I have seen demos showing flash sites opening on high end android devices like HTC Desire HD or Nexus One. So i was looking through the posts about installing adobe flash player 10.1 on my lg optimus one p500 (android 2.2). The author of that particular blog explained a few steps to install flash 10.1 on android 2.2 phones (specifically mentioning my p500),
1) First The author provided a link to adobe flash player 10.1 as it is not available in android market right now(flash player 10.3 is available). So I downloaded it and installed it on my lg optimus p500. It got installed without having any trouble.
2) I restarted my android phone.
3) I opened my android browser and opened a flash web site.
And guess what?????? yay it worked………….not…………no it didn’t worked .
Browser just closed in between loading site. I tried with all browsers on my phone viz Opera, Skyfire, Dolphin HD, same result on all browser. All browser crashed.
So i guess flash player is not supported on my device. But i don’t care hehe
Yesterday few of my juniors from school were asking me for some good fast prime number finder algorithm but simple. They used to find prime numbers by testing divisibility by all integers from 2 to number-1. This is very basic routine, i remember i also used to use it when i first started. So anyway they wanted to know some fast, efficient and also simple routine to find prime number. So i told them about “Eratosthenes Sieve algorithm“, its fast, efficient and simple also. So i quickly wrote a module in python and gave them
def findPrimeNumbers(max):
nlist=range(2,max+1)
maxM=math.ceil(Math.sqrt(max))
index=0 while nlist[index] < maxM:
prime=nlist[index]
index2=index+1 while index2 < len(nlist): if nlist[index2] % prime==0:
nlist.pop(index2)
index2+=1
index+=1 print nlist
Destroying box2d(Box2D Flash) objects is always not smooth, if you don’t manage the references properly. Well sometimes it doesn’t get destroyed also even after calling DestroyBody() method because there is still some reference to box2d objects that is active and u have to keep track of that. I had this problem more often. But yeah i again came up with my just stupid solution to tackle above problem and it works. I have tested this in my all Box2D Flash projects.
What i generally do is create a custom class which would represent particular box2d body, for example in pool game i would create a class called Ball. So now i would create a method called getDestructionStatus() which tells me if particular body is eligible for destruction. And second method i would define called destroy(), in destroy() method you can write your cleanup() implementation like if u have some movieclip associated then you can remove it from stage [Note: I didn't call DestroyBody in destroy() because it didn't work for me] Something like this :
public function destroy():void{ //your custom cleanup code before making box2d body eligible for destruction
destructionStatus = true; //eligible for destruction }
public function getDestructionStatus():Boolean{ return destructionStatus; }
Now how would u implement ? Well lets say if my ball collides with wall then i want to destroy the ball, so code would look like this:
override public function BeginContact(contact:b2Contact):void { if((contact.GetFixtureA().GetBody().GetUserData() is Wall && contact.GetFixtureB().GetBody().GetUserData() is Ball)){
contact.GetFixtureB().GetBody().SetAwake(false);
contact.GetFixtureB().GetBody().GetUserData().destroy(); } }
Above i am using a custom class that extends b2ContactListener class and i am overriding BeginContact to determine the collision and provide my some custom implementation response. Here is a insight on b2ContactListener tutorial from Allan Bishop.
Now when my ball collides with wall then i call destroy method on it, which runs my custom cleanup and set the destructionState to true. Now i will check for this destructionState and call DestroyMethod, calling DestroyBody in correct context and block matters because as i said if some reference is still pointing to body then it won’t get detroyed. Here is the implementation code:
//write a code to update the position, rotation whatever you want of bodies } }
Now comes the main part: I want to explicitly point out that i have put DestroyBody call inside the world body list iteration because it always worked for me without any issues, my bodies got destroyed and that was what i wanted. I hope it works for you also. I also want to try other techniques, so if you apply other way to destroy objects then please share with us. It would help me and others a lot xD
For my portfolio flash site i am using LoaderMax from greensock. Why did i use LoaderMax ? Well first i just started using LoaderMax and i am new to it. I am using LoaderMax for two very basic reason:
1) Loading multiple images easily. Well i want to calculate whole progress of multiple assets loading and show it in loading progress which was difficult for me to do when doing it in traditional sequential manner (using loader class). It was tough to find bytes total of all images as i used to load images one by one in sequence.
2) Garbage collection/resource release: When i used to load images using typical loader class, i used to face a problem though i later solved it but still i don’t have to go extra step in case of LoaderMax. The problem was when loading was in progress and i closed my browser window then an error was thrown saying “loading never complete” as shown in my previous post. But with LoaderMax i don’t have to worry about it because it releases the memory if loading process gets paused or aborted.
