Recent posts by BenjaminSantiago on Kongregate

Topic: Game Programming / as3 weird visual anomalies

yeah, I’m assuming most people reading this know, but just in case you can set the quality low via as3, so fixing it is not annoying.

stage.quality = StageQuality.LOW; //<— assuming you imported flash.display.stageQuality

Topic: Game Programming / as3 weird visual anomalies

(plus I need to add some new features to make it a little more useful or visually dynamic).

Topic: Game Programming / as3 weird visual anomalies

Originally posted by truefire:

I didn’t read anyone said, I just scrolled through this thread looking at the pictures. WHAT THE HECK IS THIS?

lol I tend to get these kinds of reactions when my art is in programming related forums. It’s album art.

ninefivethree I will probably try what you say in a near future version, I have it working decent enough at the momemnt
as seen here

Topic: Game Programming / as3 weird visual anomalies

thanks man if there’s anymore insight as to why it is happening from anyone it would be cool, but this is enough to keep going for now.

Hype actually has this cool thing where it will “upscale” your imagery for print quality output (this is probably not as big a deal with vector drawings as I’m almost certain Joshua Davis uses exclusively the drawing tools within flash), but I’m not scaling anything past 100% so in that respect I’m fine. I bring this up because the only time you really notice the low quality is when you rotate stuff, but with the upscaled output it looks fine to me even up super close in photoshop.

Thanks! I’ll send you a message or something when it is all done.

Topic: Game Programming / as3 weird visual anomalies

hmmm, it looks like for if even 2 or 3 are overlapping it starts to get weird (each object has 4 layers…but that’s still like 12). Stumbled on the fact that setting the image quality (ie view→quality) seems to get rid of some of it….
here’s high:

here’s low:

Topic: Game Programming / as3 weird visual anomalies

lulz. yeah I’m hoping it is something dumb…I want to go back to making cool things…

Topic: Game Programming / as3 weird visual anomalies

hey ace_blue I’ll take a look at what you recommend. But I tried some stuff. Saving .PNG’s NOT using the “save for web” dialog in photoshop, turning off colors once again and scaling and everything again. I’ve narrowed it down to something with overlapping images. As they get closer it looks like it gets worse, not sure if it needs to be the same image or is just some kind of alpha channel problem.

Is it okay to just embed .PNG’s in flashdevelop? Is there a better way to do it for images with an alpha channel?

anyway here are the images.

Topic: Game Programming / as3 weird visual anomalies

(I just thought it might be embedding the images statically, but no dice there either…)

Topic: Game Programming / as3 weird visual anomalies

sorry images mess up:
anomaly example 1

anomaly example 2

Topic: Game Programming / as3 weird visual anomalies

Hey! (accidentally posted this in the API forum…trying this again)
I’m doing an as3 app in FlashDevelop and it basically involves putting a lot of images somewhat randomly on the screen. Let me first show you the visual anomalies I am talking about (circled in red) and then I’ll explain what I’m doing

I put this last one together by outputting a bunch of images with smaller amounts and putting them together in photoshop but this is the ideal saturation I’d like to get to without weirdness.

I seem to start seeing them when I put more than 20/30 objects on the screen. I am using the Hype framework from Joshua Davis, as it seems to greatly speed up working on this kind of stuff and I want to use more of its features.

The images are drawings I made. Each is split up into four parts (outline, and 3 layers that can be a different color). I embed the images (ie [Embed(source…) and then use their bitmapData in a BitmapFill with the graphics api in a new sprite for each layer. ie in a class like this for each image:

[Embed(source="../../bin/img/fuel_05_b_00.png")]
		private var img_01_00:Class;
		
		[Embed(source="../../bin/img/fuel_05_b_01.png")]
		private var img_01_01:Class;
		
		[Embed(source="../../bin/img/fuel_05_b_02.png")]
		private var img_01_02:Class;
		
