Maze Generator Source Released
posted by Paul at 4:29 pm on January 5th, 2009 in ActionScript, GIT, Programming, Source Code
I had quite a few people ask me via email and a few people in the comments to release the code for the maze generator: well I’m doing that. Its really not much but it includes a class to integrate it into B. Korsmit’s A* library. There’s also some items in the docs/TODO file if you’re interested in doing some additions to it (I would like that very much). Note that this code only generates the maze structure and does not do any of the drawing in the example I’ve posted previously.
Anyhow, if you’re a GIT user you can clone the repository from git://github.com/paulcoyle/mazegenerator.git or you can visit the github project page and download a ZIP or a tarball from there.
Update: It looks like githib doesn’t want to make ZIP archives of the repository so here is one I made of the HEAD revision.
Looking forward to your comments!
Fallout Inspired CRT Simulating Pixel Bender Shader
posted by Paul at 11:28 am on November 12th, 2008 in Flash, Pixel Bender, Programming, Source Code
I’ve been having a lot of fun playing with Pixel Bender and came up with a shader that mimics a CRT television display that is somewhat inspired by the displays in Fallout. Below is a sample of it in action (requires Flash Player 10 and a webcam). I couldn’t find a very good quality TV image so that’s why it looks so nasty. Mac users may need to play with the settings to select the correct input for the webcam (right click and select “Settings…”).
For those without, here’s how it looks:
Developing for Flash Media Interactive Server 3 under OS X and Ubuntu using Virtualization
posted by Paul at 10:09 pm on October 4th, 2008 in ActionScript, Flash, Programming
If you weren’t yet aware, FMS3 is a terribly awesome (and expensive) server that does all sorts of great stuff like streaming video, recording video, remote shared objects and basically does a great job of making a multi-user server very easy to create. Currently, we’re preparing for a project that is going to use some of these features so I’ve had to dive in recently. The first thing any OS X developer will notice is that you can’t install FMS3 on OS X. This is a bit of a pain because, for all intents and purposes, OS X’s underlying system more than likely could support the server. However, we’re not dealing with an open source product here so we’ll have to deal with this fact. So our host options are Windows and Linux which makes the decision very easy. (more…)
AS3 Trick: Wrap an XML Node’s Content in CDATA
posted by Paul at 3:50 pm on September 10th, 2008 in ActionScript, Programming
This is very simple but I think its worth sharing since it is a bit of a shortcoming for E4X. Currently, I’m finishing up writing this small editor for a part of a page flipping content management system. Part of its role is to expose a method to JavaScript so that the web based portion of the editor can poll the flash for data that represents it’s current state. We’re doing this with XML but I hit a snag when I wanted one of our node’s contends to be wrapped in a <![CDATA[]]>.
It seems to me that this can’t be done with E4X. I know some people don’t “like” using CDATA but when you’re dealing with textual data entered by a human you can’t expect any of it to be clean so the CDATA wrapper is vital. In any event, the way to do it is a bit of a hack but it works well. Here’s my simple work-around:
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var unclean:String = 'Some very unsanitary ><content!><';
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var xml:XML = <rootnode>
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<needs_cdata />
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</rootnode>;
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xml.replace('needs_cdata',
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'<needs_cdata><![CDATA[' + unclean + ']]></needs_cdata>');
If you know of a better way please let me know!
LHASA (Layout Handler for ActionScript Applications) Gets an Update
posted by Paul at 11:03 am on August 16th, 2008 in ActionScript, Flash, Programming, Source Code
Back in May I released a very rudimentary library that I built to handle layout operations in ActionScript named LHASA. Since then, I’ve been improving and adding to it when I can. I use this library for a lot of my personal and professional projects. Recently, I discovered on an archived forum post that there was a known problem with Flash’s Event.RENDER event. This made perfect sense since I had always had some problems with some elements not always updating when several updates were required.
I just posted a new revision that fixes this and moves all of the update triggering on to the old, faithful, Event.ENTER_FRAME. So far, from all my tests, this seems to make everything work much better. I only wish I had approached the problems I was having from this angle before. The updated version of LHASA is being used in a forthcoming rebuild of the magazine engine (example) I made for Parcom. Would love to hear from anyone who might be using LHASA.
Moving Branches with Bazaar
posted by Paul at 10:41 pm on August 4th, 2008 in Bazaar, Version Control
A few months ago I started using Bazaar for all my personal and commercial projects. I moved a bunch of repositories over from Subversion either by means of a conversion plugin or, if I didn’t need the history, just a direct export.
Bazzar is really flexible. So much so that its a bit difficult to know how to approach some simple tasks. One that I’ve grappled with a few times is moving an existing branch to a new repository while keeping the history.
I tried using reconfigure and switch but both always created a total mess for me. The best way I’ve found to do this is to simply push your branch to the new location. Simple, I know, but it was not exactly the first thing that came to my mind (perhaps because I’m not so smart).
My existing repository and branch:
/local/project
The destination structure (trunk is the branch):
/remote/project/trunk
All that it takes is a simple
bzr push /remote/project/trunk
then a
bzr co /remote/project/trunk /local/project_trunk
to get a fresh checkout with all the right settings.
Would love to know if there’s a better way as there always seems to be.
Random Find: Marion Bolognesi
posted by Paul at 10:56 am on July 31st, 2008 in Art
I stumbled on to the site of Marion Bolognesi recently that had a really nice series of water colours and figured they were certainly worth sharing. There are some other examples of her work but her “eye series” is her best work by far.
Wisp Effect Source Code Released
posted by Paul at 2:16 pm on July 25th, 2008 in ActionScript, Flash, Programming, Source Code
So I cleaned up and packaged the source for the wisp effect - lucky you, it’s free (as in speech) software. Also included is a sample document class that is exactly what you see below illustrating the most of the useful parameters (but please experiment with the WispConfig class for interesting behaviours).
The effect is, of course, far from perfect and if anyone out there has improvements to it I’d love to hear about them and possibly incorporate into future releases. Also, if you use this on any personal or commercial projects I’d love to see it in action!
Click anywhere to stop the wisps from auto generating and continue clicking to generate random wisps where you like.
Blind flickring: Judith Supine
posted by Paul at 11:29 am on July 24th, 2008 in Art, Graffiti
Sometimes I go to sites like flickr or Google Images and just enter random search to see what pops up. Sometimes you are rewarded, other times you are punished by images you never, ever, wanted to see but are now burned into your mind to torture you for the rest of your life (eg. goatse).
Today, a search for “supine”1 on flickr rewarded me with some of the best streetpasting I’ve ever seen by someone known as Judith Supine. A lot of Supine’s work exploits the revitalized trend of fluorescent colours from the early 1990s but I really don’t mind. Most of the skin is replaced by a totally obnoxious fluorescent green which kind of makes it looks like some alien relative of Rick Astley is peering through a window out at you.
1 supine : adj : failing to act or protest as a result of moral weakness or indolence.
Wisp Effect
posted by Paul at 4:25 pm on July 23rd, 2008 in ActionScript, Flash, Programming
I built an effect a while back for use in a personal project that looks like glowing “wisps” of light. The effect ended up being used in a campaign for Travel Alberta but I digress. The code here compiles to a paltry 2.8kb so its light on space but can be a bit heavy computationally if you abuse it. Here’s what the effect looks like. I’ll be packaging it up and releasing it under the MIT license in the coming weeks.
Click anywhere on to spawn a new random wisp.