SWF It Good

So for a couple of weeks, I’ve been messing around w/ building a simple app using Facebook. I decided to use the new ActionScript 3 API created by Adobe and Facebook. I wanted to do a little tutorial because some of this information is hard to understand since most of the API has definitions like, ” “.

In this tutorial I will show you how to login to Facebook, retrieve your friends list and populate a TileList with their pictures. Ok, let’s get started.

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Merry Christmas, I got you guys present.

I was looking for a need to make an AIR app, though this isn’t the best one, I turned my converter class into one. Introducing Johnny V.

This past week I worked on a porting exercise. I have always wanted to find out how you convert Roman Numerals to Arabic numerals and vice versa. So I starting searching and found a bunch of bloated code for converting these numbers then I stumbled on this page.

So in a few hours of screwing around w/ the loops (typing this correctly took a bit) I got it ported. Porting is fun cause all you have to do is translate.

Here is the zip flie and Here is the class.

package com.joshspoon.etc.utils
{
	public class NumberUtils
	{
		public function NumberUtils(){}
 
		public static function romanize(num:int):String {
			var numerals:Array = ["M", "CM", "D", "CD", "C", "XC", "L", "XL", "X",
										"IX", "V", "IV", "I"];
 
			var numbers:Array  = [1000, 900, 500, 400, 100, 90, 50, 40, 10, 9, 5, 4, 1];
 
			var lookup:Object = {M:1000,CM:900,D:500,CD:400,C:100,XC:90,L:50,XL:40,X:10,IX:9,V:5,IV:4,I:1}
 
			var roman:String = "";
 
			var i:int;
 
			  for( i = 0; i < numbers.length; i++)
			  {
				while(num >= numbers[i])
				{
					roman += numerals[i];
					num -= numbers[i];
				}
			  }
			  return roman;
			}
 
		public static function deromanize( roman:String ):int {
 
			var numerals:Array = ["I", "V", "X", "L", "C", "D", "M"];
 
			var numbers:Array  = [1, 5, 10, 50, 100, 500, 1000];
 
			var roman:String = roman.toUpperCase();
 
			var arabic:int = 0;
 
			var i:int = roman.length;
 
		    var compare1:int;
			var compare2:int;
 
			while (i--) {
 
		  	var letter:String;
	  		var listLetter:String;
 
		  	for (var j:int = 0; j < = numerals.length - 1; j++)
		  	{
		  		letter = roman.charAt(i);
		  		listLetter = numerals[j];
		  		if(listLetter == letter)
		  		{
		  			compare1 = numbers[j];
		  		}
		  	}
 
		  	for (j = 0; j <= numerals.length - 1; j++)
		  	{
		  		letter = roman.charAt(i + 1);
		  		listLetter = numerals[j];
		  		if(listLetter == letter)
		  		{
		  			compare2 = numbers[j];
		  		}
		  	}
 
		    if (compare1 < compare2 )
		      arabic -= compare1;
		    else
		      arabic += compare1;
		  }
		  return arabic;
		}
 
	}
}

So after 13 year of off and on drumming I have learned a thing or two about music. Not much about tuning a guitar. Thanks to a class that I got a D in, Musical Acoustics, I know every note produces a frequency and a wavelength. With that you can now you Flash to produce a frequency and that is what I did, the six notes from left to right are the notes of a regularly tuned guitar.

Since I lost my Musical Acoustics book from UNT I had to look it up to find the Frequency of All Notes

and that pick the ones I wanted starting w/ E4.

So if you don’t have a guitar tuner…here you go.

View Code:

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I miss writing classes w/ 50 or so lines of code and here is one. This is a take off of Lee Brimelow’s Example of Dynamic Sound Generation. I’m using the BitmapData to create a tone.

[as]

package
{
import flash.display.*;
import flash.events.*;
import flash.media.*;
import flash.net.URLRequest;
import flash.system.Capabilities;
import flash.text.TextField;

public class DynamicSound extends Sprite
{
private var sound:Sound;
private var noise:Number = 0;
private var _loader:Loader;
private var _bm:Bitmap;
private var _verText:TextField;
public function DynamicSound():void
{
stage.align = StageAlign.TOP_LEFT;
stage.scaleMode = StageScaleMode.NO_SCALE;
_verText = new TextField();
_verText.text = Capabilities.playerType + ” (” + Capabilities.version + “)”;
_loader = new Loader();
_loader.contentLoaderInfo.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, onComplete, false, 0, true);
_loader.load(new URLRequest(“http://www.scarlet.nl/~ivo/photo_ASTRO3.JPEG”));

}

private function onComplete(evt:Event):void
{
_bm = Bitmap(_loader.content);
addChild(_bm);
addChild(_verText);
sound = new Sound();
sound.addEventListener(Event.SAMPLES_CALLBACK, onCallback);
sound.play();
}
private function onCallback(e:SamplesCallbackEvent):void
{
for(var i:uint=0; i<512; i++)
{
noise += _bm.bitmapData.getPixel(mouseX, mouseY)/ 44100;
var sample:Number = noise * Math.PI * 2;
sound.samplesCallbackData.writeFloat(Math.sin(sample));

sound.samplesCallbackData.writeFloat(Math.sin(sample));
}
}
}
}

[/as]

Quick and Dirty!