		[Embed(source="../../bin/img/fuel_05_b_03.png")]
		private var img_01_03:Class;
		
		private var img_01:Sprite = new Sprite();
		private var img_02:Sprite = new Sprite();
		private var img_03:Sprite = new Sprite();
		private var img_04:Sprite = new Sprite();
		private var sub_00:Bitmap = new img_01_00();
		private var sub_01:Bitmap = new img_01_01();
		private var sub_02:Bitmap = new img_01_02();
		private var sub_03:Bitmap = new img_01_03();
		
		public function severed_hand_b() 
		{	
			addChild(img_01);
			addChild(img_02);
			addChild(img_03); 
			addChild(img_04);
			
			img_01.graphics.beginBitmapFill(sub_01.bitmapData, new Matrix(1, 0, 0, 1, -sub_00.width/2, -sub_00.height/2), false, true);
			img_01.graphics.drawRect(-sub_00.width/2, -sub_00.height/2, sub_00.width*2, sub_00.height*2);
			img_01.graphics.endFill();
			
			img_02.graphics.beginBitmapFill(sub_02.bitmapData, new Matrix(1, 0, 0, 1, -sub_00.width/2, -sub_00.height/2), false, true);
			img_02.graphics.drawRect(-sub_00.width/2, -sub_00.height/2, sub_00.width*2, sub_00.height*2);
			img_02.graphics.endFill();
			
			img_03.graphics.beginBitmapFill(sub_03.bitmapData, new Matrix(1, 0, 0, 1, -sub_00.width/2, -sub_00.height/2), false, true);
			img_03.graphics.drawRect(-sub_00.width/2, -sub_00.height/2, sub_00.width*2, sub_00.height*2);
			img_03.graphics.endFill();
			
			img_04.graphics.beginBitmapFill(sub_00.bitmapData, new Matrix(1, 0, 0, 1, -sub_00.width/2, -sub_00.height/2), false, true);
			img_04.graphics.drawRect(-sub_00.width/2, -sub_00.height/2, sub_00.width*2, sub_00.height*2);
			img_04.graphics.endFill();			
		}		

I’ve tried without coloring the images (hype has a function that basically randomly colors the images using a colorTransform), without any rotation or scaling (they are quite big as these are meant for print) and I can only track it down to the amount of images. It doesn’t look like discrete boundary boxes from the weird “shardy” shapes I’m getting which is the most perplexing part. I’m guessing this is also flash/something I’m doing wrong because Joshua Davis is known for quite complex and layered imagery…I’m getting a possibly related error when I try to build the app sometimes…it will fail and say that there was a Java Heap Error, when I close and reopen the program it works fine.

Any and all help/suggestions appreciated!

Topic: Game Programming / Big sprite sheets/as3 animation?

when it comes down to size, both on disk and in memory: vector takes up a fraction of the space raster does.

Do you mean making the drawings in Flash (I’m drawing with a wacom in Photoshop. The drawing tools in Flash seem to be inconsistent for me if I zoom in/out)? I was going to do this with FlashDevelop…is there a way to do this with SVG’s or something like that? Or importing a PNG sequence in Flash and then “breaking it apart”? I’m going to end up needing some kind of a batch method just because of time and tediousness. Also this is going to be about 1/5 of the total animation (this character talking being controlled like a puppet then some frame by frame animations like the one above)

Topic: Game Programming / Big sprite sheets/as3 animation?

thanks starfiregold, I appreciate it and kind of figured, but I didn’t really think it through

Topic: Game Programming / Big sprite sheets/as3 animation?

(here is a about 1/4 scale preview which will probably help)

Topic: Game Programming / Big sprite sheets/as3 animation?

Hey just wondering…I’m doing an air app (not a game, an interactive animation basically, but I figure this would be the place to ask) that has to run locally so I imagine it isn’t that big a deal, I’m wondering what is the best way to work with large sprites/images, like 1024 × 768...should I just work with movieclips and give them a timeline or have a huge ass sprite sheet? Obviously the end goal is to have as high a frame rate as possible…The actual animation only needs to display at 20FPS (I am hand drawing stuff so there is a “jiggle” that looks reprehensible above 20FPS to me), however if I could get like 30/40 and “divide” down that would be ideal. Just wondering what you guys might think.

I was going to do this with C++ through openframeworks, but I want to have a window that has no chrome (ie like Photoshop or Flash’s splash screen), but it was taking a lot of effort to do this with the Windows API.

Topic: Game Programming / swf looks different locally versus online

Just wanted to post an update, it had something to do with the loader object not getting to its complete event. But the game was moved to a different server and the problem seemed to magically correct itself.

Topic: Game Programming / swf looks different locally versus online

Hey I’m having a very strange issue with a game I am working for someone and any help would be appreciated. The problem is that the local version (in the flash IDE as well as the autogenerated HTML version in chrome/firefox) looks different than the version on the server. The problem is only with setting the “registration point”(in quotes because the person before me working on it was using this code ) on an image that is loaded remotely from the server. For some reason, on the server, the images that need to be centered is sometimes not centered.
I’ll post code if there’s something specific that you guys think. But do you guys know of any known issues with displaying swf’s locally vs on a server that causes anomalous errors?

