Flash UI Panel to Edit the Properties of Multiple Bitmaps

by Devon O.· August 27, 2008· in Flash, Life· 20 comments
Long ago (MX 2004 days, I believe) there existed a great custom Flash panel released by Fuel Industries that would allow you to set the export properties of multiple library items simultaneously. Say, for example, you have a hundred little bitmap items in your library that you’re using for an interface and you want to allow smoothing on all of them. Ordinarily, you’d have to go through each and every one, open up the properties panel and check the Allow Smoothing check box. Hopefully you wouldn’t skip one. With this Fuel panel though, you’d highlight all the bitmap instances and click a single button one time to change them all. I’d nearly forgotten about this extremely useful little plugin until I ran across this blog post by Matt Wright. Since I no longer have that plugin myself, I figured I’d make one. It was a pretty quick and easy thing to do. I can’t remember what all that Fuel plugin was capable of, but mine handles Bitmap objects only. Basically, it’s just as I described – you highlight multiple Bitmaps in your .fla’s library, adjust the settings (allow smoothing, lossy/lossless, jpg compression quality), then click on the “execute” button and – presto […]
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3D Carousel AS3 Style && BOP Secrets Turns 10

by Devon O.· August 22, 2008· in Actionscript, Liberty· 45 comments
Long long ago, I created a 3d circular menu thingie you can see here. It wasn’t much long after, that Lee Brimelow came up with his 3d carousel tutorial. Well, to be honest, I’ve never read Mr. Brimelow’s tutorial, but still I vowed then and there that I’d never make another one these things again – kinda like Bob Dylan vowing never to play “All Along the Watchtower” after hearing Hendrix’s version. Today, though, I’ve decided to renege on that vow. A freind over at ShavedPlatypus was asking how to make a carousel thing more similar to mine than Lee’s but in AS3, so I figured what the hell, why not update. Below is an example of what I came up with: Not many comments added, but the full script is below. In a nutshell, you just create a new instance of OBO_3DCarousel and pass it a few 3d properties (if you want). After that you add pictures to it using the addItem() method. Easy-peasy, man. Oh, and you can set the useBlur boolean property if you want a blur for more distant images. The main class: [crayon-6046c1d241c03337264933/] The item class (instances of this class are the pictures in the […]
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enabled v. mouseEnabled & Other Stuff

by Devon O.· August 20, 2008· in Actionscript, Flash, Life· 0 comments
In my last post (about the OBO_BoxTransition), Senocular had mentioned in a comment that the demo app was throwing an error when double clicking. While he never did come back to say what the error was, he’s a pretty sharp cookie, so I figured there had to be something to it. So, I finally downloaded the Flash 10 Debug player (which, incidentally, is now available), ran the .swf in it and saw immediately what the problem was. The bottom line is that the buttons, which I knew should not be clicked in rapid succession, were still firing an Event.CLICK event even after I had called a disabling method which, in short, looped through an array of SimpleButton instances (don’t know why I didn’t choose a Vector – still getting used to the idea, I suppose) and set each member’s enabled property to false. You’d think that would make the SimpleButton’s unclickable, but you’d be wrong. For a brief moment, even with a false enabled property, they are still able to be clicked and will still dispatch the corresponding event. On an impulse, however, I made the quick change from enabled to mouseEnabled and – shazam! – no more double click blues. I am not sure why […]
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3D Box Transition Effect in Flash Player 10

by Devon O.· August 14, 2008· in Actionscript, Flash, Life· 13 comments
Playing with another transition effect made possible by the 3d capabilities of Flash Player 10, gave rise to the example below. The initial object seen is just a quickly thrown together MovieClip to demonstrate that interactive items can be transited as well as static images. After that first mc, though, all you’ll see is a bunch of random movie posters. Because I added a new transition to my transitions package, I touched up the OBO_BillboardTransition class a little bit and made both implement an ITransition interface. If interested, all script is below: The interface: [crayon-6046c1d248fd8298696756/] The OBO_BoxTransition class: [crayon-6046c1d248fdf059849092/] The OBO_BillboardTransition class (same effect as my last post, so no need for a demo .swf): [crayon-6046c1d248fe3920449885/] And finally, a document class to test the box transition: [crayon-6046c1d248fe7542593266/] And completely offtopic, but while doing a little google surfing after the Virgin Prunes, I discovered this lengthy but interesting read on the Goth music scene in England back in the day. Like strolling down the halls of high school. Interesting and entertaining stuff for folks into that sort of thing. You know who you are…
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Billboard Transition Effect in Flash Player 10

by Devon O.· August 03, 2008· in Actionscript, Flash· 9 comments
Didn’t really know what else to call this one. I’m sure you’ve all seen those billboards, though, that periodically spin small sections of themselves around to reveal a whole ‘nother billboard beneath advertising still more crap you don’t need, can’t afford but have to have. I just love those things. Used to mesmerize me for hours as a kid. Well maybe not hours, but for longer periods of time than your usual kid. Anyway, I always though that would be a pretty cool thing to do in Flash. Of course it could have been done using Papervision3d (or one of the countless other 3d packages all the rage these days) long ago. But now, using Flash Player 10 (which the example below, of course, requires), it can be done natively within Flash. Example: And the class that does all the work: [crayon-6046c1d249199831360239/] And for testing purposes, the document class that produces the above .swf: [crayon-6046c1d2491a0320716618/] A few caveats if you plan on using this: Seems if you run it long enough producing transition after transition, processing power will go through the roof. I’m not sure why. I thought I scrubbed everything away in the cleanup() method of OBO_BillboardTransition.as. If anyone […]
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Devon O. Wolfgang

AIR | Unity3D | AR/VR

Unity Certified Developer

Technical Reviewer of “The Essential Guide to Flash CS4 AIR Development” and “Starling Game Development Essentials”

Reviewer of “The Starling Handbook”

Unity Engineer at Touch Press.

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