29 August 2006
Written by
Richard Leggett (
)
Published on August 29th, 2006 @ 07:03:24 am, using 131 words, 417 views
I was a bit gutted when I upgraded the firmware on my PSP to 2.71 in order to get the Flash Player on there. I had a lot of useful homebrew like a PDF reader and some open source games like Tetris, and its always good to have the choice to try out some demos/games of your own (for example with LUAScript). Anyway some good news and probably the smoothest hack yet. You can now navigate to a special tif image on your memory stick and the preview icon alone will cause the PSP to run in User/Kernal mode all ready for homebrew.
Read more here.
Disclaimer: When I mention "homebrew" I am not refering to pirate material, games or movies, only non-commercial content created by the PSP homebrew community.
28 August 2006
Written by
Richard Leggett (
)
Published on August 28th, 2006 @ 02:20:26 pm, using 129 words, 398 views
"beginner_lite" has been going all out in his spare time adding more and more to the rather expansive Fantasy Quest Flash Lite 1.1 game. Not only is it a role playing game utilizing Final Fantasy graphics if I'm not wrong, but there's also Tetris, Tic Tac Toe, racing, a labrynth, weapon upgrades and a whole lot more packed into this mammoth Flash Lite game.
You can see lots of screens the last few updates to this game over at the Flash Mobile Forum.
As the home page for the Flash Mobile Forum is likely to change frequently, here are the links to the individual entries relating to this game:
11 August 2006
Written by
Richard Leggett (
)
Published on August 11th, 2006 @ 04:54:29 am, using 295 words, 903 views
I found the Flex 2 docs didn't really contain an example of using the pixel data getPixels() puts into a ByteArray. I wanted to take the pixels in that ByteArray and have them explode or move around in a controlled fashion not obtainable with a simple Convolution Matrix or DisplacementMap.
I'm not going to go through all of that, but just a quick example of getting data back out of a ByteArray and displaying it again as a copy. Normally copyPixels() would be the better option for this specific task, but this as I say gives the opportunity to move the pixels around indepentently in 3D for example.
If you have the Flash 9 preview, you can simple create a movieclip on stage, named mc and put the following code on frame 1:
import flash.display.BitmapData;
import flash.display.Bitmap;
import flash.geom.Rectangle;
import flash.utils.ByteArray;
var imageWidth:uint = mc.width;
var imageHeight:uint = mc.height;
var srcBmp:BitmapData = new BitmapData( imageWidth, imageHeight );
srcBmp.draw( mc );
var pixels:ByteArray = srcBmp.getPixels( new Rectangle(0,0,imageWidth,imageHeight) );
var copyBmp:BitmapData = new BitmapData( imageWidth, imageHeight, true );
pixels.position = 0;
for( var i:uint=0; i<imageHeight ; i++ )
{
for( var j:uint=0; j<imageWidth; j++ )
{
copyBmp.setPixel( j, i, pixels.readUnsignedInt() );
}
}
var bmp:Bitmap = new Bitmap( copyBmp );
bmp.x = 100;
addChild( bmp );
Probably the only thing that needs pointing out at all is that you can read out a pixel at a time using ByteArray.readUnsignedInt(), this automatically increments the ByteArray's .position by the required number of bytes. The reason for this is that BitmapData.getPixels() returns a ByteArray of unsigned ints of course (range 0 to 4,294,967,295 - 32bits of data, which allows for the 24-bits of colour, and 8 bits of alpha).
10 August 2006
Written by
Richard Leggett (
)
Published on August 10th, 2006 @ 07:57:43 am, using 117 words, 405 views
The aim of the Y design awards is to recognise leading creative talent demonstrated through the use of digital technology. This year the awards are focussed on the recognition of great design with the use of Flash technology - in celebration of Flash's 10 year anniversary. The competition is aimed specifically at the Uk design/agency community and already there is great interest from some the likes of Saatchi and Tribal DDB. The grand prize, which is a people choice award voted for online, is a trip for the lead designer to the next international Flash conference.
The other nine categories of awards will be decided by a panel of 5 judges including our own Mike Downey.
Visit the website.
Written by
Richard Leggett (
)
Published on August 10th, 2006 @ 04:09:30 am, using 34 words, 211 views
What an awesome suprise when I got to work. For any Little Britain fans out there... "I looove the cake" 
Thanks to Robin and to Adobe!
Only problem is it's too nice to eat.
09 August 2006
Written by
Richard Leggett (
)
Published on August 9th, 2006 @ 04:31:53 am, using 249 words, 673 views
I was just asked by a friend, "if code on the timeline in Flash 8 is no different from AS1 because it isn't inside a class file [therefore not type-checked or anything else that typically differentiates AS2 from AS1], what is AS3 code on the timeline in Flash 9?".
I didn't have a simple answer. That code will still be runtime checked etc, it certainly isn't AS1 or AS2. The reason we can't define what it is exactly is probably due to the nature of the language.
ActionScript has class structures, but they aren't the same behind the scenes as classes in what we call traditional class based languages, they are actually collections of "traits" and "property attributes" on an object prototype. If those terms are new to you, you might find the following paper of interest.
I found this paper quite some time ago probably through MXNA, and it has stuck in my mind since I first read it, it gave me a much better understanding of how a prototype language is very different to anything else, and how that makes it very suitable for GUIs which is the subject of the article.
It's a bit old, but 100% worth the read.
http://waltersmith.us/wp-content/uploads/2005/12/OOPSLA95.pdf
That paper doesn't really get technical enough, but there's a lot more info on this matter in the LiveDocs which directly related to ActionScript. The pages in that particular LiveDoc are really good reading if you like to look behind the curtain.
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