As many of you know ASTRO is in Public beta.

Download browser plugin

Here are some links on how to compile:

Text instruction – by Mike Chanmbers

Video Instruction – by Lee Brimelow

Flash Magizine Article

A promising sound example:

flash produced sound example – by Keith Peters

Here is my “3D” example, quick and dirty:

[as]

package {
import flash.display.Loader;
import flash.display.MovieClip;
import flash.display.Sprite;
import flash.display.StageAlign;
import flash.display.StageScaleMode;
import flash.events.Event;
import flash.events.MouseEvent;
import flash.geom.Vector3D;
import flash.net.URLRequest;

public class ASTRO extends Sprite
{

private var _loader:Loader;
private var mc:MovieClip;
public function ASTRO()
{

stage.align = StageAlign.TOP_LEFT;
stage.scaleMode = StageScaleMode.EXACT_FIT;
_loader = new Loader()
_loader.contentLoaderInfo.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, loadComplete, false, 0, true);
_loader.load(new URLRequest(“record.gif”));

}

private function loadComplete(evt:Event):void
{

mc = new MovieClip();
mc.rotationY = 0;
mc.rotationZ = 0;

stage.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_MOVE, onMove, false, 0, true);
mc.opaqueBackground = true;
_loader.x = – (_loader.width * 0.5);
_loader.y = – (_loader.height * 0.5);
mc.addChild(_loader);
mc.x = (_loader.width * 0.5);
mc.y = (_loader.height * 0.5);
addChild(mc);

}

private function onMove(evt:MouseEvent):void
{
mc.rotationZ = stage.mouseY;
mc.rotationX = stage.mouseX

}
}
}
[/as]

Also here are some classes that I saw through code completion. I don’t really know what to do with them yet. Maybe someone else will and will let me know (I have too much work and GTAing to do ).

• flash.text.engine Package (over a dozen classes)
• __AS3__.vec.Vector (that is wierd)
• flash.display.GraphicsBitmapFill
• flash.display.GraphicsPathCommand
• flash.display.TriangleCulling (that sounds interesting)
• flash.geom.Vector3D
• flash.filters.ShaderFilter

Happy Coding!

Alright, in this example, I am cutting each pixel in an image and piecing it back together again. Only this time I animating the pixel to a new location, piecing back the image at 200%. I think this can open a lot doors in what you can do with a bitmap. Read more »

So the last couple of weeks I have been jacking around w/ Bitmaps and BitmapData. I’ve always wanted to try it but never had the courage. Now that I have, I wish I’d have done it sooner.

In this first example I’m just copying each pixel throwing it to the wind and using Tweener to animate it to a spot. I don’t think Tweener is the best option course as you can see it runs slow. I’m also using Grant Skinner’s Memory Gauge to illustrate how slow it is. This is just a proof of concept anyway.

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So since PureMVC has updated twice and also I never talked about garbage collection of the app, I have refactored PurelyKuler to work with PureMVC 2.3. Thate are quite a few changes, some being:

1. the framework is being ported to many languages like PHP, Ruby, Python, Coldfusion, C# and many others.
   [as]import org.puremvc.as3.interfaces.IFacade;
   import org.puremvc.as3.patterns.facade.Facade;[/as]
   as oppose to
   [as]import org.puremvc.interfaces.IFacade;
   import org.puremvc.patterns.facade.Facade;[/as]
2. there is a new way to notify observers:
   [as]facade.sendNotification(PurelyKulerConstants.STARTUP, app);[/as]
   as oppose to
   [as]facade.notifyObserver(new Notification(PurelyKulerConstants.STARTUP, app))[/as]
3. also the Mediators are can be named from outside the class, so you can have many instances of the class and remove specific instances and not all.public function PurelyKulerMediator(mediatorName:String = null, viewComponent:Object=null){
   _tf = new TextField();

   super(NAME, viewComponent);// the colorContainer
   }
   Those are just a few.

Alright back to PurelyKuler.

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I was messing around last night with AIR and I stumbled apon this:

1. start an AIR app in flash cs3
2. add a list component
   1. name it dir_list
3. drop the code below in the actions panel
4. And Viola!
5. PS – PC people, I put a test to see if My Documents in in that Directory.

[as]

import flash.filesystem.*;

var userDirFiles:Array = File.userDirectory.getDirectoryListing();
for (var i:uint = 0; i < userDirFiles.length; i++) {
if (userDirFiles[i].isDirectory) {
//this.display_txt.text = String(userDirFiles[i].nativePath);
dir_list.addItem({label:userDirFiles[i].nativePath })
var tmpString:String = userDirFiles[i].nativePath;
if(tmpString.search(/My Documents/) != -1)
{

dir_list.addItem({label:”working”});
break;
}
}
} [/as]