October 2011
2 posts
byxb asked: This isn't a question, but more sharing a workaround for components since you feed comes up quite a bit for custom component building. I Just found a way to order parameters for components in CS5/CS5.5! Insert unicode character U+200B in front of the parameter name. If you have 5 params, put five of those in front of the param you want first, four in front of the second, etc. U+200B is a...
1 tag
Exploration of Radial Collision
I was fortunate enough to meet Terry Paton at this year’s MAX conference. If you don’t know, he’s a Flash game developer that produces some great work and contributes a lot of knowledge to the online web of Flash resources - definitely a recommended follow.
Anyway, he made a blog post showing simple distance-based radial collision technique that he uses often in his games....
February 2011
2 posts
vmedium asked: I'm using:
[Inspectable(name = "Set Platform: ",defaultValue = "PC",enumeration = 'PC,Mac,PS3,XBox 360,Wii,NintendoDS,PSP,PS2,Xbox')]
public var platform:String;
I also have some other values as well.
Is there a way to disable a parameter if I set the platform to Mac?
best, thansk for your...
[Inspectable(name = "Set Platform: ",defaultValue = "PC",enumeration = 'PC,Mac,PS3,XBox 360,Wii,NintendoDS,PSP,PS2,Xbox')]
public var platform:String;
I also have some other values as well.
Is there a way to disable a parameter if I set the platform to Mac?
best, thansk for your...
Fixing the "*** Building code hint cache ***"...
I have been battling with Flash CS5 Pro for the last few weeks with it not giving me any code hinting. Whenever I would do something and expect a code hint window, I would instead get nothing, except for a small yellow triangle with exclamation in the bottom right of the code window. Rolling over that icon gave the tool-tip “*** Building code hint cache ***”. After searching around...
November 2010
1 post
JSFL Script Failing or Timing Out
So in my latest endeavor of JSFL, I was building a panel that allows one to browse for an XML file that another program I built puts together. The xml file defines a set of FLA files and the number of scenes within that file. The file is loaded in and parsed out by actionscript, and once it’s all ready to be built I looped over the data and fired off a JSFL script to build each FLA file...
August 2010
4 posts
2 tags
Moving Library Assets from FLA to FLA with JSFL
One of my latest projects had me scratching my head while I was doing my R&D. The project was to build a Flash panel that could pull assets in from another FLA that acts as a library. My first thought was to see if there was any way to copy items directly out of the library and add or paste them into the current working FLA. In my research this just isn’t possible, but I was still able...
3 tags
Flash CS5 Font Embedding in AS3
Just wanted to link up a really helpful blog post for migrating to how Flash CS5 does Font embedding. You can no longer use the [Embed] tag to accomplish this in your classes.
Aaron L’Heureux has written a great post showing exactly how to migrate over to the new system! Flash CS5 font embedding – it’s totally different…
3 tags
Another Flash CS5 Custom Component Quirk
In my attempt to make my custom components compatible with Flash CS5 from CS4, I found that my Inspectable parameters that were Objects were not working, and in fact would cause all parameters that come after it to not work.
Before I continue on with the main topic here, I just want to note that regardless of what order you define your Inspectable parameters, Flash reads them in Alphabetically...
4 tags
Inspectable Parameters Not Showing Up on Custom...
So I just upgraded to Flash CS5 this week at work and I found a really finicky problem that does not seem to be documented anywhere. I build a lot of custom components for my job, and if you’ve ever done it you know that building custom components for Flash is a little like an Indiana Jones adventure - you get beaten up a bit, there’s some problem solving, and a whole lot of...
May 2010
3 posts
2 tags
Listening for stage selections with JSFL
I’ve researched and tested a few ideas, but for the most part the conclusion is that there is no nice way to monitor the stage for some sort of “Selection Event” when building WindowSWF panels or JSFL scripts. JSFL does allow you to listen for some events, however I found none of these to suffice for wanting to know when the user has selected an instance item on the stage.
...
3 tags
Converting a JSFL Object to JSON
I couldn’t find any online resource to talk about how people are passing data from JSFL scripts to their Flash Panels. When you use MMExecute you can return a String value back to Flash, or if you’re making a function available via ExternalInterface you can also pass primitive datatypes into the functions. However when you start talking about passing Objects of any significant...
4 tags
Updating (redrawing) Components from JSFL
I am building a Flash Panel for a Custom Component I have built. I didn’t want to use the CustomUI setting for components because I wanted to be able to allow this panel to edit multiple instances of this component at once. The problem I have run into is figuring out how to get my component instances on the stage to update or redraw themselves when a property changes.
I searched and...
November 2008
3 posts
Converting AS3 XML to XMLNode Object
I recently needed to convert an XML object to an XMLNode object in Actionscript 3. It’s not exactly rocket science, but the way to do it is hard to track down via the tubes. Here’s how I did it:
var my_xml:XML = new XML("<foo><bar></bar><bar2></bar2></foo>");
var xmldoc:XMLDocument = new XMLDocument(); xmldoc.ignoreWhite =...
In The Middle of Adobe MAX 2008
It’s Tuesday Morning here in San Francisco. I’m sitting by a defender arcade game listening to a conversation of AIR and Flex Data service development and sipping coffee. So far, the conference has provided some great sessions. Right now is a great time to to be a Flash/Fex/AIR Developer. Adobe is providing more food for the community, almost too much. If you’re not hungry, if you’re not an...
Adobe AIR as a platform for Flash
What I’ve yet to see in the AIR marketplace is an application that uses the SWF format as it’s content that it distributes. I can envision a fantastic gaming platform created in AIR that allows for a Flash developer network to create a myriad of playable online and offline Flash games.
The app could distribute a framework FLA that anyone could use to create a game. Games could be...