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MovieClip Exploder class

January 18th, 2012 | No Comments | Posted in Adobe Air, adobe flash, flash

I built a logo particle explosion class for a client. Unfortunately they decided not to take this route. It came out rather cool so I thought I’d share this with all of you. You can download the source code and use it anywhere you like. It would be cool if you would tell me where you used it tho.

Download MovieClipExploder source code

Usage:

1. Download the zip file
2. Copy the ‘com’ folder in there to your project directory
3. Make a ‘particle’ sprite/MovieCilp in your .fla file and  choose ‘Export for Actionscript’ when you make it as a MovieClip. Type: ‘particle’ in the ‘Class’ field. (you can use custom shapes if you want to).

Settings for Particle movie clip in flash

3. Particle creation Settings

4. Make the shape inside the particle movie clip as another movie clip and call it “gr”. No actionscript export necessary here. But you can now add effects to this asset. I added a little blur in the example.
5. Make sure your logo has an instance name and it’s on the stage. Then add the code:

import com.teemusk.ExplodeMovieClip;
var logoexploder:ExplodeMovieClip = new ExplodeMovieClip(logo);
addChild(logoexploder);
logoexploder.startEmitter();

6. Publish your movie and watch those particles fly.

That’s it. Enjoy!

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Passing variables to a function

January 11th, 2012 | No Comments | Posted in adobe flash, flash, Objective-C

My lingo is so Actionscript, but that is changing slowly. Variables are methods, and we’re actually passing properties in Objective-C. But ok. Yesterday I wrote about declaring and calling functions/methods in Objective-C. Now I’ll try to explain how to declare functions that accept variables and how to pass variables to them. Also I cover briefly how to get ‘trace’ statements in Objective C.

So let’s cut to the chase.

Trace Statements

Actionscript:

var string:String = "I AM STRING";
trace("I am getting traced in the console ");
trace("I am a variable: "+string);

Objective-C

NSString *string = @"I AM STRING";
NSLog(@"I am getting traced in the console");
NSLog(@"I am a variable %@",string);

Now note how variables work in NSLog statements. characters starting with % sign will get substituted by comma separated variables. Also all string defined have to have “@” in front of them.
They’re a bit to get used to. I will pass a cheatsheet of different variables

Actionscript

private function myFunction(foo:String){
trace("I got the variable "+foo);
}

 Passing a variable to a function

Passing a var to a function in Actionscript:

private firstFunction():void{
var str:String = "This is passed data";
anotherFunction(str);
}
private anotherFunction(s:String):void{
trace(s); //Output: This is passed data
}

Passing a variable to a function with Objective-C:


//First add this line to your header (.h) file;
- (void)anotherFunction:(NSString *)s;

//then in Class file (.m) you can call this function like so:
-(void)firstFunction{
NSString *str = @"This is passed data";
[self anotherFunction:str];
}
- (void)anotherFunction:(NSString *)s{
NSLog(@"%@",s); //Output This is passed data
}

Make sure ‘firstFunction’ is called. Try to use AppDelegate’s initWithOptions as your firstFunction.

Objective C NSLog cheatsheet:

%@     Object
%d, %i signed int
%u     unsigned int
%f     float/double
%x, %X hexadecimal int
%o     octal int
%zu    size_t
%p     pointer
%e     float/double (in scientific notation)
%g     float/double (as %f or %e, depending on value)
%s     C string (bytes)
%S     C string (unichar)
%.*s   Pascal string (requires two arguments, pass pstr[0] as the first, pstr+1 as the second)

%c     character
%C     unichar

%lld   long long
%llu   unsigned long long
%Lf    long double
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Objective-C Here I come

January 10th, 2012 | No Comments | Posted in adobe flash, Apple, flash, Objective-C

Okay. I’ve been learning Objective-C on and off for quite a while now. I’ve been doing it mostly using The Big Nerd Ranch books.

I can tell you it has not been easy. While all tutorials in these books are quite straightforward and work out just great when you follow a book, they still haven’t helped me to get my head around this language. I get the syntax, I get how the structure should work, but some of the concepts are so different coming from ECMA script language background such as Actionscript or Javascript. Painful.

