Bitwise Magazine

Adventures in ActionScript - part two

Connecting up the Rooms

Wednesday 11 March 2009

This series explains how to use ActionScript - the language behind Adobe’s Flash graphics and Flex framework - to program an adventure game. In part one, I created a simple ‘map’ which was an ‘associative array’ (a ‘hash’ or ‘dictionary’ of key-value pairs) containing user-defined Room objects. Each room had ‘exits’ which took the form of strings (each string being the name of an ‘adjoining’ room). This string was used as a key into the ‘map’ to locate a room with the matching name.

In principle, I might just as easily have used a simple array or rooms indexed from 0 to 9 (say) to represent a map of ten rooms). Each ‘exit' could then have been an integer - so if the North exit were 1 that would mean it leads into the room at index 1 in the array. Using string keys instead of integers made the map a bit more easily readable but, essentially, moving from one location to another still required me to obtain a value (e.g. the string at exit N) and then use that value to ‘look up' a room. In short, whether you use a simple array or an associative array as your ‘map', it is really nothing more than a ‘lookup list'. It does not really and truly represent a multi-connected ‘map-like' structure since the rooms themselves aren't really and (...)

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Adobe Flash CS4 Professional Bible

Book Review

Monday 9 March 2009

Adobe Flash CS4 Professional Bible
$49.99 / £33.99
Robert Reinhardt, Snow Dowd
Wiley
ISBN: 978-0-470-37918-9
1224 pages

When a book calls itself a ‘Bible' you can bet it's going to be a pretty big one. The ‘Adobe Flash CS4 Professional Bible' is certainly that: it contains around 1,200 pages and there is not much in the way of padding. Moreover, it is fairly sparsely illustrated and the font is quite small. As a result, you get a heck of a lot of words for your money! I have to be honest and admit to the fact that I find the sheer size of this book quite intimidating. The idea of starting at page one and diligently reading my way through to page 1,135 (which is where the Index begins) is a non-starter. Thankfully, this is not a book that demands to be read in sequence. It is more a pick'n'mix book - one that you can dip into when you need information or a tutorial on a specific subject. (...)

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Adventures in ActionScript - part one

Learn ActionScript and Flex the fun way!

Saturday 28 February 2009

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the acme of the programmer’s art is the Text Adventure! Well, ok, so maybe not universally acknowledged but, anyhow, in my highly biased view, writing a text based adventure game is not only a considerable programming challenge but, as an added bonus it’s a heck of a lot of fun...

Prelude To An Adventure A text adventure was the first really big project I undertook when I was learning to program, way back in a far distant time known as the 1980s. One week I was writing “Hello world” the next week I was exploring a deserted city containing an uncooperative wombat, a gigantic termite that wobbled menacingly at me as I tried (and failed) to enter a forbidden courtyard and, naturally, the obligatory Nameless Horror. And thus it was that I discovered the noble art of adventure game writing. My game (‘The Golden Wombat Of Destiny') was written in Turbo Pascal. The quality of mu coding was, I am pretty certain, pretty poor when I started writing that game. By the time I'd finished it (about a year later) it was a good deal better. Even to this day, (...)

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Teach Yourself Visually Adobe Flash CS4 Professional

Book Review

Saturday 21 February 2009

Teach Yourself Visually Adobe Flash CS4 Professional
$29.99 / £19.99
Keith Butters
Wiley
ISBN: 978-0-470-34474-3
368 pages

This is a beautiful book. No, really! It looks just great. Most books about computer software are black and white and filled with dull-looking text. This book is full colour and most pages have more space taken up by pictures than by words. As a result, not only is it a pleasure to look at but it is also easy to dip into. You can just flip to the section you are interested in and follow the step-by-step guides. Each section is copiously illustrated with annotated screenshots which explain how to accomplish a variety of Flash design and development tasks use Adobe's Flash IDE. But while it looks nice, is it actually useful? I guess that all depends on what sort of information you need. If you are an experienced Flash user this is not the book for you. It is principally aimed at (...)

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Creating Visual Experience With Flex 3.0

Book Review

Sunday 15 February 2009

Creating Visual Experience With Flex 3.0
$54.99 / £35.99
by Andy McIntosh and Juan Sanchez
Addison-Wesley: http://informit.com/aw
Computer Bookshops: http://www.compman.co.uk/
399 pages
ISBN: 0321545370
ISBN13: 9780321545374

Adobe's Flex development framework has the potential for creating highly visual web or desktop applications with a Flash graphics user interface. But while you could create interfaces with the standard Flex components using all the defaults, that would barely scratch the surface of the graphical possibilities. In ‘Creating Visual Experience With Flex 3.0', Andy McIntosh and Juan Sanchez explain how to add some pizzazz to your applications with styles, skins, filters, blends, effects and transitions. The book starts off with a quick run-through of some Flex fundamentals such as the various types of auto-layout options to position controls inside containers. It then moves on to explain how to a change the appearance of controls using both ‘inline' styles and external style (...)

