Flash camp on the beach (Rimini)

The new Flash camp will be in Italy, Rimini, and will take place on 5th of September. Participation is free!

Order your ticket via eventbrite.
The meeting will take place at Hotel Sporting Viale Vespucci, 20 47900 Rimini (Italy).
Speakers
As a camp everybody can join us as a speaker, today we have a great group of speakers already confirmed:
  • Jaco Pixeldump (www.pixeldump.org)
  • John Lindquist (http://pv3d.org, http://flex4.org)
  • Joost Nuijten
  • Eros Marcon (actionscript.it)
  • Simon Slooten (www.simonslooten.com)
  • Matteo Lanzi (aka Gallo_Teo flex-developers.org)
  • Adam Flater
  • Michael Labriola (http://blogs.digitalprimates.net/codeSlinger/)
  • Rich Tretola (http://blog.everythingflex.com)
  • Gabriele Farina (www.sephiroth.it)
  • Alessandro Crugnola (www.sephiroth.it)
  • Michael Plank (www.powerflasher.de)
  • Rich Tretola
  • Matt Chotin
  • Giorgio Natili (flex-developers.org)
Agenda
What’s New in Flex 4 (Matt Chotin) 9:00 – 9:45
Most of us have heard that the Flash Platform tools are getting a major upgrade with Flex 4.  We’ll give a high-level overview of what’s coming in the three major components: Flash Catalyst, Flash Builder, and the Flex Framework.
Concepting Rich Internet Applications (Joost Nuijten) 9:50 – 10:35
The pitfall of Flex applications is to thrown in a bunch of buttons of fields, the Flex skin looks nice, and the say: “There we have another Rich Internet Application”. To my opinion it is much more than that. It’s about creating the ultimate user experience by mixing interaction design, emotion and common sense.
“One key element of a good ergonomic web application, or at least a sign that it works ergonomically, is that you want to stay there — like a big old comfortable chair that wraps you up and you just don’t want to leave it, ever… (well, at least, maybe, for a little while more…)”
(SyMetric Sciences, Inc., 1999)
Flex 4 in 3D: The UI of the Future is Now! (John Lindquist) 10:40 – 11:25
Ok, the title might be a bit over-the-top, but the new 3D features of Flash Player 10 do allow us to pull off some pretty cool tricks. This session will cover step-by-step how to take advantage of the the 3D api. We’ll start by creating our own custom and reusable 3D layouts and work our way to creating 3D components. Once we’ve brought everything together into a full 3D application, we’ll end with a  discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of using 3D in user interfaces.
TESTING WITH FLEX AND FLASH BUILDER (Michael Labriola) 11:30 – 12:15
Unit testing in Flex is taking a giant leap forward. First learn about the latest technologies, their integration into the Flex developers workflow and the promises offered by these advancements. Then learn how to write tests using these new methods, how those tests can be used effectively and the theory behind their use. Finally, learn about the extension points and how numerous testing projects can now converge to offer solutions now and into the future of Flex.
FDT – Pure Coding Comfort (Michael Plank) 12:20 – 13:00
You want to improve your ActionScript/Flex development workflow and boost your programming
efficiency? Michael demonstrates how the coding flow completely changes with FDT by using
features like Quick Fixes and Auto Completion. FDT is an Eclipse based IDE for ActionScript
and MXML development that provides pure coding comfort.
Not only professionals prefer working with FDT, the tool is also appropriate for beginners
because of supporting features like e. g. live error highlighting. A short speed coding example
on stage illustrates how fast the coding workflow can be with FDT.
Mate – The beauty of a simple framework (Simon Slooten) 13:30 – 14:15
Mate is a Flex framework that is simple, elegant, scalable and simply beautiful. In this session you will get an introduction to Mate, as well as look at a Flex Application that uses Mate
ByteArray:  extend your swf apps with extra features (Marco Fusetti aka Jaco) 14:20 – 15:05
ByteArray is a great flash player feature that let you load/treat/save binary data.
Let’s look into some techniques and examples on adding features such swf black box, sound data, external swf inspection and more.
Using Merapi (Adam Flater) 15:10 – 15:55
An introduction to native hardware and software integration in Flash
Flex sdk (Matteo Lanzi aka Gallo Teo) 16:00 – 16:45
How to patch it to solve common architectural problems and improve performance
Flash Catalyst/Flash Builder 4 ˆ Designer/developer Workflow (Eros Marcon) 16:50 – 17:35
How to design and optimize an artwork for FC, importing design in FC, adding interaction, working with states and transitions, wiring FC interactive UI with real data in Flash Builder 4
Extending flash applications (Alessandro Crugnola aka Septhiroth and Gabriele Farina) 17:40 – 18:25
A quick walkthrough from static plugins to dynamic scripting
Java, Flex and Model View Presenter (Giorgio Natili) 18:30 – 19:05
Flex loves Java applications that expose API deployed under Blaze DS, follow us in a complete tour that shows the process to define good API for a Flex / Air application that follow Model View Presenter design pattern and get the key points of GUI Architectures for responsive applications.
Flex image uploading and manipulation via Pixel Bender (Rich Tretola) 19:10 – 19:40
Flash Player 10 introduced some new features including the ability to write a file to the users file system as well as the usage of Pixel Bender filters. In this session you will see how to upload an image within a Flex application,  filter the image with a Pixel Bender filter, and then use the JPEGEncoder class to encode the filter image to a ByteArray.

