THEACTIONSCRIPTER.COM

Free Gucci Mane Flash Game

Mike — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 16:51:00 GMT

I recently developed a shooting game featuring Atlanta based rapper Gucci Mane. Gucci Mane has recently been sent to jail and his fans want him out. The games objective is to help free Gucci Mane from jail. Try and freeze the guards with the ice gun (burrrrr) allowing enough time for Gucci to make his escape. There is a helicopter waiting for the rapper at the end of the game to bring him to freedom.

This game is an example on how you can use Flash and other online tools to market and promote music artists on the internet in a new hip way. Simply add a sound track to the game and have their fans rock out while saving Gucci Mane.

Flash Input Text Font Issue with Mask

Mike — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 15:00:00 GMT

Why isn't my text showing up when I enter it in an input textfield? That was the question I was asking myself. Usually when I have an input text field the text shows up perfectly when keying inside it. The reason I was having this issue was because my textbox was under a mask.

The solution:
Embed the characters needed like you would a dynamic text field. That's it.

Developing Flash on a Mac vs PC

Mike — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 16:53:00 GMT

I finally did it. I made the jump from PC to MAC. I have been PC my entire life and figured it was about time to try out the MAC after all those commercials. I got a new MacBook Pro and it looks cool. The keyboard lights up and everything.

I have been developing Flash on it for the past month and came to some conclusions. The Apple learning curve will take me longer than I thought. I guess this is because I lived and died by the shortcuts on my PC. I adjusted to the basic Apple differences quite easily, like using the command instead of the control key. The Flash shortcuts are what have been killing me. F5 and F6 were not creating new keyframes or blank keyframes for me. It took me a while to realize this was because you have to hit fn and F5 or F6. So I had to do it the long way insert > timeline > Frame.

I guess part of my struggles is because I have a laptop with limited keys. Not having a home and end key has also slowed me down.

The positive thing about the switch has defiantly been dealing with my creative partners. This was the main reason I made the switch. Since the creative assets I get were designed by people using MACs a lot of time I would have missing fonts or fonts that were not compatible. This doesn't happen anymore.

All in all I have mixed emotions on the switch from PC to MAC dealing with Flash development. I have to say I miss my PC, like it more and much much faster with it, but time will tell. Maybe in 3 months I will be singing a different tune when I know my MAC inside and out but until then I have to say, "I am still a PC guy!".

AS 3 Hide/Show Mouse Cursor

Mike — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 21:42:00 GMT

Need the ActionScript 3 code to hide or show the mouse cursor? Take a look below at it. It is real simple. Make sure you include the import.

Syntax:
import flash.ui.Mouse; Mouse.hide(); Mosue.show();

Where Can I Find Omniture Flash ActionSource Documentation?

Mike — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:01:00 GMT

You can find a version of Omniture's ActionSource documentation for Flash/ActionScript implementation at the link below.

http://issuu.com/carismarie/docs/omniture_flash_documentation

Flash Making Extra Omniture Tracking Calls

Mike — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:40:00 GMT

Omniture tracking can be very tricky inside of Flash. Omniture's introduction of ActionSource has made it easier to implement the tracking calls but there is still a number of issues that happens if not explained correctly. One common mistake is extra tracking calls. A lot of times when users click on different trackable components inside Flash the Omniture call gets triggered more than once. This is becasue the Omniture call variables are not being nulled out after it is being fired.

When implementing Omniture on normal web pages each link click usually sends the user to a new http page. Since the user is being sent to a new http page the Omniture variables are automatically refreshed because of the new http headers. In Flash you have to refresh them on your own.

The example below shows an Omniture call in Flash via ActionSource that is not getting refreshed after the call is executed. Since the variables are not being reset after the call, it is being saved in the ActionSource object and is being sent again on each of the next calls.

s.campaign = "Campaign Name";
s.pageName = "About Us";
s.eVar17 = "value";
s.track();

Since campaign, pageName and eVar17 have not been nulled out after s.track() was called, everytime s.track() gets called in the future it will continue to pass campaign, pageName and eVar17. This will give you incorrect stats. You may think you have gotten more hits related to that campaign or eVar than you really did.

Solution:

s.campaign = "Campaign Name";
s.pageName = "About Us";
s.eVar17 = "value";
s.track();
s.campaign = null;
s.pageName = null;
s.eVar17 = null;

That is it. Just null out the vars after you make a tracking call and you are good to go.

Let me know.

Connecting to a Web Service in Flex

Mike — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 20:49:00 GMT

I figured it was time to dive into Flex and see how different it is than Flash. There are some differences but not too many. For my first Flex project I decided to make an app to look up stock quotes. I figured this would be a good place to start because communicating with web services is a common task for ActionScript projects.

In this example I used WebserviceX.NET Stock Quote free web service. To connect to the webservice you have to instantiate a Web Service instance in your MXML file. Below is example syntax to instantiate a WebService in your MXML.

id : name to identify your web service
wsdl : web service address
fault : function to handle faults when connecting to your web service
result : function that will be called after connecting to your web service

Now it is time to make the call to your web service. The following code gets executed after the user clicks the search button. This code lives inside the same MXML page inside an <mx:Script> tag.

