My good friend Divinci—who also happens to be my neighbor, and the official Funface Games beta-tester—kicked off the Plug Awards in NYC recently. The people over at the Dell Lounge just released an awesome 7 HD cam shoot of him performing the Star Spangled Banner on 3 MPC's! It's really an amazing feat to play 3 of these things live... most people simply program a beat into it then walk away, but he tears them up Hendrix style in this video!
I would embed the video on my blog, but it's only available through the proprietary player on the Plug Awards site. To view it, follow the link below, click on "see all" then look for the clip with "Divinci" next to it. Star Spangled Banner by Divinci of SOS - 2008 Plug Awards
Ever since making the switch to AS3, like many others, I have had to re-learn several routine tasks such as making pre-loaders for my games. After hunting through the Flash CS3 docs and coming to the realization that all of the examples were focused on loading external files, I turned to the mighty Google in an attempt to shed some light on creating a self-contained loader. Most examples just parrot the help files, but after a long search, I've got something that seems to be working exactly like the good old days of sloppy AS2!
If you can get away with loading external swf files, then I have to admit, it is a much more straight forward process, but in the Flash Games Business, it is very important to have everything packaged in one tidy swf file. Many portals will not accept games with multiple files, since they may not work within their existing infrastructure. We don't want to do anything that will prevent our games from spreading virally, so a single swf is best!
First I'll toss the code out there for the folks who want to get right to it. This script goes on frame one of the main timeline, which normally contains some type of loader bar and text display to show the loader's progress.
/* "myloader" is a movieclip on the timeline that contains the loader-bar and a text field */ this.stop(); import flash.events.ProgressEvent; import flash.events.Event; import flash.display.*; loaderInfo.addEventListener(ProgressEvent.PROGRESS, loadProgress); loaderInfo.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, loadComplete);
function loadProgress(e:ProgressEvent):void { var pct:Number = loaderInfo.bytesLoaded/loaderInfo.bytesTotal; myloader.l_txt.text=int(pct*100)+"%"; myloader.l_bar.width=pct*186; } function loadComplete(e:Event):void { this.gotoAndStop("menu"); }
Nice and simple, but just like a free vacation, there are a few catches. When you want to dynamically create an instance of a Sprite or MovieClip in AS3, you need to give it a linkage identifier just like in AS2. The difference now is that Flash automatically associates a class with this asset; which you can either provide or choose to not worry about, depending on what capabilities you want for that particular asset. You also have the option to export this asset in the first frame, which will cause it to load before our preloader.
In the image above, I have an asset called "Eye" which has "Export for Actionscript" checked, as well as "Export in first frame". If I wanted to create an instance of the Eye, I would just write something like this:
var myEye:Eye = new Eye(); myeEye.x=100; myEye.y=100; someMC.addChild(myEye); //etc...
...which is much nicer than the old attachMovie() from the AS2 days!
In many cases choosing "Export in first frame" is fine, but do this with enough assets, especially if they are large, and you will wind up staring at a blank screen while these assets load (before your preloader). To remedy this, I always try to un-check "Export in first frame", and never associate classes directly with my library assets from the linkage menu. Instead, I write custom classes that instantiate any Sprites or MovieClips I need; and in all reality, this allows for more flexible coding. I like to think of these as wrapper classes. For instance, say you are writing a particle engine class that needs to utilize many different Sprites. It wouldn't make sense to have the class directly associated with only one particular Sprite. It's best to think of these display objects as just a visual representation on screen, and not as the object that is containing and managing the code.
If you un-check "Export in first frame" then you will need to manually place these assets somewhere on screen, otherwise they will not be included along with your published swf file. The work around for this is the same as what we have already been doing for years. Just create a MovieClip with these assets inside it, and place it off screen. For sounds, make sure to create an extra frame that the playback head will never reach,(unless you enjoy hearing all of your sounds play simultaneously) then use the property window to add them to the timeline with start as the sync setting. See the image below for details:
So far this has worked like a charm, and I've done quite a bit of testing during the development of my new AS3 titles.
And just because we need something fun in this post, here is the source for the movie below, which demonstrates everything we've talked about. If you want to use the explosion animation in your games, then by all means, have at it. It was created in Lightwave, and I've been using it for years!
Today I just sold the first copy of Mobile B-Out, and I have to say, it feels great!
I was using this handy little tool to calculate how much I would need to charge in order to make a dollar after paypal took their cut. It looks like I missed the mark by a few cents, so I've adjusted the price to $1.35. It's too bad really, because it seemed like luck was on my side when I came up with the $1.11 price tag! Paypal takes a flat fee of $.30 per transaction, Plus up to 2.9% of the total. International orders can get hit for 2.5% on top of that.
In other news, I'm working on making a nice installer for various phone models, starting with the Symbian OS. I almost have something working, but it's about 10 times harder to make the installer than the game itself. The process involves:
Downloading gigs of symbian sdk's
Creating cool icons
Generating encrypted keys and certificates
Searching through a library of congress worth of documentation
Hacking through file headers
Fighting with tools that claim to do all this in a single click
It will be worth it in the long run, and I'm sure it's valuable info to have under your belt! I really would love to see an Adobe solution that streamlines this whole process though!
I would also like to get this game listed in the Nokia Marketplace, but it looks like there are pretty strict guidelines in place, and a $200 per year fee to get a proper Symbian certificate. Since B-Out doesn't need any of the advanced features that require strict certification, it might wind up being much easier, and hopefully cheaper.
For now, it's easy enough to just manually choose the game from the Flash player on your phone and enjoy it!
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