But in this post i am not discussing the tutorial to use LoaderMax or its features. As always i faced a certain problem and i solved it xD. So i wrote a code module including LoaderMax which ran flawlessly on all web browsers (internet explorer, chrome, opera, and safari) but it didn’t run on Mozilla Firefox. When running on Firefox an exception error was getting thrown and i spent 1 hour to find the reason and couldn’t find it and got me pissed me off xD. First let me show you the code module that i wrote and was throwing exception on firefox:
var queue:LoaderMax = new LoaderMax({name:“mainQueue”, onProgress:progressHandler, onComplete:completeHandler, onError:errorHandler});
function completeHandler(event:LoaderEvent):void{
var image:ContentDisplay = LoaderMax.getContent(“photo1″); }
here is the screenshot of error:
In first statement of function completeHandler i am retrieving loaded image. I am sending it to my resize algorithm later to resize the original image to fit into my target area. But it throws error on firefox because it says invalid bitmapdata. My resize algorithm takes displayobject as parameter and ContentDisplay extends Sprite class. Note: LoaderMax can also resize your original image according to aspect ratio
I didn’t understand why this error was coming in firefox but not in other browsers. At first i thought maybe my algorithm was having issues with type ContentDisplay so i re-wrote my completeHandler function as follows:
function completeHandler(event:LoaderEvent):void{
var image:Bitmap = LoaderMax.getLoader(“photo1″).rawContent; }
The above new statement gives me bitmap. Now i run my module and guess what ? yay yepee it didn’t run on firefox but ran on other browsers xD and this time i got null exception, yeah above statement returned null, weird rite ?? I was frustrated and cussing firefox xD. But accidently while doing just trial and error i added few parameters and viola boom bang dang it got running on firefox and all browsers xD. here is the new change that i made :
well if u have noticed, i have added new parameter called “estimatedBytes”. Yes, just this parameter solved above problem and again i was left scratching my head heheheh xD.
Yeah again i faced a little strange problem that i solved it. In my one of previous post i wrote about using movieclip with plane primitives of papervision and also accessing that movie. Now comes the main discussion of this post that is accessing movieclip from papervision plane.
Lets say i have attached a mouse listener to plane to which moviematerial is mapped. So when i click plane i want to do/manipulate the movieclip that is mapped to plane via moviematerial so code would look something like this:
private function planePressed(event:InteractiveScene3DEvent):void{
var moviemc=event.target.material.movie as Movieclip; // do manipulation or changes on moviemc }
the above snippet works, i mean u can access the movieclip on above do the later changes to it if u want.
But lets say there is no listener attached to the plane but later in program cycle i want to modify the movieclip attached to plane like applying blurr filter to it. Then i would do something like this:
var mc=my_papervision_plane.material.movie as Movieclip; //apply blurr filter to mc
Well the above code didn’t work for me. In previous above event handler i traced event.target and it traced plane object, so it seems like ‘.material’ returned MaterialObject3D so i have to first downcast it to MovieMaterial separately and then try to access movie property on it. Here is the error:
So here is how is the stupid solution
var mat=my_papervision_plane.material as MovieMaterial; if(mat){//just being safe
var mc=mat.movie as Movieclip; }
So that worked. But still i didn’t had to do that inside my event handler when i was accessing via even.target, maybe i am missing something out. Right now i am going through docs of papervision.
Have you ever come across the dreaded “<error>” ? If you have read on, if you haven’t you might wanna take a look at this.
Well it started out like this………i was working on dynamic flash slideshow gallery. I was loading external images and paths were saved on xml file. Slideshow was working and running smoothly until i closed my browser window and received “Error #2044: Unhandled IOErrorEvent:. text=Error #2036: Load Never Completed.”. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr. When i closed my browser window i got this exception error on a window, here is the screenshot:
This error only comes when image was being loaded(preloader is shown during loading) and during that loading period if i close my browser exception error was being thrown. I knew the reason behind the error but didn’t knew the solution to handle it.
I didn’t knew what to. What was i supposed to do when error was coming on closing the browser ? I thought it was a browser issue. But there are lots of this kind of application out there and they doesn’t have this issue. So i have to do something about this “memory leak” thingy. So i found the solution for this and solution is to add the error handler to loader:
I am making a 3d portfolio site for my friend who is a photographer and graphic designer. I am very much enjoying developing it. I am using Papervision 3D for this project. So lets come to the objective of this post. There is a About me section and my friend wants the feature where she could edit the “about me” details through some dynamic editor like built in php. So basically i am giving my friend a basic editor features also with support of basic html tags to define the structure like “p b i br” etc. And there will be an xml file where all this content along with html tags will be written to. I’l be parsing this xml file from my as3 code and display it. Yeah there is a separate css file also for formatting the content but its not dynamic. So this is the objective and really i had problem with rendering content according to associated html tags.
