01Feb ActionScript Reference for Android!
After seeing that someone wrote an ActionScript reference application for the iPhone called ActionScript 3 API Reference for iPhone, I decided to take matters into my own hands and make the same application for the Android platform which the t-mobile G1 works on. The Android OS is a fantastic platform for a developer as I made this whole application over just two weekends. For the first release, I included a view to see all classes and a class search functionality. You can now download this from the Market on your Android phone! You can find it under the Application – Reference section, and it’s called ActionScript Reference. See the below screenshots…
Classes View:
Class Information View:
For more information on Android: http://www.android.com/
26Jan FlashVars for EVERYONE!
When building utilities that can be used with both Flash and Flex, there are two common hurdles that developers run into. The first one is that Flex does not pull FlashVars the same way that Flash does. This means for ActionScript utilities that rely on html inserted variables will need to be separated into two separate files or need to have flashvars passed into the utility from the outside. Another hurdle is that Flash does not have a global reference to Stage- instead it can only be accessed through display children of stage. This is problematic for utilities that work with Stage as they can only get there reference of stage when it’s manually passed into the utility as a parameter which can result in an ugly web of stage references being passed around.
However, I finally got the time to develop a workaround that solves both problems with classes FlashVars and StageReference. The tricky part of this implementation was building a utility that could use the class Application but not reference it when it was being built from Flash since it would cause the compiler to fail from the invalid class reference. I worked around this issue by grabbing Application by getDefinitionByName so that the Flash compiler wouldn’t fail since it was a weak reference.
With Flash, use StageReference.stage = stage in Frame 1 or in your document class’s constructor. This will give you the global reference to stage and also allow the new class FlashVars to pull flashvars automatically when compiled in a Flash project.
The custom class FlashVars is used in this fashion:
or
This usage is exactly the same from Flash and Flex! No more having to switch from loaderInfo.parameters to Application.application.parameters when porting utilities between Flash and Flex.
Download (includes StageReference): flashvars.zip
09Dec flashMVC: New Utility ActionBinder!
I just update the SVN (svn.jadbox.com/public/) source for flashMVC with a MXML component tool I made for the cases that I was working with Flex. It’s located in com/jadbox/flashMVC/flex/ActionBinder.as, and it helps automate the view (aka MXML) portion of your application to communicate with your SuperModel. It will monitor the status of a particular action on the model, and allow the user to easily perform view updates or to run the action itself. This will help further reduce the amount of work you will have to do in Script tags (if not completely remove the need for one in the MXML).
<flashMVC:ActionBinder superModel="{mySuperModel}"
action="{mySuperModel.LOGIN}"
id="LoginBinder"
actionComplete="{trace('Login action completed')}"
actionEnable="{trace('action enabled')}"
actionDisable="{trace('action disabled')}"
actionPerforming="{trace('working')}"
actionStoppedPerforming="{trace('stopped working')}" />
// You can also do the action from the wrapper:
myActionBinder.perform(...args);
LoginBinder.perform(username.text, password.test); // for example
// Can use this property to
// enable or disable the action as well:
myActionBinder.actionEnabled=false;
You can find a great example of this in my SVN under the path:
/flex projects/flashMVC examples/actionBinderExample/
You will just be sure to link the flashMVC framework from the Flex project settings to compile.
Asdocs have been updated with the ActionBinder’s API. For more information about nimble flashMVC framework, go the flashMVC tab at the top.
Next on my list of features for flashMVC is the application “replayability from imported xml log”. This will be really useful to utilize in Flash or Flex development!
10Sep flashMVC beta released
I have finally released a pet-project of mine for handling simple to complex Flash and Flex applications in a unified way. The framework provides a pattern for MVC (Model View Controller) and has lots of goodies to rapidly build prototypes. In the near future, I will be working on an extension to allow quick unit testing as well as better error handling. This is new so please leave feedback and comments! (-_^)P
19Aug UrGroups – A Social Networking Experiment
This was a project I actually came up with to do while under a mass power outage in Detroit. I wanted to dabble on exactly what would be required to build a very simple social networking site. The direction I decided to head with was a group meetup system in which people could post what they had planned for a weekend and their friends would be automatically notified. The site hasn’t been worked on for over a year as it was only a development test. The site also includes marketing material for promoting the site as well as legal and press release pages. I decided on programming the site using pure PHP, XHTML, and good ol’ javascript. A few noteworthy accomplishments are image security (capcha), email validation, registration/login, user profile, event editing, and an ajax support form… all done by hand without a CMS package.
Link: http://www.jadbox.com/urgroups/
05Aug Subway Get Smart Flash Promotion
Subway FreshBuzz is giving out over 1 million dollars in prizes! Enter into the promotion and experience mini-games for the movie Get Smart. The promotion also includes exclusive music and video clips. I wonder who created the Flash… 
Note: The website link will stop working after August 10, 2008 as the promotion ends.
31Jul JADRAD engine
I programmed these examples several years ago… I’ll edit this blog to explain more but JADRAD is rather impressive for a newbie start in game programming at the time.
This is an RPG engine I programmed using C++ libs and BlitzMax. It is all hand-made as I was doing it for learning purposes. This includes graphics engine, AI, pathfinding, rpg system, map system, and more.
JADRAD RPG Engine (ZIP – 3megs)
On the flip-side, here is another very very simple AI test for swarming:
AIants (ZIP – 600k)
31Jul Simple AI Flash test (old)
This is a carry-over post from my last blog and is ages old.
This application was created from scratch (without any 3rd party libraries) for a speed ActionScript 3 programming challenge. At the time, I have used AS2 but wanted to write this to see how well AS3 can utilize
advanced class constructs and other methods found in today’s mature OOP languages.
It was great fun to write, and it truly illustrates the speed boost AS3 delivers!
(more…)