APE + Arkanoid = Aperkanoid

Pedro Lourenço and Bilou have been working on a project that involves using the APE physics engine for Flash. Here's a demo of using APE that allows to play a bit with different parameters of the engine like damping, gravity, mass, etc. The source code has a lot of comments ( as does the engine itself ) that should permit anyone starting with APE to get going.

Some minor issues/glitches on the engine are noticeable, mainly when you crank up strength values, or at least make masses way to small for the forces being applied to them. You can spot them when the ball is re spawned near the screen centre, this probably happens because objects start moving so fast that once the engine tracks where they're at, faults have already occurred. Overlapping also occurs, a bit more often than it should but there are some ways to workaround it...or you can learn to live with it!

Go ahead, try the demo to understand APE a bit better, "a" and "s" move the pong around, "r" resets the level once all targets are gone. Fiddle with the values on the bottom and press enter to set them.

Source Code (tested in Flex Builder 3)

Giving Flex Builder a Library (SWC)

Have you ever wondered why Flex doesn't have a nice library like Flash IDE?
You'd love to use Flex but not having that nice little library there puts you off?
Well here's how we do it:
First create your FLA file, then create all the items you want inside (they don't need to be on stage just library will do), be sure to tick 'export for actionscript' and 'export in firstframe', also you can change the base class to something else that will add functionality to your movieclip.
Then in export preferences, tick 'export swc'.
Ok so now we have a nice little SWC file, how do we get it into Flex? Easy
Open project properties, go to Build Path > Library Path and add your SWC file.
That's it!
Congratulations now you have auto complete goodness on your AS3 Flex Builder application
Just keep in mind that these elements will be exported in the initial load of your website, so if you want to preload them be sure to use the preloader.

Flex3 and AIR 1.0 are out!!!

These were the news everyone was waiting for, both AIR and Flex3 are out, they're final, ready to be taken by us and pushed to new levels!!!

The details and pricing for Flex3 can be found here and I find them quite accessible for a full version going only for CHF 319.00, it's a bargain for the best Flash/Flex development IDE.

As for AIR it now has a nice little official Adobe link, and they even show an impressive list of clients for a just released product, featuring the likes of ebay and nasdaq.

So get your copy of Flex3 while it's fresh, I know I'll get mine

Ah, also for those of us who live in Europe we'll have plenty of chances to catching the on.air tour here's the link with the dates.

Papervision3d GW Memory Leak

Yesterday I came across a nasty leak with GW, it just wouldn't kill my moviematerials after I removed all the references to them, I tried it all, removeChild, removeListener, weak keys... you name it.

So I finally decided to go have a look at Papervision's destroy methods, and surprise surprise they weren't being called, no harm there, it's alpha these things are meant to happen

So here's what you have to do to force those destroy methods to execute, and clean your memory.

In org.papervision3d.core.proto.MaterialObject3D  set the destroy method from protected to public, do the same to all the materials that you use, like org.papervision3d.materials.MovieMaterial . When you're done with these just the destroy method in your class. For me it looks something like this:

Hope this helps.

Interparla 2008

I haven’t been blogging for the past weeks because beside my regular Job I have been working with Patricia Gouveia on a flash interactive installation. This work (game) is based on the “The prisoner’s Dilemma”, it have 3 different distinct levels (maze, form, fight) and stimulate the users to act on a cooperative behavior mediated by two joysticks and a projection. It’s a fast game and required some skills.

The work is going to be show in Interparla 2008, which is a festival in Parla (Madrid) between January and February. This festival is going to combine a group of artists, musicians, cinema and companies from the digital area. This year the festival received Portugal as the guest country. In this context, installation came up, the game "The prisoner’s Dilemma" is based on the co-operation between opponents.

Dreaming in Flash Art

If you want to link to us for some reason, we now have this fancy logos you can use.

It is our intent that anyone be able to use these images to represent dreaminginflash.com in a positive light so enjoy and let the world see them, if that is your wish.