Problem: I am rendering contents to TextField using its htmlText property and its styleSheet property for css. Every sentence starts with extra three or four spaces. With every ‘br’ tag comes extra 2 new lines. So basically i was having problem dealing with these extra space and extra new lines.
First i googled it and found many solution for removing extra spaces and new lines but nothing worked or maybe they weren’t working for htmlText or i don’t know the reason so i came up with my own solution by writing a code to eliminate extra spaces and extra new lines. Though my this code wasn’t fool proof but it worked to some extent as it removed extra spaces and new lines. But still it wasn’t 100 % perfect regarding alignment. Here was my code that i wrote to dissolve this problem:
var original:Array=contents.split(“\n“);
contents=original.join(“”);
var original1:Array = this.contents.split(” “);
var tempStr:String = “”; for(var i:int = 0; i < original1.length; i++){ if(original1[i]==“”){
continue; }
original1[i] += ” “;
tempStr += original1[i] ; }
contents = tempStr;
So what i am doing is splitting every word following new line into array indexes and joining to empty string. And in case of spaces i am doing same but i am restoring the spaces back that was there between words that is only eliminating first and last extra spaces.
This was working okie, i would say 95 % but not full perfect as few lines when rendered to TextBox had some very minor alignment issues so i had to come up with some other good solution.
But accidently i found the solution which i couldn’t find in google heheheh (maybe i didn’t searched properly). I use FlashDevelop for my coding, yeah its an awesome IDE. So i typed ” .”(period operator) after my textfield reference variable and list of methods and properties appeared. I was going through all and found this life saving property called “condenseWhite”. condenseWhite removes all extra spaces and new lines from html text if property is set to true. So simple solution and i was scratching my head and writing all those code to resolve this problem.
So bottom line if u are parsing html text in as3 and if you get extra spaces and new lines when rendered to TextField the just set the condenseWhite property to true. I hope it helps someone who face same problem like me.
I just came across this strange problem while writing a demo for car racing game on AS3. I don’t know how to start but please bear with me.
I have a button movieclip on a stage. It’s a “Play Game” button. When I click this button my game starts. So I press the button and game starts (also button is removed from the stage). Now I should be playing the game. But I could not play it. Why? Because my key press events are not getting fired, so I can’t drive my car. I had added the key listeners to stage but my events don’t respond. Then I mouse clicked on stage then viola my key press events are getting fired and suddenly I am able to drive my car. I scratch my head. Question marks appear over my head. I didn’t have the clue why this was happening? Here is the part flow of game code:
buttonClicked(){
initGame();
startGame(); }
initGame(){ //init codes //adding keylisteners to stage //……………………………………. }
So that is the flow. So when i enter startGame then somehow i am losing the focus on my stage since i am not able to get any response from any key events. But when i click on game screen/stage then my key events are working.
I didn’t found the valid reason behind it. I tried many things but couldn’t solve it. I googled it and found a simple solution on some forum. Solution is:
startGame(){
stage.focus=stage; //………………………………………….start game codes…………….. }
“stage.focus=stage” was the solution i found but i still haven’t figured out the reason behind this stupid problem. What i could conclude is that my focus is still with the button that i had pressed and focus hasn’t bubble up back to stage. So anyone who knows the reason, please do explain it.
After hours of hard work finally i made my pinball flipper working properly with box2d flash. Yeah i had a pain of time while making my flipper work properly
So before writing points on how i made my pinball flipper, i wanted to make clear that this is the way i did it so it may not be better way. If anyone has got better technique then please pretty please share with us hehe Thanks.
So first thing first, i created a rectangle i.e polygon set as box, this rectangle was my pinball flipper. Now i wanted to move/rotate the flipper within given limits as it does in any pinball game. Yeah i didn’t mention that i chose box2d flash as it supports all my physics needs and does its job pretty good so i would not have to write the collision and basic physics from scratch.
