AS3 Basic Tile Mapping ala Final Fantasy
Well it seems that one of the most popular posts I have is about Final Fantasy IV Online. Unfortunately that project is not alive at this time. So I thought I'd throw some AS3 goodness out into the void for people to play with and download.
This is a tile-based map display engine with fairly snappy scrolling. It currently allows for two layers - a set of base tiles, and a set of overlay items. The overlay items have pure magenta in their graphic which gets set to transparent thanks to the super handy threshold method. This current example is able to run smoothly and quickly on my machine at 34x30 tiles ( 544 x 480 resolution ). It was edited down to fit nicely in this layout from 640 x 480 which still ran just as smoothly. For those of you who are counting, that is 1,020 tiles on each layer - a total of 2040 tiles being animated at this resolution.
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Diffusion Limited Aggregation : Inverted ( with source )
Here we extend our Diffusion Limited Aggregation to invert the growth model. This one would not be able to grow indefinately due to the limited space. However it still is captivating and reminds me of growths inside a petri dish.
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Diffusion Limited Aggregation : Quad Start (with source)
Here we extend our Diffusion Limited Aggregation to provide four initial seeds instead of just one, in the interest of comparison. The growth model does not change tremendously, but it does yeild some differences compared to a larger central seed. It seems that quite often the different seed growths will stay separated, forming sometimes intricate channels. And other times you will see them join up - though if they join they will typically do it earlier in the development of that branch.
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Diffusion Limited Aggregation : Fractal Growth Model
This is a simple demonstration of Diffusion Limited Aggregation, which is a fractal growth model. It can be found in both living and non-living structures such as coral and snowflakes. The basic idea is to take an initial seed in the environment, then present other seeds which wander - in this example using simplified brownian motion. If the particle wanders outside the acceptable radius, it is killed and a new one spawned to take it's place. If it hits an existing structure, it sticks, and a new one is spawned. For purposes of simulation, this example has many particles each taking many steps each visible frame.
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OnAir Tour plus Adobe support of Open Source
Two quick topics in a single post here. First off, I attended the OnAir bus tour here in Minneapolis the other night. I must say it was a good time with some good information. The food was good (pop rocks and nerds, how do you beat that?), the atmosphere was nice and the speakers were fantastic. Didn't see anyone playing Guitar Hero on expert mode to play against, but a lot of people were giving it a good shot. I also discovered that Mike Chambers was taller than I expected him to be after years of only seeing his headshots. Kevin Hoyt gave a great presentation with lots of code flying by fairly quickly - I loved it even though it wasn't focused on Actionscript 3. And it was nice to get to put a face with a name for Grant Skinner.
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Flaver : Redesigned for more tastiness
The site got a visual overhaul. At this moment it's strictly visual ( though the code on the back end has been completely redone ) but I have plans for some other minor additions to the site. Some may or may not be noticed, but I'm excited about them regardless.
There are some issues I'm working out, so some things may not be fully functioning until then. Source and Study items will be missing while I reorganize them and update the links in the posts. Comment form may be a bit wonky ( it seems to not want to do the insert sometimes ).
Hope you enjoy the new look!
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SoundMixer.computeSpectrum + Microphone?
This weekend I got the idea to try creating a chromatic tuner in AS3 using input from the Microphone and SoundMixer.computeSpectrum. According to the Adobe livedocs:
“The SoundMixer class contains static properties and methods for global sound control in the SWF file.”
This however does not seem to be fully the case.
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Flash Develop 3 Alpha Release
It has happened : FlashDevelop 3 (Alpha) has been released. If you are not familiar with FlashDevelop then I would highly recommend giving it a try. I find it to be lightweight, responsive and full-featured - all of which I consider crucial when doing development. Quite simply, this has become my editor of choice and did almost the moment I started using it. Check it out and give them feedback on their hard work (though remember this is still alpha right now).
For those of you already familiar, the docking system has been improved greatly, AS3 support is built in now, and so is HaXe support! A new look, the ability to restore open files when starting up, and a host of other improvements make it a beautiful download.
Go get FlashDevelop 3 (Alpha)!
Font Embedding in AS3 : Lessons Learned
I have spent some time actually working with font embedding in AS3 and gone a little beyond the other simple examples you will see. While there may be several posts about embedding fonts in AS3, I have yet to see any real detailed information along with things to be aware of. If you have yet to see any of the basic examples you can read this post by Marcos Weskamp. Yes, it really is that simple to embed fonts now -- at least, on the surface it is. Let us dive down a little deeper.
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Another reason to love Flash and Opera
Hopefully by now you're familiar with Pandora Radio - a flash-based internet "radio" based off musical properties like syncopation, vamping, overall tonality, etc instead of just genre. If for some reason you are not familiar with it I would highly recommend you give it a shot.
Also my list of things I cannot do without ( aside from Flash Develop ) would be Opera browser. You may be aware that I created a widget for Opera to display Pandora radio that means you do not need to have an extra tab open to listen to your music. It seems that I have won 1000 euros for winning the first round of the Widget World Cup - just in time for the holiday shopping season!
Nothing better when two of your favorite things combine and net you cash!
Also as a side note : I am still addicted to FlashDevelop and have been playing around with AS3 development (can you say love) thanks to some great work by Keith Peters and others. I have some experiments from my explorations to post when I take a few minutes to actually stop developing, along with a new design for the site - so keep your eyes open!
My name is Mike Johnson, though many know me as exorcyze. I have been in love with programming
for over 25 years and use Adobe Flash for most of my personal experiments. I enjoy sharing
knowledge and study almost anything. Most of my professional work is in Actionscript, C#.Net and PHP.
