Flying away… holidays!!

Before leaving for my holidays i just want to make a quick post about the recent SE|PY additions…

1. Quick search bar

sepy quick search

The new “quick search” bar at the bottom. Thanks to Eric Dolecki who suggested me a more usable and fast to use “search” control (thanks also to Eric new icons suggestions!)
I use Mozilla Firefox from more than one year, i love the way it has implemented the find bar, and I never thought at using it in SEPY? yes.. that’s true 🙂

2. Right border enhancement

This is directly taken from an Eclipse feature i like a lot.
For every bookmarked line or line with a “TODO” comment you will have in the right side of each document a small clickable rectangle, with different colors, which show you the absolute position of that line in the document.
When you move the mouse over that rect you will see a tooltip telling you the content of the line and click on it for move to that line.
Nothing particular, but I found it really useful.
It’s now possible to customize the words SEPY is looking for (not only “todo”, but what you want)
Moreover, with the last addition of a sqlite database once you open a document for the second time you will see all the previous bookmarked lines, and the cursor will be placed in the same position you previously closed the document.

MTASC compile

Last addition is the mtasc compile dialog.
Using this dialog window you can compile yuor script in SEPY using the mtasc compiler and see in the same dialog a preview of the created SWF.
BTW, I will leave for my holidays on Monday (destination Tallinn, Estonia).
See ya again by the end of August.. and great holidays to you all!!
http://sourceforge.net/

New Flash Player security rules

Erica Norton of the Flash Player Team wrote an interesting post in the flashcoders list about the upcoming changes in the Flash 8 security restrictions.
I’m copying here parts of that post:
(cut)
In Flash Player 8, the rules are:

  • local with file system content may only communicate with other local content
  • local with networking content may only communicate with remote content
  • trusted content may communicate with both local and remote content

(cut)
The first 2 types will be publishable. For those that do not upgrade their Authoring tool, we will be providing a command line utility to convert SWFs to local with networking SWFs (and vice versa).
There will be 2 mechanisms for trusting content.
The first, many of you have seen: the Settings Manager. The second method is in the form of .cfg files placed in a specific location for the Flash Player to read.
This will enable distributors of local content, via an installer for example, to install a .cfg file to the appropriate location, thereby trusting the content. One could also provide an updater to an already distributed bit of content in order to trust those documents this way.
Please note, that one may trust a directory, which trusts all content recursively below that directory.
(cut)
There will also be an API available in ActionScript in order to detect which of the 4 sandbox types that the SWF is (remote or local: local with file system, local with networking, trusted) so that in ActionScript you can do one thing or another.

http://chattyfig.figleaf.com/pipermail/flashcoders/2005-July/145237.html

1st Flash Lite Game Contest!

The community Actionscript.it MMUG, cooperating with Sephiroth.it, is organizing the 1st Flash Lite Games contest, a contest for all those who want to develop a mobile game. All the contestants must present a game made for Flash Lite 1.1, respecting the necessary qualifications described in the regulation.
The prizes are:

  1. A Studio Mx 2004
  2. A Nokia 6630
  3. A Nokia 6600

For the official announcement and the contest rules follow this link:
http://www.actionscript.it/fl_contest/regolamento_en.htm

Flade, opensource 2D physic engine

Today Davide shows to me this link to a new opensource project regarding Flash.
It’s a “free library for simulating 2D physics in Flash using Verlet integration. It currently features particles, stick & angular constraints, wheels, and surfaces composed of line segments. Designed primarily for games with a goal of speed and ease of use”
I immediately downloaded the available “alpha” release and made a first test..

[attachments docid=646 fields=caption,description force_saveas=”1″ logged_users=”0″]

