Plastic Cactus

July 1, 2010 - Admin

Well, it had to happen sooner or later. When we released a mochified version of Plakka Cakka something went seriously wrong with its innards - and appeared to bork on several websites. So... after much head scratching a very quick rename was decided to the slightly less interesting Plastic Cactus. Both games are virtually identical apart from the name, so if you see them out in the wild don't get confused! they're one and the same!

One new addition to Plastic Cactus is the inclusion of the Games Chart widget, we're going to be monitoring its progress over the coming weeks but we're excited about the extra traffic it looks like it should generate. Head on over to www.gameschart.com for more information.

Motoring on

May 17, 2010 - Admin

Plastic Martians is not dead, I repeat, the Martians are alive. There's been loads of interesting things happening over the last few months, some exciting new projects with some exciting new people. Plakka Cakka and Plastic Christmas made it off the drawing board and onto your computer screens. We've also been busy with a load of other projects, all that can be said at this point is "meeow" and look at the image.... all will be revealed!!

Moving

July 16, 2009 - Admin

We're moving! We'll no longer be in central Manchester but are moving "oop north" from the 30th July 2009. New address will be:

Stokoe House
Market Place
ALSTON
Cumbria
CA9 3HS

Manchester may be gone, but not forgotten! There's still loads of links between Manchester and PM so keep in touch. It's not like we're dropping off the face of the planet (although it sort of feels like it).

Skillsarena

July 16, 2009 - Admin

We're very proud of a new project which went live recently, something out of the ordinary for Plastic Martians Ltd.! The project was commisioned by Turtlez Ltd. for the end client Skillsarena Ltd. and basically consists of an online word testing application. Now this might not sound very interesting or exciting, but the project had some pretty unique elements to it:

- written in 98% Flash and 2% Javascript
- a complete simulation of the Office 2003 suite - complete down to individual button clicks, menus and dialog boxes
- user/test candidate can interact with the test exactly as they would interact with the real thing
- right click actions and control key combos supported!
- written entirely in Actionscript 2 - meaning a lower Flash player threshold of flash 8

It really is a world beater in that respect! No other simulation package in Flash comes close. Users can simply log in to their tests and start interacting with them with no downloads necessary!

Have a look at www.skillsarena.com for more information.

Flashy

July 16, 2009 - Admin

Plastic Martians Ltd. is proud to announce the launch of it's new site! Designed to showcase our extensive Flash knowledge it combines practicality with kittens in a seamless blend of style over content

Have a play around with the site. We're still adding bits and changing other bits, so don't be afraid to drop us a line if you see anything wrong/would like to suggest a cool new feature. We're always glad to receive feedback from people, it makes us feel all warm and gooey inside. Unless you're reporting a bug of course, then it gets a bit messy. Report you glowing praise/utter contempt to info@plasticmartians.co.uk

The site was written in Actionscript 3 using the standard development environment of the wonderful FDT Eclipse plugin from those lovely people at powerflasher.de and Eclipse itself. Graphics were actually designed in Flash 8 and the whole thing pulled together with yoghurt pots and bits of string (well, ANT and mxmlc to be precise)