Flash is Dead… Long Live Flash

by Devon O.· January 31, 2010· in Flash· 19 comments
Ordinarily I limit my posts about Flash here to its usage and just kind of sit on the sidelines when it comes to debates about its future. After all, though I make my living with the Flash Platform, I’m not an Adobe employee and they’re big enough boys to stand up for themselves amidst all the hullabaloo. And I’ve been working and playing with Flash since about 1999/2000 and if, during that time, I had a dollar for every time a new technology was the alleged “killer of Flash”, well, I’d have at least 10 or 20 bucks. Yet here it is 2010 and Flash is still here and as strong as ever. Recently, though, the whole HTML5 debacle has really reached the point where I thought I’d throw in my opinion. So here’s my 2 cents on the already way over capacity topic: Everything is Propietary One of the biggest divisions between Flash (and other plugins) and HTML5 is that one is proprietary while the other is an open standard. What I always ask myself though is where do these open standards come from – they don’t just appear? The answer, of course, is open standards are proposed, shaped, […]
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Digging into the Microphone in Flash Player 10.1

by Devon O.· January 30, 2010· in Actionscript, Flash· 39 comments
One of the big (well, maybe it wasn’t all that big, but it was interesting) announcements of the 10.1 Flash Player was its ability to access detailed sound data from the microphone in the same way you can access mp3 data now. Until now, microphone access has been limited to volume. With the 10.1 player though, you can extract a bytearray of 512 sound samples just as you can from an mp3 file. Generally speaking, the Microphone class, like the Sound class, now listens for the SampleDataEvent.SAMPLE_DATA event. When this is triggered, the event’s data property will hold a bytearray of 8192 samples. Those samples can then be “read into” a sound instance (similar to the way dynamic sounds are created) and the sound instance played. At that point, you can use the good ol’ SoundMixer.computeSpectrum() method to read the current sound samples into another bytearray and do with them as thou wilt. Below is a quick example using a 3d grid of Papervision3D spheres. Just click to get started then speak/sing/whistle/holler into your mic (of course, you’ll need the 10.1 player installed and you’ll have to allow access to the microphone): Seeing as how there doesn’t seem to be […]
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Fred Never Had it so Fun – 1st Crack at Unity

by Devon O.· January 09, 2010· in Unity3D· 14 comments
Seems all the cool Flash Platform developers have been trying their hand at Unity these days, so I had to jump in and find out for myself what all the buzz was about. So, after a week or so of trials and tribulations, I finally completed my first Unity project – a little driving game with a Flintstones style car. Why a Flintstones car? Well, I wanted to use my own models (or those provided by the Unity environment) and, the ugly truth be told, I pretty much suck at 3d modelling. At least a Flintstones car is just a bunch of simple primitives thrown together. Some stuff I learned, experienced, or would like to learn: Make liberal use of public variables and the Unity IDE. When I started, I found myself creating private vars and trying to define them with complicated and convoluted GameObject.Find() calls. Then I realized I could make the variable public and set its content with a dropdown box and suddenly life became a lot more fun. Really not impressed with the Unity code editor. I’ve heard you can set your own, but haven’t yet taken the time to figure out how to do so. For […]
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Game Timer Download

by Devon O.· January 02, 2010· in Actionscript, Flash· 6 comments tags: download, swc, timer
Just playing around with an idea for a game timer and thought I’d share the results for anyone who might need something similar. Basically, this is just an ‘odometer’ style scrolling number thing that counts down from a specified number of seconds to 0. It only allows 2 digits, meaning you can only count down from a max number of 99 seconds, but what do you want for free? Once you have the .swc (available below) in your library and you’ve imported com.onebyonedesign.utils.timer.CountdownTimer, you’ll have access to these public methods/properties: setTime(time) – call this first – it sets the number of seconds to count down from setColor(color) – sets the color of the scrolling digits start() – starts the timer currentTime – read only property that tells what second the timer’s at. Useful, if you want to change the color at say 5 seconds or whatever. reset() – resets the timer back to the original time set with setTime() toggle() – will pause the timer if it’s running or re-start it, if it’s paused. it dispatches the two events Event.CHANGE (every second) and Event.COMPLETE (when the timer’s done). Here’s a quickie example: [crayon-6108c411a134c576933961/] And that will give you: Download the […]
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New Year’s Day 2010

by Devon O.· January 01, 2010· in Liberty, Life· 0 comments
Well, it took it’s own sweet time getting here, but here it finally is: 2010. No rocket cars or jet backs, but we do have video conferencing, holograms, and the ever increasing cybersprawl that is the web today, so sci fi and cartoons didn’t completely lie to us. And, maybe it’s just me, but it seems the future is starting to feel more like a promise again and less like a threat (cf. Chuck Palahniuk). Well, at least for a couple more years until the aliens return and all hell breaks loose. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like it, but this has been one damned eventful decade for me. I’ve taught myself actionscript and secured a wonderful future; I joined and was honorably discharged from the Navy where I met a whole lotta interesting people, lived in Sicily and the Middle East, and criss crossed the Atlantic in a boat you’d never think was large enough to make it; I’ve started life anew in a new country on a new continent with a new career; and most importantly, I finally met and married the girl of my dreams. Whew. Quite an action packed 10 years. Who’d a thunk it? Originally, my […]
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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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