Open User Review
I've been progressively slowing down work on sheep-series development with the approach of summer... not a big shocker, I was expecting that to happen, so I had put a push on to make headway back in February and early March. Anyway, during this development lull I might as well have folks review and get in their two cents worth in case there are some great ideas floating around out there. I retain veto power, but I do want to hear what ya'll think. I've been meaning to open this up for a while but have just never gotten around to posting about it. So, email me (ie: forums private message me) with a desired username and password if you'd like to have a go. Sorry, but I'm not opening this up with unlimited access since this application IS writing stuff to my server. Each guest needs a unique name/password for my own security. Oh, one thing though: by submitting a username and password, you also swear an oath that you don't write me with a single bug report. This app is pre-alpha, so I don't want to hear about "bugs" since they're almost all just features I haven't written the code for yet. Feedback on concept, usability, and design is good. Tech feedback at this point is just overwhelming and meaningless.

My apologies to all, but I wiped user accounts by accident while doing some development last night. If you try to log into the development site, you'll currently be blocked. However, the progress was worth the sacrifice, I assure you! I've finally implemented dynamic library management into the editor framework so you can now create and upload your own media to build your own rooms!

coooooooool :D I'm adding a second hard drive with XP so i'll get the CS3 trial again, the daughter gets an Adobe package in 2 weeks from her Uni.. she's goes to New York sometime in her next year

As a follow up, I've also migrated the help documents over to a new subdomain... http://shepherd.gmacwill.com The site is a work in progress. Mind the unformatted pages and dead links. However, I have posted up the supporting media for the library creation tutorial. You can now download the support files and work with them in Flash CS3 to create media libs.

This engine looks very promising. I've been poking around in the AS2 version and I'm intrigued by the AS3 version. I could provide french translations for the internationalization. I am an AS3 programmer for my day job, not just a hobbyist. :)

Hey, that would be great! Although Shepherd is multi-lingual without requiring additional compiling. All texts are stored in an external language-keyed XML file, so it's really just a matter of writing new XML language nodes. Of course there are still some static text fields in there which I've just never hooked into the XML doc. However, about 75% of the display text is currently configurable. In the long run, I plan to make it back in there and hook every field into XML, but right now getting the game player built is much more important than making the editor 100% adaptable to languages. Incidentally, that is one key new feature of the new Lassie player. It is being built from square-one with multi-language support.

Cool yeah I build a lot of french/english (canadian billingual) flash apps, usually of a 'marketing/modern edgy' type. They're pushing mini games or marketing oriented games to our clients now so I'm building a modular AS3 game engine that's non genre specific. I'm attending FITC (flash in the can conference) in Toronto in April too... I can't wait! :) When you have the english xml in a state that you want me to translate a french version, I can do that up no problem. Good luck with the new engine... if you ever need a sounding board with game programming experience (Mostly C++ OpenGL/DirectX though, I'm new to AS3, but a lot of it translates.), send me a PM. :)

Flash in the Can in April, hu? I'll have to read the overview of it. I went to Flash Forward last year and was sorely disappointed. The forum-style format was utter rubbish with entirely too many gratuitous presentations given by people who liked to hear themselves talk. Overall, I got very little out of the conference, so I'm interested in trying something else next year. Let's keep in touch... if FITC looks promising, then perhaps we can meet up there! Happy Holidays.