Win a 3D Flash Gallery!

This is a great opportunity for all the readers! Thanks for flashloaded we’re giving 3 free licenses of 3D Wall Pro ($199/each).

To win the prize is very simple, just leave a comment to this post with at least “I want the license” text besides any other comment and after 12 days we will select randomly 3 winners! ( remember to leave your email in the comment )

What is 3D Wall?

The 3D Wall is a papervision powered component to isplays images on an engaging interactive 3D wall. This PRO version can also display FLV videos and SWF’s and more..

Some of the key features of the 3D Wall are:

  • Flat or curved wall
  • Customizable animations
  • Glow and reflections
  • Double sided thumbnails
  • Complete customizable properties (rows, columns, preloader…)
  • Complete interaction (keyboard or mouse)
  • Use of external xml configuration file
  • A Flash component inspector
  • Images, flv and swfs
  • Customizable video controls
  • Youtube, flickr images
  • Watermarks

Here’s a couple of screenshots:

See more screenshots at the 3D Wall page

REMEMBER: Winners will be selected randomly from commenters 10 days later (31 October 2008) and will be contacted directly via email.

Contest is over!

Today (1st November 2008) the contest is over! After running this mysql query to find out 3 random commenters:
SELECT * FROM mt_comment WHERE comment_entry_id = 268 order by RAND() LIMIT 3
we got the three winners who are: (5170) moon, (5135) Pieter and (5176) tm!

genereAvventura finally in english!

Finally the italian guys at genereavventura.com finished the game translation into english! (see my previous post for the game presentation).
And if you ever played at “Day of the Tentacle” or some of the other old fashioned adventure game you must try it!

It must be really a great effort, in fact it took 6 months!
Play the english game: http://www.genereavventura.com

This is their official communication:
genereAvventura: The terrific menace of the Invaders from Audiogalaxy is out!

Having spent more than 3 years dedicating our free time to make this game, we proudly present version 1.0, which you can play directly on our website www.genereAvventura.com , now in English too!

General description

The terrific menace of the Invaders from Audiogalaxy (TTM, to name it briefly) is a project which has the purpose of achieving a game in Flash, playable directly via the web, and absolutely free.
It is supposed to have, above all, a complexity and longevity like those relatively early Adventure games that named this genre.
The authors, who loved, and still love, this type of game, wanted to pay homage to those masterpieces, by creating an original and independent story.
Anyway – throughout the game – it refers several times to all those games that had inspired it.

After a first period break, due to some members’ personal problems and because of the complexity of creating such a game, our team came back into action, re-thinking the purposes and the specifications of the game; for example the first things we had to eliminate was the possibility of solving some parts of the game without noticing it; in genereAvventura everything had to have a cause and a consequence.

