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!

RobotLegs Hello World Video Tutorial

Hey everyone. Long time, no see. I’ve just been super busy leading a team of flash guys on a big project which has left very little time for experiments and playing with code. Anyway, hopefully I’ll get back into my routine and get a few posts out a week again.

This post comes courtesy of Joel Hooks offering a free t-shirt to anyone who made a RobotLegs Screencast. I’m a sucker for geek apparel, so here’s what I made:

Watch the RobotLegs Hello World 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 RobotLegs, check out www.robotlegs.org and join the google group.

Also, the IDE I’m using in this demo is FDT. If this demo doesn’t convince you to check out FDT, I don’t know what will

10 Things Every Senior Flash Developer Should Know

I’ve interviewed quite a few Flash/Flex developers as potential employees for Roundarch. The hard part for me is knowing exactly what questions to ask to be able to gauge a Flash dev’s skill level.

So, I made a list. From my experience this list allows me to judge the skill level and experience of the devs I interview.

If you’re not quite “Senior” level yet, read through the list and study up from the links. If this stuff is “old hat” to you, please critique this list add more references in the comments.

1.      The Elastic Racetrack
You need to understand when events fire, when code is executed, and when the player renders. It’s really the foundational concept of Flash Player.
http://www.craftymind.com/2008/04/18/updated-elastic-racetrack-for-flash-9-and-avm2/
 
2.      FlexSDK, mxmlc, compc, and all that jazz
You need to know what’s going on when you hit that “run” button in Eclipse.
http://www.senocular.com/flash/tutorials/as3withmxmlc/
http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/html/help.html?content=apparch_08.html
 
3.      Player Events, Custom Events, Event Bubbling
I can’t imagine where flash player would be without frames and mouse clicks.
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/actionscript/articles/event_handling_as3_03.html
http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/langref/flash/events/package-detail.html
http://www.tink.ws/blog/custom-events-in-as-30-dont-forget-to-override-the-clone-method/
http://jacwright.com/blog/70/how-to-listen-to-flash-events-that-dont-bubble/
 
4.      Statements, Keywords, and Directives
You should never be surprised by a new “word” in as3. If you don’t know what “static” or “override” or others are, learn them.
http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/2/langref/statements.html
 
5.      ASDoc
Someday, you’ll re-read your code and have no idea what it does. The stress here is on proper documenting, but generating asdocs is nice too.
http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/html/help.html?content=asdoc_3.html
 
6.      Managing visual assets (images, fonts, CSS, etc)
Flash is visual. So you need to know how to manage assets with code.
http://www.gskinner.com/talks/flexlovesflash/
http://code.google.com/p/queueloader-as3/
http://code.google.com/p/bulk-loader/
 
7.      Arrays, Collections, Dictionaries, Mapping
You’re not just working with one MovieClip here, so you need to know how to control multiple objects at once.
http://livedocs.adobe.com/flash/9.0/ActionScriptLangRefV3/Array.html
http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2006/07/as3_dictionary.html
http://code.google.com/p/as3ds/
 
8.      Programmatic motion (tweening, easing)
If you wanted things to stay still, you should’ve stuck with HTML
http://blog.greensock.com/tweenmaxas3/
http://www.amazon.com/Foundation-Actionscript-3-0-Animation-Making/dp/1590597915/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1243014431&sr=8-1
 
9.      OOP and Coding Against Frameworks
The days of a one huge .as file are over. You need to smartly move your code into organized and reusable objects. Also, now there are plenty of popular as3 frameworks to help manage your code. Read up on them and start using one.
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/actionscript/articles/oop_as3.html
http://www.actionscript.org/resources/articles/684/1/Object-Oriented-Programming-in-AS3/Page1.html
 
10.  Version control
Unless you think your code is worthless, you need to learn how to back it up properly.
http://tortoisesvn.net/downloads
http://versionsapp.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revision_control
http://git-scm.com/
http://www.nongnu.org/cvs/

Peer-to-Peer in Flash Player 10 by Danny Patterson

Danny Patterson presented on the new Flash Player 10 Peer-to-Peer capabilities at my last uFlash meeting. I recorded the meeting, so I thought I might as well share it here.

Enjoy: https://admin.na3.acrobat.com/_a204547676/p85387367/

It’s almost an hour long, so grab some popcorn.