Also I have googled around a lot. While there are some blogs that describe a bit about migrating from ECMA script to C based language, they haven’t helped me out too much.

Therefore I will try to add my 5 cents to the blogosphere about this subject. (And don’t judge me if I’m wrong in my theories presented here. I’m just a n00b.).

Declaring and calling a function

This is probably the first thing you want to do. In Actionscript 3 I would do this:

Defining a function:

private myFunction():void{
//Do something;
}

To call this function from another function I would just:

private anotherFunction():void{
myFunction();
}

In Objective C it’s not as straightforward. Defining a function like this won’t allow to call it from another function.

Defining a function:

First add the function description to an interface (yeah that’s the myClass.h file. Objective C calls them Headers).

- (void)myFunction;

Then in the class itself (myClass.m file) define this function completely:

-(void)myFunction{
//Do something
}

And then you can call it from another function:

-(void)anotherFunction{
[self myFunction];
}

 

I hope you get the idea how it works. I will try to add more examples soon.

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Writing to applicationDirectory with Adobe Air

October 27th, 2011 | 2 Comments | Posted in Adobe Air, flash

I had a lot of painful trouble with flash.filesystem.File functionality the other day. The problem is that File.applicationDirectory is read-only. I understand that it’s read only as on a mac we’re inside the <myair>.app/Contents… folder when we’re executing scripts and it is not very wise to write stuff in there.

Most of the times the File.desktopDirectory or File.documentsDirectory will meet our needs just fine and we can write stuff there. That was not the case for me. I needed an air desktop app which would work like a website or projector with loading data next to itself (from ‘images’ or ‘data’ folder etc.). Also I really needed to write a log out of the app so I can see how people are using it and if it’s app’s problem when it crashed.

Long story short. Here is my solution which is a bit of a hack but not too bad and at least it works ‘unlocking’ the File.applicationDirectory so we can have read/write access to it.

The trick is to resolve path for the applicationDirectory first and according to it’s native path we resolve the folder as File.userDirectory. My code goes like this:


var appPath:File = File.applicationDirectory.resolvePath("");
var fromUserPath:File = File.userDirectory.resolvePath(appPath.nativePath);

fromUserPath will take us to the exact same place as appPath, but with a difference that it is read/write and also you can do fromUserPath.parent.parent.parent to it to get to the folder next to the air app on a mac.

So my code that handles the starting path for my app on win and mac (and debug mode) goes as follows:

if (Capabilities.os.toLowerCase().indexOf("win") > -1){
localPath = File.applicationDirectory.resolvePath("");
}else if (Capabilities.os.toLowerCase().indexOf("mac") > -1){
var appPath:File = File.applicationDirectory.resolvePath("");
var fromUser:File = File.userDirectory.resolvePath(appPath.nativePath);
localPath = fromUser.parent.parent.parent;
}
if(Capabilities.playerType == "Desktop" && Capabilities.isDebugger){
localPath = File.applicationDirectory.resolvePath("");
}

//if you trace localPath.nativePath now you can see that you’re on a directory that your air app is at.

I had a terrible headache with this and could not find a straight answer by googling so I thought I’d give something back to community. Enjoy.

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How to delete flash cookies and cache

November 25th, 2010 | No Comments | Posted in adobe flash, cache, flash, flash cookie, shared object

It’s rather easy to flush browser cache for different browsers but regular “clear cache” command through browser menu does not kill flash shared objects (flash cookies).

To clear browser data which will delete all xml files and regular cookies set by server-side scripts is easy and can be done as follows:

Clear cache in safari (mac): Safari(menu item next to the apple icon)>Empty Cache..
clear cache in Chrome(mac): Chrome>Clear Browsing data…


To clear flash cookies and cache you will have to do it through adobe’s website:

go to: Adobe Flash Player settings
there you will see a window like this:

Click on folder icon on top if it’s not selected (not the one with the globe icon but the other one).
from there on you can select websites which you want to delete from flash cache or you can delete all sites, which will clear all flash cookies.
Hit Confirm and you’re done.
Now you can experience flash sites from the clean sheet once again.

Enjoy!

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