The story

Turin 2010.
How original: an alien spaceship is approaching Earth.
A beam fired from this interstellar craft hits the home of an unassuming boy, abducting him and his computer.
Onboard the spaceship he awakens trapped within a strange sealed transparent cell, destined to unravel the terrific menace before him.
To stop the invading aliens and their musical evil plan (to enslave all humanity of course) our young hero will have to undertake an adventure through time, visiting musical legends in Turin, London, and even the legendary Woodstock!

Technical Part

TTM doesn’t rewrite history.
Visually, the game is similar to the strange and schizophrenic style of “Day of the Tentacle”, without overdoing distortions and perspective styles.
It has a vivid and saturated colouring, with different settings and styles.
The drawing style of the characters is variable, from light caricature to lacking in any anatomical sense.
It is supposed to be similar to some of the classics of this genre And to be easily recognizable.
Every personage has his or her own different character, sometimes hilarious, sometimes ironic.
People who have played “point and click” games will find the gaming methods and interfaces natural and usable.

It’s a charming experience!
Start surfing the website: you will discover this adventure, and will make you relive old pleasures.
Continue with the game: it will be familiar to those who played graphic adventures in the Nineties.
Come back to the site: there will be forums and exclusive downloads for you!

Come and try it! And let us know what you think about it!
www.genereAvventura.com

Flash CS3 announced (Euro prices too high?)

Finally Flash CS3 it’s here!
A lot of features have been included.. probably there are many reasons to upgrade, as they say:

Reasons to upgrade

– Adobe Photoshop® and Illustrator® import
– Animation conversion to ActionScript™
– Adobe interface
– ActionScript 3.0 development
– Advanced debugger
– Adobe Device Central CS3

– BUT –

I really cant understand why the US upgrade is $ 199 (this is what I currently read on the store), while in Euro it will be € 298 (which is $396).
So if I buy Flash CS3 upgrade in Euro, I will pay the double price than american people!
Bad, bad thing!!

Genere Avventura

The terrific menace of the invaders from the audiogalaxy!

Some italian guys finally released the first version of their adventure game, after 3 years working on it during their free time. I still remember when IlTimido (one of the authors) has shown to me an early beta of the game. I was impressed by the quality of the graphic and the musics.
The game graphics are similar to the famous “Day of the Tentacle”, the navigation is completely mouse based (click and move, click and take…) and there are a lot of citations during the game. (the game is written in flash and you can play it for free from the web)

Go and play the game!
http://www.genereavventura.com

Flash Professional 8 FLVPlayback 1.0.1 Component Update

This update provides fixes for problems related to SMIL support in the initial release of the FLVPlayback component. It also addresses some issues related to streaming from the Flash Media Server and Flash Video Streaming Service (FVSS) partners as well as some minor issues related to using custom UI controls. Anyone working with the FLVPlayback components should apply this update. Installation instructions are included with the download in the Readme file.

Download available here

Xray updated

John Grden just posted on osflash mailing list about an update of his xray connector.
This new version (1.5.5) includes these changes:
– New Grid Line creator – add grid lines at any x/y coordinate in any timeline when working with coordinate conversions
– New Edit tool – scale, rotate and move any clip on stage at runtime with a similar edit tool you’d find in the flash IDE
There’s also a video tutorial which explains these changes
Another update is the new swf interface made with Flex2 (requires Flash player 9): http://labs.blitzagency.com/…/Xray.html
Download the mxp file here:
http://mirror1.cvsdude.com/…/xray_conn_1.5.5.mxp
Download the connector only packages here:
http://mirror1.cvsdude.com/trac/…/xray_connector_only.zip
An example on how to use the connector package inside your .as:

import com.blitzagency.xray.util.*
...
private function loadXray():Void{
XrayLoader.addEventListener(XrayLoader.LOADCOMPLETE, this, "xrayLoadComplete");
XrayLoader.addEventListener(XrayLoader.LOADERROR, this, "xrayLoadError");
XrayLoader.loadConnector("xrayConnector_1.5.5.swf");
}
private function xrayLoadComplete():Void{
start(AllTests);
}
private function xrayLoadError():Void{
trace("an error occured loading the Xray connector");
}