We are almost done. All we need to do now is display the results. This code also lives inside the same MXML page inside an <mx:Script> tag.

Take a look at the demo below. Currently we are getting a security issue because this demo is trying to access data from another domain. The solution is to add a crossdomain.xml in the root directory of the server but I do not have access to the blog's server root directory. Please download the source MXML file and add it to your Flex project to see it running.

Source MXML File

Reading a RSS/Twitter feed with ActionScript 3

Mike — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 18:28:00 GMT

Everyone is tweeting! Time to tweet in style. Below is an example I made that reads in an RSS or Twitter feed and displays the entries inside a Flash component.

Try out this Flash RSS Feed Reader by entering your blog or Twitter's RSS feed below then clicking go.

How it works?

It is pretty simple to create your own Flash Twitter reader with ActionScript 3. RSS feeds are read in similiar to XML. After you read in the RSS feed loop through the RSS' channel items to display each entry.

Let me know your thoughts or if you need to see any code.

AS3 :: Get all Children MovieClips

Mike — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 15:14:00 GMT

It is easy in ActionScript 3 to get all the chlidren instances of a MovieClip. Take a look at the AS3 code below for help.

for (var i:uint = 0; i < mcMain.numChildren; i++){ txtOutput.htmlText += 'name:' + mcMain.getChildAt(i).name; txtOutput.htmlText += '\t type:' + typeof (mcMain.getChildAt(i)); txtOutput.htmlText += '\t' + mcMain.getChildAt(i); txtOutput.htmlText += ""; }

The above code uses a for loop, to loop through the total number of children in mcMain. mcMain.getChildAt(i) will get the reference to the child instance. By tacking .name to the end of mcMain.getChildAt(i) you can get the name of the child object.

download source

AS3 MOUSE_OVER VS. ROLL_OVER

Mike — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 17:46:00 GMT

A lot of Flash developers I come across have an issue with mouse actions when MovieClips are embedded inside other MovieClips. AS3 has multiple ways to handle embedded mouse actions within MovieClips. The two main ways are MOUSE_OVER and ROLL_OVER. They sound the same but have slight differences.

MOUSE_OVER

MOUSE_OVER will be triggered when you first rollover the main MovieClip. It will also be triggered every time you rollover any MovieClip inside the main MovieClip. This can get dangerous when you have additional buttons inside the main MovieClip with MOUSE_OUT functionality. Be careful because your MOUSE_OVER functionality will be called multiple times.

* If you set the main MovieClip to mouseChildren = false, it will prevent the MOUSE_OVER action being triggered when you mouse over any embedded MovieClip. Be careful though because you will not be able to add any mouse actions to those embedded MovieClips.

ROLL_OVER

ROLL_OVER will be triggered when you first rollover the main MovieClip. It will not be triggered again until you roll out of the main MovieClip and back over it. You can rollover as many embedded MovieClips as you want without it being triggered multiple times. ROLL_OVER is best for when you have embedded MovieClips with mouse actions.

Best Practices for Flash AS3

Mike — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 13:48:00 GMT

Take a look at this article I wrote on Bukisa. In this article you will read about best practices for developing a website in Flash. Learn different tricks to make your site perform better, load faster, and maintain easier.

http://www.bukisa.com/articles/137106_flash-and-actionscript-3-best-practices-to-improve-performance

Align Text with ActionScript 3 - Center AS3 Text

Mike — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 17:46:00 GMT

Imports needed to align your Flash text in AS3.

import flash.text.TextField;
import flash.text.TextFieldAutoSize;

Alignments you can do with your text:

TextFieldAutoSize.LEFT
TextFieldAutoSize.RIGHT
TextFieldAutoSize.CENTER
TextFieldAutoSize.NONE

Syntax needed to align your dynamic text in AS3.

_textField.autoSize = TextFieldAutoSize.LEFT;
_textField.text = "Hello World! This is my text.";

Make sure that you assign the autoSize before you set the text. If you set the text first the alignment will not work correclty.

Disable the right click menu in Flash AS3

Mike — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 16:01:00 GMT

Gain control of your Flash Movie. Do not let users right click and zoom in on it if you do not want them to. Take a look below at the AS3 code to prevent users from right clicking on your Flash experience.

stage.showDefaultContextMenu = false;

Example Flash Movie with Right Click Functionality Disabled.

Error #2044: Unhandled ioError: With .DAE file in Papervision

Mike — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 13:50:00 GMT

I got the classic #2044 Error today when I moved a project I have been working on from local to test environment. Usually you receive this error because the file doesn't exist. That wasn't the case for me.

I am building a papervision project and the file that was causing the #2044 error was the Collida .DAE file. Since the test environment was IIS, I had to add the .DAE file the the MIME Map. After I added the .DAE file to the MIME Map I was able to load my Collida .DAE into my PaperVision project.

