Seb Lee-DelisleOK so the huge game is over and about to be published (link coming here soon). Now I’ve had a chance to catch my breath I’ve realised that I have loads of tech demos that never really made it online. So in order to make up for that I’m going be uploaded loads of little […]
OK so it’s go go GO on this huuuuge platform game – 9 levels and a 1st March deadline. Yes, Christmas is cancelled. So I suspect that I may go a little quiet on the blog for a bit… But… I thought you may like to know, I’ve been doing a little test on the […]
Every now and again you find something in Flash that you can’t believe you’ve ever lived with out. Thank goodness Tom Kennett (one of the FlashCodersBrighton) showed me the FlashMX XPathAPI. Never will I have to custom write an XML parser again! To use the XPathAPI, first you import the library : import mx.xpath.*; Let’s […]
My Flash on the Beach session went really well, I had a great time and a good turnout despite the early hour (and it was the morning after the official FOTB party!) As for the 3D Flash source files, I promised them so here they are! FOTB06 – 3D in Flash source files [Files no […]
Wednesday 9.30am – Flash on the Beach Unbelievably, December has hit us with all the force of a runaway train, and Flash on the Beach is upon us! And even more unbelievably, I’ve actually got my whole presentation planned and ready to go! BRING YOUR LAPTOPS! we’ll be working through the exercises there and then, […]
Here’s another demo of the work we’ve been doing on a custom cacheAsBitmap utility, we’re calling superCacheAsBitmap. The circle in the middle of the demo is made up of 1000 transparent lines, so you shouldn’t be surprised that it’s very slow to render using traditional methods! Click Move Clip to get things started, and you’ll […]
One of our very own FlashCodersBrighton members has just posted an extremely useful FAMES installation guide. Check it out here. [no longer available] FAMES is an completely open-source solution to building Flash swf files, based around the ubiquitous Eclipse IDE. Was it Aral who came up with that acronym?
I’ve been working on a smart function that can convert a MovieClip into a bitmap so that it renders faster. “What’s wrong with the cacheAsBitmap property?” I hear you cry. Well much as it’s an amazing way to optimize the speed of moving clips, it can sometimes actually slow down render time! It’s fine as […]
Just been playing with the MovieClip.transform.matrix property to copy one movie’s rotation, scaling and position to another, and it’s been behaving a little unexpectedly… Here’s an example: movieclip2.transform.matrix = movieclip1.transform.matrix; This code copies movieclip2‘s position, scale and rotation to that of movieclip1. But importantly, it only sets movieclip2‘s transform object, and not its _xscale, _yscale, […]
Here’s another example of the realtime easing method I described in the last post, this time being applied to the rotation of 3D boxes. The target rotation of each box is changed on a rollover. I think this could make a good game… see if you can get all the squares to be red at […]