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Camtasia Studio 6 Review

Screen recording software

Tuesday 3 February 2009

$299 ($149 upgrade), Free Trial available
TechSmith
http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia/

Camtasia Studio 6 is the latest version of TechSmith's well-known screen recording and editing tool. The previous version was so fully featured that I, for one, would have had a tough time thinking of any more features left to add. The developers at TechSmith, however, managed to think of a few. I decided to see what they'd come up with... Here I am recording a marked area of the screen. The unrecorded area is automatically ‘dimmed' by Camtasia. The Recorder tool at the bottom of the screen lets you start or stop recording and preview any video (recorded via a webcam) if that option is selected. Some of the new features in Camtasia might be described as ‘keeping up with the times'. An obvious example is the move away from the Flash FLA format in favour of the MPEG-4 (...)

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Ruby In Steel Developer 1.4

Just released

Monday 26 January 2009

If you program Ruby or Ruby On Rails...

You may want to take a look at the latest and greatest release of my company's Ruby/Rails IDE for Visual Studio. Ruby In Steel Developer 1.4, for your programming pleasure http://www.sapphiresteel.com/Ruby-In-Steel-Developer-1-4

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Grotesque Censorship or Creative Editing?

What gets lost in Translation?

Saturday 24 January 2009

I read lots of novels, many of which are translations from other languages. I am perfectly happy with the idea that the translator may substantially change the literal meanings of words in order to recreate the ‘flavour’ of the original text in a different language. I am less happy with the idea that chunks of the original text are silently removed in the translation.

In fact, to be truthful, I didn't even realise that it was common practice to remove text from novels in the process of translation. I was alerted to this possibility when I read some readers' reviews of the book ‘Grotesque' by the Japanese writer, Natsuo Kirino, on Amazon. I had previously read another novel, ‘Out', by the same author and had enjoyed it greatly and was therefore looking forward to reading this one. However, some of the Amazon comments on ‘Grotesque' warned that the text has been “censored” and that the ending had been altered. After a bit of Googling I found lots of comments elsewhere on the Internet complaining of the same thing. Even the book's entry in Wikipedia asserts that “Publisher Knopf censored the American translation, (...)

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Rails For .NET Developers

Book Review

Monday 19 January 2009

Rails For .NET Developers $34.95 / £24.99
By Jeff Cohen, Brian Eng
Pragmatic Bookshelf
Pages: 277
ISBN 10: 1-934356-20-4
ISBN 13: 9781934356203

Learning a new language can be tough enough but learning a new framework can be even tougher. So while some .NET developers may be tempted to try out Ruby On Rails, learning both a new language, Ruby, and a new framework, Rails, may prove to be a daunting prospect. For some people, the sheer unfamiliarity of everything may prove to be an insurmountable barrier. Now Jeff Cohen and Brian Eng's book comes to the rescue. The book assumes a readership familiar with Microsoft languages and technologies and it quickly explains the fundamental differences between these and Ruby On Rails. It starts with a quick 'hands on' session to give users a flavour of Rails development and then moves on to look at features such as the MVC (Model, View, Controller) methodology, unit testing and the nitty (...)

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Adobe Flex In Visual Studio - latest news

Amethyst Beta 2

Friday 16 January 2009

Just a quick note to let you know that my company, SapphireSteel Software, has just released beta 2 of our new Adobe Flex IDE for Visual Studio.

This version adds IntelliSense including class, member, event and object completion for both the ActionScript programming language and MXML formatting code. Anyway, here's a screenshot: If you are interested, you can read more (and download the beta) over on the SapphireSteel Blog.

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Jing - Free Screen Capture Tool

From the makers of Camtasia

Sunday 11 January 2009

Jing (free)
TechSmith
http://www.jingproject.com

If you want to save screenshots or movies from your computer screen, TechSmith’s free new tool, Jing, could be just the job. It lets you record either static images or animations grabbed direct from your PC. These can either be saved to disk or uploaded to TechSmith’s online storage site, screencast.com (the Jing installer includes a ‘quick subscribe’ dialog to let you set up an account with screencast.com).

