A day with Colin Mook!

Flash extrordinaire, ActionScript expert Colin Mook was here in Blore on 29th for an intensive full day of free ActionScript 3.0 training.

This one-day event covers the fundamental skills for AS3. Topics covered include object-oriented programming, classes, objects, event handling, etc.,

He also gave a quick sneek peek on AS 4.0.

Though the topics looks preliminary, it gave a nice insight on coding practices, style and MVC model.

Personally i felt the training like I am goin thru his book. :)
I wish he could come again for similar full fledged training on advanced concepts in AS 3.0 and if possible on new features in AS4.0 :)





Thats me n ma friends with Collin to get his autograph :)

Alternativa 3D

Here is another 3d engine for AS, just had a quick glance on this and it seems to be a real 3d world out there. Lots of 3d s/w options right here inside this engine.
materials, lights, cameras etc.,

The demos out there on Alternativa 3D is simply awesome...the frame rate in which the scenes are getting rendered..OMG! the dev's out there have done a great job indeed! Kudos to you guys!

In this week itself I've read 3-4 articles about various 3d engines available in action script..where is this Action Script going? Its been a huge make over happening in this scripting world.

ok you just check out this engine right here

TweenMax

Here is the new set of Tween classes for Action Script 2 & 3, called TweenMax.

TweenMax builds on top of the TweenLite core class and its big brother, TweenFilterLite, to round out the tweening family with popular (though not essential) features like bezier tweening, pause/resume capabilities, easier sequencing, hex color tweening, and more. TweenMax uses the same easy-to-learn syntax as its siblings. In fact, since it extends them, TweenMax can do anything TweenLite and/or TweenFilterLite can do, plus more. So why build 3 classes instead of one? Good question. The goal was to maximize efficiency and minimize file size. Frankly, TweenLite is probably all most developers will need for 90% of their projects, and it only takes up 3k. It's extremely efficient and compact considering its features. But if you need to tween filters or rich imaging effects like saturation, contrast, hue, colorization, etc., step up to TweenFilterLite at 6k (total). Still need more? No problem - snag TweenMax to add extra features jam-packed into 8k (total). See below for a chart describing the differences between the classes. TweenMax introduces an innovative feature called "bezierThrough" that allows you to define points through which you want the bezier curve to travel (instead of normal control points that simply attract the curve). Or use regular bezier curves - whichever you prefer.

To know more on this, reg. the performance, feature comparison and usage check here

CAPTCHA now gotcha!

CAPTCHA! wondering wats this is?

The abbreviation is for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart
now u got that? nope!? ok let me put this way..

These are the texts (distorted texts like symbols n mixed cases) which needs to be typed in when a user wants to sign in to an account, idea is to ensure that the datas are coming in from a human and not from a malicious bot.

Now a security firm is reporting that the CAPTCHA used for Windows Live Mail, Gmail can be cracked in as little as 60 seconds. OMG! gone in 60 seconds thats so fast n furious!!

wanna know more on this? check this article

FFilmation

Following my Particle systems note i am glad to write about another amazing open source in AS3 (Action Script 3) to create a 3d world.



FFilmation Engine is an AS3 isometric programing engine, focused mainly on game development.

Here’s a list of highlited features mentioned in the FFilmation site:

1. One engine capable of handling several isometric scenes of different complexities.
2. Create scenes from human-readable XML definitions, allowing easy edition of the scene’s topology and contents
3. Graphic media can be split into several external resources and loaded when an scene needs them
4. Flat textures. Paint your grahics directly into flash. Walls, floors and celings are edited as 2D graphics and projected by the engine. Elements and animated characters can be animated via flash timeline, no need for complex programming.
5. Dynamic lighting, global lighting, real-time shadow projection. Multiple lights from multiple sources affecting the same objects.
6. Bump-mapped surfaces. Still somehow buggy and a serious performance killer, but already there.
7. An extendable material interface. MovieClip materials, autotiled materials, procedural materials.
8. Automatic zSorting of all surfaces and objects
9. Built-in collision detection. No need to program complex coordinate comparisions, simple listen to COLLISION events generated by the engine.
10. Basic AI API helpers such as “is character A visible from character B’s position ?”

So we've a 3d World filled with particle systems, wow! what a color full scene?
I cant stop creating a world for me with these...

Flint Particle Systems

Earlier days when I was learning 3ds Max, my favorite sfx creation was with Particle Systems. Later on I moved on to Flash development and did went back to 3ds Max.

But now I've a good news that I can create a similar particle sfx with Action Script! wow :) It all can be done by a open source called "Flint".

Flint is an open-source project to create a versatile particle system in Actionscript 3. The aim is to create a system that handles the common functionality for all particle systems, has methods for common particle behaviour, and lets developers extend it easily with their own custom behaviours without needing to touch the core code.

Flint is developed by Big Room ventures Ltd. and is released under the MIT open source licence.


isnt it sounds cool, wanna try your hand? go ahead!! "Spray" ur swf :)

Google Analytics + Flash

I found an interesting article in one of the blogs and thought of sharing it in my circle of life....especially the Flash coders.

Its all about how to use Google Analytics to track your button clicks and report to you what buttons users clicked on your swf content to get to what sections of the file.

Sounds interesting and useful? then chk the article here.

Adobe RIA Summit 2008

Yesterday from 9 A.M - 6 P.M I had a real good (technical) time listening to speakers on RIA | AIR | Flex.

It was very informative sessions.

Here is an outline on what happened in the summit...
* RIA - Past, Present and Future
* RIA Platform Roadmap
* Architecting Flex applications
* Wiring it all up - How to connect your flex application to backends
* "Hall of Fame" - Customer Success Stories, Products and Solution demos, Meet the Flex team
* RIA Best Practices
* "Getting the ACT together" - The role of Academia, Community & Training in the Flex ecosystem
* AIRkitectur - A technical session on Adobe Integrated Runtime

Speakers:
* Dr. Naresh Gupta, M.D. Adobe Systems India * David Wadhwani, VP, Platform BU, Adobe Systems Inc.
* Ben Forta, Director - Evangelism, Adobe Systems Inc.
* James Ward, Platform Evangelist, Adobe Systems Inc.
* Sunil Bannur, Flex Architect, Adobe Systems Inc.
* Raghunath Rao, Technical Evangelist, Adobe Systems Inc

Thanks to Mrinal to get the videos of the summit. Check the videos here

Ben Forta and James Ward's session was simply awesome!!!