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it’s easy once you know how.

Fixed: AIR update framework broken!

Posted by James - 29/01/10 at 10:01:30 pm

Arrgh! All of a sudden the AIR Update Framework stops working.  No explanation, no errors; nothing. Where you’d expect to see your update notification popping up, you get a window just like the one above – no content, just the default Flex blue background colour.

The problem is actually a pretty specific one, but it’s not going to fix itself.  Using the Flex 3.5 SDK and the AIR Update Framework together causes this issue – obviously some part of the Flex SDK has changed between Flex 3.4 and 3.5, and no-one tested the framework before releasing it!  The issue is fixed in Flex 4 and doesn’t occur in anything other than the 3.5 SDK – so upgrading / downgrading is one solution; or…

Hack a solution:

Continue reading Fixed: AIR update framework broken!…

Link: Working with SQLite in AIR, with the help of ORM

Posted by James - 28/01/10 at 09:01:12 am

If you don’t know what ORM is read the next paragraph, and it might help.  If you do, skip to the links below to learn a little more about how you can make ORM work with AIR and SQLite.

ORM stands for Object Relational Mapping, in basic terms the concept of representing your tables-based data as more familiar objects and classes. Not a big concept after all, it’s one that I’ve been using already in my AIR applications – albeit unwittingly and manually.  FlexORM is a project to assist and standardise this process, so it’s worth knowing about and trying out.

Read more about ORM:

http://www.adobe.com/newsletters/edge/october2009/articles/article7/index.html

http://www.adobe.com/newsletters/edge/december2009/articles/article7/index.html

Webcam Face detection demo: Now with source!

Posted by James - 22/01/10 at 09:01:43 am

So a little while ago, Halloween in fact, I threw together a demo of some face-detection stuff I’d been looking at. [Check out the original post here.]  We originally had the demo on the MMT Digital homepage, but recently that’s been updated and my demo got lost in the process, so I’ve restored it here, along with the Flex project for it.

Continue reading Webcam Face detection demo: Now with source!…

Link: Computer mind control with ActionScript 3.0

Posted by James - 20/01/10 at 09:01:32 am

This is a very cool experiment – using a socket in AS3 to interface with Brain Computer Interface (BCI) hardware. Check it out at this url: http://seantheflexguy.com/blog/2009/12/30/neurosky-mindset-brain-computer-interface-actionscript-3-0-api/

Demo & Source: Simple Box2D, with curved edges!

Posted by James - 14/01/10 at 12:01:35 am

 

(The image above this text is actually the Flash movie, if you hadn’t guessed.  Try using your mouse to interact.  If it’s blank, then something’s gone wrong!)

I’ve been busy working on my Box2D classes again. (As before here and here.)  I’m not quite ready to go through the code with some tutorials yet, but you can download the source for this demo here.  This version has had a bit more of a proper code cleanup – I’ve un-hacked some hacks I did earlier in development, and added a few more utility functions, but most importantly this version supports SWF library asset importing of multiple shapes, and shapes with curved edges (which it couldn’t do previously).

I feel like I should put that in bold or something, because it’s probably my most-clever bit of code to date.  I’m going to settle for saying it twice though: You can import library objects with multiple shapes, and shapes with curved and straight edges.  Have a look at the screenshot below and compare it with the Box2D display;

In Flash IDE:

In Box2D:

You can download the source for this demo here.

I’m going to get this as a project on some publicly-available source repository soon.  I’d love to hear feedback on it now though!

Link: Flex AutoComplete component

Posted by James - 11/01/10 at 03:01:20 pm

If you’re ever looking for an autocompletion component in the Flex framework, I’d strongly suggest you check this one out: http://hillelcoren.com/flex-autocomplete/ Quite simply it’s awesome, it’s fully featured and packs a helluva lot of options into such a small package.

I swapped an old ComoBox component for it just now, and it worked fantastically with no additional configuration.

Check out the demo for it here: http://web.me.com/hillelcoren/Site/Demo.html

Simple Box2D – Custom Polygon creation.

Posted by James - 11/01/10 at 09:01:33 am

I’ve been working on some classes to simplify Box2D for Actionscript developers (See previous post for a quick intro).  The latest update to these classes introduces couple of minor ideas, and one gosh-darned awesome idea, if I do say so myself.  Let’s start with the awesome things, and move on from there…

Awesome thing: Creating Custom Polygons

Or rather the methods for creating them.  Shapes in Box2D come in three basic flavours – circle, rectangle and custom polygon.  Moreover, everything must be convex (no inny bits), have no more than 8 sides, and can’t have holes.  On the plus side you can still make larger, more complex objects out of smaller ones – but it all involves a lot of thinking.

So, here’s the solution – or rather, the options.

Polygon creation option #1 – Creating a polygon from an array of points.

Using some clever triangulation code from Splashdust.net, there’s a simple method for creating any custom shape from an array of Point objects.  With this method you can create a shape with any number of sides, and not worry about whether the shape is concave or convex.  It’ll still break if the edges of your shape interest each other, and doesn’t support holes in the objects you’re creating, but it’s a start.

var array:Array = [ new Point( 0, 0 ), new Point( 10, 0 ), new Point( 10, 10 ), new Point( 20, 10 ), new Point( 20, 0 ), new Point( 30, 0 ), new Point( 30, 30 ), new Point( 0, 30 ) ];

world.createComplexPolygon( 50, 50, array );

Polygon creation option #2 – Creating a polygon from a shape in a library.

This is where things get cool.  Creating a shape from a series of points is all well and good, but it’s a laborious process to set up and modify.  You can create a shape in the Flash IDE, add your symbol to your library and import it to Box2D.  Currently this method only supports single shapes on a single layer, and only straight edges – but multiple shapes, layers and curved edges are definitely on the list for the future.

world.createPolyFromLibraryShape( 300, 100, "sampleShape", "vectorassets.swf" );

Continue reading Simple Box2D – Custom Polygon creation….