Above, Jing in action. The Jing editing environment (framed) lets you annotate screen captures and save them to disk or upload them. This screengrab of Jing was, incidentally, done using Jing itself! Jing docks a little animated ‘control centre', like a small yellow bubble, at the top of the screen (TechSmith fancifully refers to this as a ‘sun'). When you are ready to make a capture, you click the bubble and three little ‘arms' pop out - if you click the left arm you can make a capture, if you click the middle arm you can view your capture ‘history' (a thumbnail library of previous captures) and if you click the right arm, a big round yellow ‘options' bubble pops up (Jing is clearly far too cool to have old-fashioned square dialog boxes!). Grabbing a (...)

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The ActionScript 3.0 Quick Reference Guide

Book Review

Thursday 8 January 2009

The ActionScript 3.0 Quick Reference Guide
$34.99 / £24.99
by David Stiller, Rich Shupe, Jen deHaan, Darren Richardson
O’Reilly: http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596517359/
Computer Bookshops: http://www.compman.co.uk/
491 pages
ISBN 10: 0-596-51735-1
ISBN 13: 9780596517359

Doorstopper programming tomes are all very well in moderation. But I have to say that I am generally favourably disposed towards books that deal with their subject briefly and without waffle. So O'Reilly's ‘ActionScript 3.0 Quick Reference Guide' (which is about the size of a P. D. James novel) looks like just my kind of book. As its title indicates, the ActionScript 3.0 Quick Reference Guide deals exclusively with version 3.0 of ActionScript, which is the object oriented programming language at the heart of Flex and Flash development. However, it has special help for programmers (and artists) who have previous experience of the much simpler (not object oriented) versions (1 and 2) of ActionScript. In fact, the general emphasis of the book is on helping people who are having (...)

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AdvancED Flex 3

Book Review

Wednesday 7 January 2009

AdvancED Flex 3
$54.99 / £38.99
by Elad Elrom, Jack Herrington, Joshua Mostafa, Shashank Tiwari
Friends Of ED: http://www.friendsofed.com/book.html?isbn=1430210273
Computer Bookshops: http://www.compman.co.uk/
640 pages
ISBN-10: 1-4302-1027-3
ISBN-13: 978-1-4302-1027-6

Out of a slew of new books devoted to Adobe's Flex development framework, ‘AdvancED Flex 3' is one that really caught my eye. The plain truth of the matter is that many Flex books cover the same ground: namely, the fundamentals of developing Flex applications using ActionScript and Flash, with (as often as not) a short tutorial on Adobe's Flex Builder IDE as an added bonus. This book from Friends of ED explores further afield. It starts on the assumption that the reader will already have mastered the basics and will now be ready to explore some of the more esoteric corners of the Flex framework. The chapter headings will give you a good idea of the topics covered: PART ONE: HARNESSING THE POWER OF FLEX 3 Chapter 1 Leveraging Architectural and Design Patterns Chapter 2 (...)

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Visual Studio Flex IDE - Amethyst Developments

Beta 2 due soon

Tuesday 6 January 2009

As regular readers will know, my ‘day job’ (when not writing for Bitwise) is developing Visual Studio IDEs for Ruby On Rails and Adobe Flex.

My company, SapphireSteel Software, announced our new Flex IDE, ‘Amethyst', about a month ago when we released the first beta. This beta concentrates on editing and project management functionality. Shortly, we will released beta 2 which will add IntelliSense ‘code completion'. In a few weeks we will release a version that includes a debugger. All of these features will be in our free IDE, ‘Amethyst Personal Edition' (PE), which will even run (optionally) inside a free version of Visual Studio (the ‘VS Shell'), making the entire IDE completely free to end users. We are also developing a commercial edition, ‘Amethyst Professional', which will have a more powerful debugger, more complete IntelliSense and (crucially) a drag-and-drop visual design (...)

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Dreamweaver CS4 review

Relatively minor upgrade, but still the best web editor

Sunday 28 December 2008

Dreamweaver CS4 review (from $399/ upgrade: $199)
Adobe
http://www.adobe.com/products/dreamweaver/

There comes a point in a software product’s life when users may, on the whole, be pretty satisfied with the existing features and there really is no compelling reason to update.

In my view, Dreamweaver hit that point maybe two versions ago. The last release, CS3, introduced a few neat tools (most of which I've never used) and the latest version, CS4, adds a few more tools and smoothes off a few rough edges. But, even so, I have to say that I really wasn't champing at the bit for another upgrade and, in the couple of months since I began using CS4, I really haven't made much use of its new features. These features include a ‘live view' which sort of ‘activates' the page in the editor by ‘turning on' CSS styling and JavaScript effects. This displays an approximation of the way the page will appear in the browser (this will generally be more satisfactory with static HTML pagers and less so with dynamic pages generated by, for example, PHP or (...)

