haXe Tutorial

This tutorial is for anyone who has heard about haXe, but never had the time to figure out how to set it up. If you guys show a lot of interest in learning more about haXe, I’ll put together a few more tutorials on some of the features, but as of right now I have no idea what kind of interest is out there:

Watch the Intro to haXe Video Tutorial

Click to view the video in a pop-up. Right-click and “save as” to download the video to your hard drive.

*note – I tried “fast forwarding” through the download/install portions, but the camtasia “clip speed” couldn’t accurately fast forward only the parts I selected.

AS3 Signals Tutorial

AS3 Signals is an awesome open-source project created by Robert Penner that will make you re-think the way you approach events in all of your future projects. I put together this video tutorial (mostly to force myself to learn it) and I’ve been REALLY impressed with it so far. Go ahead and give it a watch:

Watch the Intro to AS3 Signals Video Tutorial

Click to view the video in a pop-up. Right-click and “save as” to download the video to your hard drive.

For more info on AS3 Signals, check out http://wiki.github.com/robertpenner/as3-signals/ and join the google group.

Download the swc: as3-signals.swc

*note – I just realized that I said, “it’s really, really easy and it’s also really simple” during the video. That’s really just a testament to how easy it is

*second note – thanks for all the votes on video resolution preferences. I’ll be sticking with 1024×768 from here on out.

TweenMax – Tweening a timeline (Advanced Tweening)

It’s been a really busy week doing a lot of interactive motion work, so no time to work on my Theme Designer, but here’s a little trick I picked up this past week from Jack. Tweening a timeline allows you to create multiple tweens and then apply one ease to the whole group. Neat trick, eh?

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49

package  
{
    import com.greensock.TimelineMax;
    import com.greensock.TweenMax;
    import com.greensock.easing.Linear;
    import com.greensock.easing.Quart;
 
    import flash.display.Sprite;
 
    /**
     * @author John Lindquist
     */
    [SWF(width="900", height="480", frameRate="31")]
    public class EasingATimeline extends Sprite 
    {
        private var square:Sprite;
        private static const STEP_DURATION:Number = 1;
 
        public function EasingATimeline()
        {
            square = new Sprite();	
            square.graphics.beginFill(0xcc0000);
            square.graphics.drawRect(0, 0, 50, 50);
            square.graphics.endFill();
 
            square.x = 100;
            square.y = 50;
 
            addChild(square);
 
            //set all the eases of your steps to Linear.easeNone
            var step1:TweenMax = TweenMax.to(square, STEP_DURATION, {x: 700, y: 50, ease: Linear.easeNone});
            var step2:TweenMax = TweenMax.to(square, STEP_DURATION, {x: 700, y: 350, ease: Linear.easeNone});
            var step3:TweenMax = TweenMax.to(square, STEP_DURATION, {x: 100, y: 350, ease: Linear.easeNone});
            var step4:TweenMax = TweenMax.to(square, STEP_DURATION, {x: 100, y: 50, ease: Linear.easeNone});
 
            var timeline:TimelineMax = new TimelineMax();
            timeline.append(step1);
            timeline.append(step2);
            timeline.append(step3);
            timeline.append(step4);
            //pause your timeline
            timeline.pause();
 
            //tween your timeline with whatever ease you want
            TweenMax.to(timeline, timeline.totalDuration, {currentTime: timeline.totalDuration, ease: Quart.easeInOut, repeat: -1});
        }
    }
}

Tags: tweenmax

Robotlegs + Flight + Union Platform

So, I was distracted from finishing my FDT theme generator by a discussion on the Robotlegs mailing list suggesting the possibility of merging Robotlegs with Flight. It sounded like an interesting challenge, so the above chat room is my initial attempt at it. Go ahead and click the “Connect” button to try it out!

The full source code is here:
http://github.com/johnlindquist/flight-demos/tree/master/FlightAndRobotLegsUnion/ (if you’re not familiar with git, there’s a download button on that page which will download all the source. It’s an FDT project, so you’ll have to fiddle with it a bit to get it set up in whatever environment you’re using)

I’m considering making a beast of a tutorial (probably around a half hour) explaining how this all links together, but I have to finish my FDT Theme generator first!

Huge thanks to the Union Platform for providing the test chat service that doesn’t require an API key!