Now next step, i had to rotate flipper around a pivot point near the end of flipper, by default my flipper would rotate around its center which i didn’t wanted to happen. Second, i wanted to make my flipper aka polygon to be dynamic body so that it would react to gravity. So if i made my flipper dynamic then my whole flipper would fall down acting to gravitational force, this i didn’t wanted to happen either. So i needed a way to fix my flipper to a pivot point around which my flipper will rotate and also my flipper would react to gravity provided flipper should be attached to that pivot point. I hope you understand what i am saying
Next step, i had to restrict the rotation of flipper because i didn’t wanted my flipper to cover whole 360 degree circular motion.
Well now the solution of above, i would say again that i had a pain in my ___ to make it work. But when i found the solution and implemented it, it looked easy and smooth like butter or cheese hehe
Ok so what i did is i created a small circle which looked like a dot, this circle dot will act as my pivot point. Now my polygon flipper will be attached to this circle dot, which is static body, it means my circle dot would not react to gravity. So coming to bottom line, i created a revolute joint between the circle dot and polygon flipper. With this, my circle dot will act like a hinge and flipper will be rotating around that hinge and also flipper would react to gravity. Now just restriction for rotation of flipper is left which is done by setting lowerAngle and upperAngle property of revolute joint. Another important thing is setting enableLimit to true.
I assume you know Box2d so not explaining all codes in details. Now code of setting up whole flipper and hinge pivot point:
var circleBodyDef:b2BodyDef= new b2BodyDef();
circleBodyDef.position.Set(localCenter.x,localCenter.y);
circleBodyDef.type=b2Body.b2_staticBody;
var my_circle:b2CircleShape=new b2CircleShape(1/Metrics.PIXELS_TO_METER);
var my_fixture:b2FixtureDef = new b2FixtureDef();
my_fixture.shape=my_circle;
var circle_body:b2Body=world.CreateBody(circleBodyDef);
circle_body.CreateFixture(my_fixture);
Note: Metrics.PIXELS_TO_METER is 30 (in box2d length is measured in meters)
I have created a polygon body(sawbody) and small circle as hinge point (circle_body). Then i am creating a revolute joint between polygon and circle by fixing circle near the end of polygon represented by variable localCenter(b2vec2). Now i want to set angle limit for the rotation of flipper say 35 degree, it means flipper will cove only 35 degree rotation. So i am setting upper angle and lower angle to 0.6 and -0.6 respectively because it takes radians as value and 35 degree is equal to approx 0.6 radians. Now you have to set the enableLimit to true.
Busy Busy with stacks of projects on hand. I am learning lotsa things while working on them. I love learning new stuffs and programming is my passion. So one project i am working on is flash web page. So i thought to make a 3D flash site with some cool effects. I chose papervision 3D for my project. I am happy with the outcome till now.
But anyway i am here to share some small problems that i face during the development and how i solved it. There must be newbies like me out there who might face this problem . So here i’l share how i faced a problem regarding playing movieclip animation mapped to 3d object on papervision 3d.
I had never used movieclip on my previous papervision projects, rather i used bitmaps for graphics. In my current 3d flash site project i was required to use some movieclips also. I opened the papervision documentation and found something called MovieMaterial for creating a texture from my movieclip instance in fla file. Using MovieMaterial is simillar to using ColorMaterial and BitmapFileMaterial. Here i will just be talking about MovieMaterial.
MovieMaterial creates a texture from movieclip to be mapped to 3d object like cube. So i created a MovieMaterial :
materialFront = new MovieMaterial(movieclip_instance1);
materialFront.smooth = true;
movieclip_instance1 is a instance of movieclip in fla library. So i am getting material/texture from the moviclip. So i created other materials for other faces of cube. Then i added all materials to the MaterialList:
cuboid = new Cube(cubeMaterials, 750, 5, 500, 10, 10, 10);
So movieclip is mapped to all the faces of cube. So this is done. But those movieclips that i mapped were just a single graphics, it didn’t have frame animations inside movieclip. So i mapped a movieclip having animation into it to cube using same above steps and codes but viola, movieclip animation wasn’t playing, just first frame was getting rendered at the face of cube. So this was quite a problem for me because i wanted to render movieclip animation for giving nice effects.
I just googled on this topic and found the solution. I went to papervision documenation again and opened the MovieMaterial doc and looked at the constructor parameters. The last parameter in the MovieMaterial constructor specifies the additional properties associated with the movieclip. Default value is false. So i modified a line of code:
materialFront = new MovieMaterial(movieclip_instance1, true, true);
The second parameter specifies whether movieclip is transparent . Last parameter is what i needed to solve my problem, I passed it true saying i have animation into my movieclip and i want it to play when rendered. So viola movieclip animation was playing and i had a stupid grin on my face
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