Web/Game Dev: Tutorials & Sourcecode

Several years ago I co-authored in New Masters Of Flash Volume 3, and wrote a tutorial for it which extensively covered illustrating in Flash then bringing the graphics to life with code… adding the interactive layer. It crossed my mind that I could port it to Actionscript 3.0 for fun! I really loved making it. The original Frog Pond was part of an unreleased portion of BlueSuburbia. BlueSuburbia is 100% vector art, and, as was the case with all the graphics in BlueSuburbia, it was drawn in Flash. The original tutorial (found in the book) is still an excellent walkthrough...

I’ve been working on a game. Some super simple stuff that has come in handy… CLICK HERE FOR THE SOURCE FILES — //splitting a string every given amount of characters and saving the result to an array //DOWNLOAD SOURCE var arr:Array = new Array(); function str_split(str:String, splitTo:Number) { var arr_str:Array = new Array(); for(var i:Number=0; i < str.length; i += splitTo){ arr_str.push(str.slice(i, i+splitTo)); } return(arr_str); } var str = 'This has been split every 3 characters.'; arr = str_split(str,3); trace(arr); //outputs Thi,s h,as ,bee,n s,pli,t e,ver,y 3, ch,ara,cte,rs. -- //timing the length of a text field based on its character...

I’ll be releasing old project files, source codes, and various back-end miscellany. This is the first. More soon… Download it here! Preview it here! This is a prototype/rough of an old dynamic VJ / DJ I was creating for a game (Haxed By Megahurtz). It’s in AS 2 because I was targeting the Nintendo Wii (at the time AS 3 wasn’t supported/recommendable). It’s a basic version of the final. This takes sounds from an array and plays them /combines them randomly. To go along with that it also splices videos together. As everyone knows, the newer platform/language capabilities open up...

SOURCE FILES HERE! (AS3, and AS2) Short Summary: Wordpress feed readers + Flash are a popular things to do (ever since the Macromedia weblogs). I had a nice and tidy widget version programmed way back for my old site, as well as played with the same model in Flex. Although it no longer displays because the feed is long dead (RIP early roots of social media), sorting them by category/author, then syndicating to Flash when you do have the feed URL (RSS or atom), is a simple endeavor once you get all the php query vars. Searching on the WordPress...

DOWNLOAD HERE (In the directory, right click over anything + Save Link As…) Some years ago I was asked to make a contribution to a book (to put it ambiguously). I made an animation called Alien Invasion, that was basically about arcade games springing to life and 8 bit characters taking over malls across the first world and bringing the economy to its knees because of the sudden decrease in shopping. The stock market suffered heavily because of this. In conclusion to their violent rampage, the 8 bit fiends attacked the human baby factories, and thus the end of humanity...

Click here to download the source files. Other than Youtube an easy, and significantly higher quality video service is Vimeo. It’s pretty much regarded as the professional version of Youtube because of the higher quality videos that you can upload and display without suffering horrendous compression. Vimeo Plus even allows you to embed HD videos… In unlimited amounts! Bang! Holy shit. The perk here is that, much like youtube, you can use their handsome API’s to get your videos into Flash. It’s an economical way of incorporating streaming video into your Flash site… Because installing cool shit like Red5 involves...

System requirements: *PHP (4.0.4 and up) *MySQL *Apache Server *Flash (If you found this via a google search… Source files for the Flash are at the end of the post…) Short Summary: Update: For a tutorial, and source code, on integrating Pandorabots with Flash, click here. This is a concise collection of all the information that’s out there (as far as my research leads me to believe – since I last checked), + some personal trial-error-experimeddling on installing Program’s to host your own ALICE bot. This also walks you through the basics for building your own Flash interface (for your...

typeof is handy but can be a little too flimsy at times. Basically all it really understands are only six possible values; boolean, function, number, object, string, and xml. If you want to run a conditional to check if you’ve got some common ethnic group, such as a movieclip, on your hands then it works charms… BUT if you want to use typeof to check for a Text Field, or maybe something more exciting, then it’ll fail. At least I know of no other way… So! Today’s super simple code blurb of the day is: for (var i:Number=0; i<clip.numChildren; i++)...

I’ve been itching to do one for a long time since I keep being asked to do countdown timers… Then there’s always that pesky deadline that keeps me from actually not cutting corners and doin’ it fo’ realz. So dundid I didit! A countdown timer set to server time via PHP! (…You know, it should work, but I didn’t test it through n’ through, just threw the servertime integration together this evening :S ). Source files up for grabs HERE! The deal is if you do a countdown in Flash, the Flash Date object is set to the user’s system...

Here’s a quick particle effect I threw together. Thought I’d put it up here… figuring it might help some hapless googler searching for a quick fix, since it’s a super simple class you can easily reuse or (quite possibly) extend… probably. Download source here. [swfobj src=”http://nathalielawhead.com/sourcefiles/Mouse_Particle_Effect/silly_little_particle.swf” height=”400″ width=”480″] Mouse over the above area to preview. The AS (Particle.as) package { import flash.utils.Timer; import flash.events.TimerEvent; import flash.geom.Point; import flash.display.MovieClip; public class Particle extends MovieClip { protected var position:Point; protected var vector:Point; private var gravity:int; private var friction:Number; private var maxIterationsAlive:Number; private var iterationsAlive:Number; protected var update_i:Timer; public function Particle(p:Point, v:Point, g:int,...

This is a follow up to my previous post “Loading Twitter Feeds Into Flash (Through PHP)” (Check it out for source code and other resources)… After successfully doing so, the next most obvious question of any Flash developer would be: “Wow, Flash is awesome! So, can I display images and media files in my Flash Twitter feed reader?” Well, son… The answer is both Yes and, um… No. You can display direct links to media such as: http://realylongurltoyoursite.com/directory/anotherdirectory/image.jpg BUT Twitter has a 140 character limit (that’s just the idea behind Twitter, if it where longer it would be Tumblr). So...

[swfobj src=”http://nathalielawhead.com/noodles/twitter.swf” height=”200″ width=”600″] -Supports ability to retweet, follow, and shows a profile pic. Download the sourcefiles here. There are many cool things you can do with twitter. See Smashing Magazine’s article “50 Twitter Tools and Tutorials For Designers and Developers” I like it. Rather inspiring. Twitter is cool. You know you can even grab the coordinates of where the twitter twat tweeted? I feel sinister seeing that. Consider making a “stalk your ex” app using Twitter and Google Maps where you can enter a user name and see your “ex’s” migration and travel habits. Hehe… Evilness. Importing Twitter feeds...