Add the following code to your Web.config file

<system.webServer>
<staticContent>
<mimeMap fileExtension=".dae" mimeType="application/octet-stream"/>
</staticContent>
</system.webServer>

This is is more common when trying to dynamically load a .flv file on the server.

AS3 Tint MovieClip

Mike — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 19:15:00 GMT

Here is how to tint a MovieClip in Flash via AS3.

var c:Color = new Color(); //Create a color object c.setTint(Math.random() * 0xffffff, 1); //Set tint to a random color mcObject.transform.colorTransform = c; //Apply tint to your MovieClip

Below is an example of randomly changing a MovieClip's tint with ActionScript 3

Source Code

Going from ActionScript 3 back to ActionScript 2 isn't fun

Mike — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 13:39:00 GMT

I remember when I first made the jump from ActionScript 2 to ActionScript 3. I wasn't excited about the switch at the time. I remember always asking myself why did they change this, I can't I do this anymore but after my first project I was happy I made the switch. AS3 made coding easier. I write less code in AS3 than I needed to do in AS2 with the exception of getURL.

I've been doing AS3 straight for the past year now. Every time I have to start a new ActionScript project I always write it in AS3 for obvious reasons. The challenge is when someone asked me to write a project that had to be done in AS2. No AS3! Sure, I thought, no problem. I have been coding for years in ActionScript 2 but wow how quickly I forget the differences. I felt I had to reteach myself some of the basics.

The project should have only took me 4-6 hours but ended up taking me 8-10 hours. If I could have wrote it in AS3 it probably would have took me just 2 hours. Making the jump back seemed more difficult than the jump forward. Some of the simplest actions I just forgot. For example, assigning actions to buttons from my class. It took me a moment to remember that inside the onClick function there is no true reference to the class, so I had to set one before I declared the action. Simple code like that, which I used to write like clockwork, I just forgot.

In all the change back was frustrating but kind of funny. Seems like I need to do some more small AS2 projects on my own to stay sharp but if I have to do anything important I'm writing it in good new ActionScript 3.

Omniture Media Tracking in Flash with ActionScript 3

Mike — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 18:23:39 GMT

Omniture made media tracking easy with their creation of ActionSource. You no longer have to make external javascript calls for when the video starts, pauses, plays, ends, etc. The ActionSource object handles it all. ActionSource is pretty easy to learn and implement but I do feel Omniture in general and the way they handle their reporting is quite ambiguous. I'm lucky I just have to do the implementation and not the naming strategy for the tracking. I am told what props, eVars, events, etc to implement and can easily fire them correctly because of ActionSource.

First you will have to setup your ActionScource object as usual. Then you can track your videos by using the below function calls.

When the video get initialized you need to call the media open function.

// mediaName :: Name of video // mediaLength :: Duration of video // mediaPlayName :: Name of video players.Media.open(mediaName, mediaLength, mediaPlayerName);

When the video play listener is called you need to call the media play function.

s.Media.play(mediaName, mediaOffset);

When a user pauses the video or it stops you need to call the media stop function.

s.Media.stop(mediaName, mediaOffset);

When the video is finished you need to call the media close function.

s.Media.close(mediaName);

The tracking call to Omniture doesn't get fired until the close() function gets called.

Omniture Media Tracking Reports

How many people watched a video
How long a user stayed on a video
What sections of the video a user watched
When the user exited the video
Videos By Player
If you have Omniture tracking throughout your site, you can also know the user flow before and after the video

AS3 ? Conditional

Mike — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 18:16:00 GMT

You can use the following line of code as a if/else statement.

x = ( a == b ) ? y : z;

if(a==b){
x=y
}
else{
x=z;
}

Cool Papervision and Web Cam Video

Mike — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 14:23:00 GMT

Take a look at this cool Papervision and Web Cam video I found on YouTube. You can hold your virtual creations in your hands now.

Shared Object / Flash Cookie in ActionScript 3

Mike — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 15:38:00 GMT

Sometimes you may want to store information on the clients machine. You can do this using a Flash Shared Object, this is basically a Flash Cookie. A Flash Cookie is actually a little better than a normal cookie. Flash Cookies are a little more secure and cannot be deleted like your browser's normal cookies are. Very few users know how to delete them, which is pretty cool for us Flash Developers.

Here is how you set a SharedObject in ActionScript 3:

var __so:SharedObject = SharedObject.getLocal("theactionscripter"); __so.data.favoriteWebsite = "http://www.theactionscripter.com"; __so.data.userId = "123"; __so.flush(); //Immediately writes a locally persistent shared object to a local file.

Here is how you get a SharedObject in ActionScript 3:

var __so:SharedObject = SharedObject.getLocal("theactionscripter"); trace(__so.data.favoriteWebsite ); //http://www.theactionscripter.com

Here is how you clear a SharedObject in ActionScript 3:

var __so:SharedObject = SharedObject.getLocal("theactionscripter"); __so.clear();

View Demo of SharedObject.

Source Code