Topic: Game Programming / Working for a professional game firm?

It’s hard with Moore’s law and the culture of software as increasingly expensive commodities that makes it hard for teachers to teach this kind of stuff. Why are teachers still teaching visual basic? why not Processing (I bring it up because it is designed for non-programmers, is way not scary looking for n00bs, and it is cross platform, not to mention it is still pretty cool..I’m assuming people on here have opinions about Java) or AS3 with a tool like FlashDevelop that has a vibrant community and is a gateway to cool shit like games, interfaces and (more so for Processing, if you taught it as a gateway to openframeworks or cinder and C++) “legitimate” coding…whatever that means. The reality is because teachers often have to teach to tests and quotas and bullshit especially in highschool, when kids are looking for “red pills” just often can’t find it.

I remember there was a vocational class at my highschool where they taught you how to use programs like photoshop, lightwave, flash (for timeline animation), and aftereffects. I remember how stressed out my teacher was talking about trying to keep the computers performing adequately and keeping up with programming updates.

Sorry to get ranty…but education today (more so for highschools) really bothers me.

Topic: Game Programming / Working for a professional game firm?

the ends justify any means necessary.

Topic: Game Programming / Working for a professional game firm?

Originally posted by GameBuilder15:

GameMaker? How do they make enough money off GameMaker to live?

Topic: Game Programming / Working for a professional game firm?

Originally posted by skyboy:

Originally posted by GameBuilder15:

I think I could program forever on pizza. :P

until you start to hallucinate. once you reach that point, it’s time to go to sleep, or you might react to something that’s not happening.

lol yeah, I used to get to that point. I used to be able to do that shit all the time but I can’t do it anymore. When I stay up for long periods of time it really fucks me up emotionally I get REALLY unnecessarily hard on myself and depressed (if I can’t get this dumbass Tween to work how am I going to make a real game?! etc). I think there have been studies that if you don’t sleep enough, it is akin to being drunk. I doubt it’s true for everyone, but I need at the very least around 6 hours of sleep to be functioning near sane levels.

Topic: Game Programming / Working for a professional game firm?

yeah sorry Draco, my comment was unclear, I meant to say something more along the lines of Thanks draco and staplegun for your insights, but make the hours comment only to staple. Honestly stuff like that is kind of fun to me. Tim Ferriss calls it “eustress” as opposed to “distress”

Topic: Game Programming / Working for a professional game firm?

That sounds cool Staple gun. 40 isn’t that bad, I would think that you would incidentally sign up for more, ie when a game is near completion and that last 1% needs to get in there. Same to Draco as well good to hear what’s really going on in the streets.

Topic: Game Programming / In video game programming, what counts as a "derivative work"?

I’ve tried to ask this in the youtube partner forum, but haven’t been able to get a definitive answer. I figure it may be an issue here if people are earning revenue on their games.

It is basically, what the title says. With video game programming, what counts as a “derivative work” ? Here’s the example that effects me, I made a pong clone in processing as an exercise a while ago and I wanted to post a video about it, and then do the same thing in flash show them side by side. Since pong is SO SIMPLE what really counts as a derivative work? ie I’m not actually making it with TTL logic chips or creating a chip like Al Alcorn. From what I understand Atari and Magnavox settled out of court so I’m not sure what kind of precedents there are with this.

Topic: Game Programming / Working for a professional game firm?

so Draco, did you start working there out of school? ie did you have a portfolio that you had been working on for a while or was it a resume type deal? I’m just curious you can say how ever much you want.

I am working on this game for someone that I came to kind of by chance and now I am the sole person working on the flash part of it, and I have NO IDEA how the guy who was doing stuff before me is a professional (see my “previous post”: http://www.kongregate.com/forums/4-programming/topics/149969-is-this-considered-bad-form-in-as3 ) and figure I should be making more money. I honestly don’t care too much about wearing nice shirts/long hours right now as long as the stuff I was working on was fun or interesting

Topic: Game Programming / Working for a professional game firm?

I was wondering if any of you have worked for professional companies doing actionscript coding or maybe even HTML 5/Javascript if that’s becoming bigger? And what was the experience like? What qualifications did you have in terms of portfolio of games and degrees (ie CS or BFA). Just wondering what the community is like over here, I haven’t been lurking the forum too much yet.