I don’t know if the project is still alive and which is the developement status, but it looks very promising.
…And here the code used for the example above:

var psystem = new ParticleSystem();
psystem.setDamping(1.0);
psystem.setGravity(0.0, 0.4);
// cooefficient of restitution
psystem.setKfr(0.1);
// surface friction for particles
psystem.setFriction(0.5);
// surfaces
var sA = new Surface(new Point(0, 0), new Point(1, 200));
sA.setIsOrientH(false);
psystem.addSurface(sA);
var s0 = new Surface(new Point(1, 200), new Point(100, 200));
psystem.addSurface(s0);
var s2 = new Surface(new Point(220, 170), new Point(300, 200));
psystem.addSurface(s2);
var s3 = new Surface(new Point(300, 200), new Point(400, 150));
psystem.addSurface(s3);
var sB = new Surface(new Point(399, 150), new Point(399, 0));
sB.setIsOrientH(false);
psystem.addSurface(sB);
// circle surface
var circA = new CircleSurface(170, 220, 70);
psystem.addSurface(circA);
var leftX  = 10;
var rightX = 50
var widthX = rightX - leftX;
var midX   = leftX + (widthX / 2);
var topY = 160;
// wheels
var wheelA = psystem.addWheel(leftX, topY, 10);
var wheelB = psystem.addWheel(rightX, topY, 10);
wheelA.coeffSlip = 0.0;
wheelB.coeffSlip = 0.0;
// body
var rectA = psystem.addRectangle(new Vector(midX, topY), widthX, 10);
// wheel struts
var conn1 = psystem.addConstraint(wheelA.wp, rectA.p3);
conn1.setRestLength(5);
var conn2 = psystem.addConstraint(wheelB.wp, rectA.p2);
conn2.setRestLength(5);
var conn1a = psystem.addConstraint(wheelA.wp, rectA.p0);
conn1a.setRestLength(5);
var conn2a = psystem.addConstraint(wheelB.wp, rectA.p1);
conn2a.setRestLength(5);
psystem.paintSurfaces();
this.onEnterFrame = function() {
var keySpeed = 2.0;
if(Key.isDown(Key.LEFT)) {
wheelA.rp.vs = -keySpeed;
wheelB.rp.vs = -keySpeed;
} else if(Key.isDown(Key.RIGHT)) {
wheelA.rp.vs = keySpeed;
wheelB.rp.vs = keySpeed;
} else {
wheelA.rp.vs = 0;
wheelB.rp.vs = 0;
}
if (Key.isDown(Key.UP)) {
if (ang.targetTheta < 2.9) ang.targetTheta += .1;
} else {
if (ang.targetTheta > angDefault) ang.targetTheta -= .1;
}
psystem.timeStep();
psystem.paintWheels();
psystem.paintConstraints();
}

Flash Player 8 Public Beta

Released the Flash Player 8 public beta.
It’s a pre-release version of “the next major release of Flash Player. It is being made available for developers and consumers to test their content to ensure existing content plays back correctly and that there are no compatibility issues.
As usual there’s also the bug reporting form:
http://www.macromedia.com/go/fp_public_beta_feedback

http://www.macromedia.com/../public_beta

SEPY for OSX 10.4

SEPY ActionScript Editor running on TigerWorking on my new mac mini I finally managed to get sepy run for OSX (actually i made an installer for OSX 10.4).
I have fix the major platform related bugs, there are still some issues (such as mainmenu disappearing sometimes, import/export features), but on my first test it seems quite stable. Download it from sourceforge here: http://sourceforge.net/…&release_id=340616

I’ve also put a new testing Windows version here: http://sourceforge.net/project/…&release_id=340550

AMFPHP 1.0 milestone 2 alpha

Today Patrick released a new milestone of amfphp: Chnages in this alpha release:

  • Added new methodTable option (per method) “fastArray” => true|false for fast array serializing on return (will only make a difference for large multidimensional nested voodoo arrays)
  • Added new method Headers::getHeader($key) available from all services, also HeadersFilter.php added
  • Added FrontBase support
  • Added Pear::db support
  • Added CSV-based recordsets support
  • Renamed sql folder to adapters to fit with the CSV recordsets
  • Various bugfixes for PHP4 MethodTable class
  • Major overhaul of service browser, should work much better now
  • New actionscript template system for service browser, see browser/templates/ for examples
  • Added new return type binary that will write the value as a string but without charsetHandling
  • Added new return type raw that will write to the output stream directly (careful)
  • SSL with ie hopefully works now

Some new methods included recently, which you can use in the gateway.php file (for production env): – disableStandalonePlayer() Disables the standalone player by filtering out its User-Agent string – disableServiceDescription() Disable service description from Macromedia’s service browser – disableTrace() Disables remote tracing – disableDebug() Stops debug info from being sent (independant of remote trace setting)

amfphp project page