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Wikipedia Censorship Removed (kind of)

But what else is censored in Britain...?

Wednesday 10 December 2008

I note that the British Internet censors, the Internet Watch Foundation, have reversed their decision to block access to a Wikipedia article as reported here on the blog a couple of days ago.

Initially they banned a page about an album by heavy metal band, The Scorpions, on the basis that an album cover that was produced back in the ‘70s was a "potentially illegal child sexual abuse image". Following much adverse publicity relating to this decision, the Foundation has now decided to unblock access to Wikipedia on the grounds that "in light of the length of time the image has existed and its wide availability, the decision has been taken to remove this webpage from our list." This strikes me as a feeble and cowardly decision. If they sincerely believe that the image represents “potentially illegal child sexual abuse”, in what way does its age and availability alter that fact? If these are sufficient criteria, they will no doubt welcome all widely (...)

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Amethyst, Adobe Flex IDE beta released today

Amethyst PE (beta 1) for programming Flex in Visual Studio released today.

Monday 8 December 2008

As I mentioned a few days ago, my company, SapphireSteel Software, is working on a new IDE called ‘Amethyst’ for developing Adobe Flex and AIR applications right inside Microsoft Visual Studio. Adobe Flex is a framework for programming web browser and (via the AIR runtime) desktop applications using the ActionScript language. Typically, the user interfaces of Flex and AIR applications are rendered using Flash graphics.

The version of Amethyst which we have released today is primarily an editing environment for ActionScript and MXML (a type of XML that defines the layout of a user interface). It has code colouring (more than 70 individual coloured elements), automatic and customizable code formatting, bracket matching, undo/redo, auto-commenting and uncommenting of marked blocks and more besides. It is fully integrated into Visual Studio 2008 and can even be used with a free version of Visual Studio. Amethyst PE (Personal Edition) is free and will remain free. Later betas will add extra features including debugging and code completion. Next year we will launch Amethyst Professional. This will have many high-end features including a drag-and-drop visual designer. See the Amethyst PE announcment for (...)

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Wikipedia Censored in the UK

If Wikipedia is blocked to us, what else is, I wonder...?

Monday 8 December 2008

China is often criticised in the UK for restricting the access of its citizens to selected areas of the Internet. Even some pages on the esteemed BBC web site are blocked in China.

Here in the UK, of course, we have full, unfettered access to the Internet. After all, we value and uphold freedom of expression and that includes the freedom of British citizens to have the same access to the internet as the people of France, Germany, Italy, Australia and America. Or, at least, so I had assumed... Today I discovered that this assumption is incorrect. There exists something called The Internet Watch Foundation whose task it is to “see the end of websites that profit by selling images of child sex abuse”. This sounds like a laudable enterprise to which nobody could seriously object. However, this Foundation has now decided that Wikipedia falls within this definition. As far as I am aware, Wikipedia certainly does not make a profit by selling images of (...)

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Free Adobe Flex IDE For Visual Studio

Enter Amethyst

Monday 1 December 2008

My company, SapphireSteel Software, has just announced a new Visual Studio IDE, Amethyst, for developing Adobe Flex and AIR applications.

Go To Amethyst Announcement We'll be releasing the first public beta of Amethyst Personal next week. This is free now and will remain free after the launch of the final product. If you haven't got a copy of Visual Studio, you can even use our All-In-One installer to install a free copy of the Visual Studio ‘Shell' edition. The first beta of Amethyst Personal provides syntax coloured editing and code collapsing for ActionScript and MXML. It has project management in the Visual Studio Solution Explorer and it will compile and launch Flex and AIR applications. You can use Amethyst on its own, or you can create mixed language Solutions with Amethyst projects alongside C#, VB or Ruby In Steel projects. You could even install a free copy of Ruby In Steel Personal Edition to give (...)

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Alien Skin Lens Plug-in - coming soon

Friday 21 November 2008

Alien Skin will be launching a new lens simulation plug-in for Photoshop - just in time for Christmas!

I've just got some advance news of the new Alien Skin ‘Bokeh' Lens Simulation Plug-in. No, I didn't know what Bokeh meant either. I am told that it is the Japanese word for ‘blur'.... Anyway, The Bokeh plug-in is said to do accurate lens simulation to manipulate focus and depth of field in a photograph. For example, it will let you select the subject in Photoshop and then blur the background to give the impression that the shot was taken with a lower f-stop. Alien Skin claims to have performed experiments with various professional quality camera lenses to ensure that they mimic the depth-of-field effects accurately. Alien Skin will announce Bokeh on the 1st of December. You can read a bit more about it here: (...)

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