how the browsers notify your objects of what the user just did with the wheel? Sadly however, the reality is that this is not the case. Different [...]