Flash player 9 version issues
Flash 9 is a great player and AS3 is really amazing. But crucial differences between different versions of the 9 player drives me crazy. For exampel… 9.0.47 and later can have linked movieclips placed later than the first frame on the stage timeline and then you can uncheck the export in fist frame box in [...]
More on fonts and localization
Why do they put the characters in different places in a fonts character map?
There is probably some good reason for it for someone… for me it is just trouble. Bought a Baltic font and thought it would work great, but somehow the Baltic specific characters were on different positions in the character map than Flash [...]
Font embedding troubles
Why can’t localization and embedding fonts be as simple as one would want it.
Embedding a font in the library (new Font) to get the complete font may seem like a good enough solution. But no… you just can’t embed the whole typeface, just the characters that matches the current system at compile time. Sooo annoying. [...]
ScrollRect rox
Why haven’t I been using this more before? Setting a scrollRect instead of using a mask movieclip when making rektangular masks is so much easier and above all faster (in terms of performance).
Slow and smooth
Making animations where bitmaps are moving slowly across the screen can be a tricky thing. Since Flash rather wants to move the bitmap in even pixels, the animation can get annoyingly jerky at slow speeds.
My tricks:
In Scandic Better World I’m animating clouds slowly across the screen (depending on that the user has a fast enough [...]
Polygonal Labs - Data structure
Interesting classes for structuring data. At the first look, it’s seems quite advanced for an ordinary flash developer. But just have a look and get back there when you need to make a fast pathfinder, item-queue/stack or node-tree. And significent faster and simplier when working with data relations. (Is used with the 3D physics engine mentioned in the previous post)
http://lab.polygonal.de/ds/
http://lab.polygonal.de/articles/
First physics engine in 3D
This engine is based upon APE and uses Sandy 3D. But it handles abstract objects, so you can link it to PV3d as well . By combining different view in 3d-scene the position and rotation is simulated. http://seraf.mediabox.fr/wow-engine/as3-3d-physics-engine-wow-engine/
Coded or handmade tweens?
Now with the new addToStage-approach in AS3 I feel the need of sending a thought to the old fashion tween-animation. Of course, there is a great use of coded animation, but I think it’s sometimes easier to make a more streamlined and integrated animation with a combination of both. It’s often easy to recognize a typically coded motion. All the easeOut and [...]
So frame me!
For me, one side of adapting to AS3 is the timeline and the bad conscience about using it. I’m not ready to let it go completely and I belive that there is still more to get from it.
In AS2 I always used the technique to goto a frame and directly use the instances at that frame. Even if all animations was coded, [...]
Dynamic textfields and optimizing
When you need to squeeze that extra Kb for your so greatly programmed dynamic “one-frame”-fla, keep an eye of your dynamic textfields. The size of a textfield with at least one embedded character is up to 7 kb larger than the same charaters in a static textfield.
I don’t know why, but one reason could be that there is a set [...]