Recent posts by Nicodemus on Kongregate

Topic: Programming / Workflow: Flash + Flex

Ha! Perfect. Thank you ColbyCheeze. That’s what I was looking for.

And thank you for trying to help too Dazzer, I appreciate it.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Impeachbush.com

Its amazing to me how so many people can drink the koolaid and parrot everything they hear about how terribly evil Bush is. Nothing Bush has done has been “illegal” and certainly not done on his own. Thats why we have the legislative and judiciary branches. Anything that Bush might be “guilty” of (and I use the term loosely) you have to charge the rest of the government with as well. Then again, if we want to start finger pointing, there are plenty of skeletons in the closet for both sides of the aisle.

In any case, this whole “impeach Bush” thing is a waste of time and pretty silly. Hate in politics never gets us anywhere…look at the useless democratic controlled congress right now. Instead of trying to get things done and work for change, they have wasted a lot of time and resources bickering, placing blame, “investigating”, and so forth.

I’m not saying that Bush and the Republicans are without blame and real innocent, but it irritates me to see the same crap being bandied about that simply isn’t true or based on deceit to start with, but is believed wholeheartedly because some people WANT to believe it is true. A good example is the whole Valerie Plame issue…some people still insist that Bush or one of his cronies “outted” her.

Does it hurt that much to think for yourselves and find out the facts?

This thread will probably descend further into a black hole with more misleading statements about how terrible Bush is or was, and a lot of accusations or “proof” will most likely be bandied about as well. Hopefully the smart and rational readers will see this for what it is and ignore it. Time is better spent being constructive. If you don’t like the government, vote in some new people. 2008 is a good year for that.

Go vote. But don’t vote until you understand the issues and you know what each candidate stands for. Certainly don’t vote for someone because that is what someone else tells you to do. Lemmings are stupid.

Topic: Kongregate / The Future of Shockwave Games

It feels pretty good Focus.

It wasn’t my intention to bump an old thread. I didn’t even notice the date of the post when I originally read it. I was trying to find posts on director vs flash and see what people thought. If I am going to try to learn one or the other, I might as well pick up the one that has more momentum and resources behind it, no?

Anyway, if a thread is so old that people think it is “bad form” to comment on it, then it should be archived and not open for replies.

Having said all of that, how will Flash CS3 and AS 3 impact Director in the future. Adobe’s comments notwithstanding, Im beginning to think that Flash is the way to go…

Topic: Programming / Workflow: Flash + Flex

Thank you for replying.

I think I should clarify my last question.

Lets say I open flash and create some movie clips and stick them in the library, as well as some other stuff that I import to library. I now have blahblah.fla that has a lot of nifty assets in the library. I save and close everything and then I fire up Flex Builder 2.

New actionscript file, etc. etc. I’m happily coding along some random application or whatever and I need to grab one of the movieclip assets that I have stored in the blahblah.fla file. Of course, I could just throw down all this actionscript in flash itself, but I’ve decided to use Flex Builder 2 as my main tool for doing all the nifty code stuff.

Here is my inexperience starts to muck up my afternoon. I understand everything in that blog post, but that doesn’t address this particular issue. How do I grab something from the library in a .fla file from Flex? Should I save it as a .swf and load it up? Can I do that straight from the fla? Or is there some other method that is cleaner, easier, and more to the point? The question is how to do this from Flex Builder 2 (or some other tool) instead of directly from within Flash CS3.

Topic: Programming / Workflow: Flash + Flex

Thanks for the response Dazzer, but that really didn’t answer any of my questions.

I think I’m just going to stick with Flex for now since there seems to be a fair amount of books, tutorials, and other resources for Flex specifically.

I’m guessing I just reference the Main.as (or whatever I call it) for the document’s base class when I make a new file in Flash. If I’m correct, I can code away happily in Flex, and then switch over to the Flash CS3 app to mess around with all the artsy stuff.

My next question is dealing with assets. I get making external URL requests to grab a bitmap or something, but what I want to do is put all of my assets in a library in a flash .fla (essentially making them embedded) and then referring to them in the code (via Flex). Any comments on doing this an easy way?

For example, if I have a short movieclip of a robot guy walking, is it sufficient to just have it in the library, or do I have to place it somewhere on the main timeline to make it referencable? I’m guessing I have to load the object and then use addChild to create an instance of it, but as I said, I’m unclear on how to grab something directly from the library via code in Flex (or some other similar app).

Any comments?

Topic: Programming / Workflow: Flash + Flex

Hey guys…

Ok, as I understand it, the choice of using Flash CS3 (or whatever version) or using Flex (Flex2, Flashdevelop, whatever) is mostly a matter of personal preference and background. Designers/artists are more comfortable using Flash, while programmers find that straight actionscript through Flex or something is better.

My background is mostly on the business development, production, management, and technical design side of the fence, and I’m pretty proficient with most of the Adobe creative suite (mediocre artist, but I’ve got skills). While I am more than happy to have artists and programmers working for me on regular projects, I’ve decided I need to learn to program myself and start cranking out some smaller games that I’ve had sitting on the backburner for years.

So here is my quandry…I’m comfortable enough with Flash CS3 to do all of the usual stuff in there, but I feel like the straight actionscript side of things is probably better off being done in Flex2 or Flashdevelop. It seems it would be easier to organize from an OOP standpoint and probably a lot cleaner, especially for more complicated projects.

After reading a couple of books and checking out some of the Lynda.com tutorials (which are awesome for anyone just starting out with flash or actionscript!!), I have a grip on the basics, but I’m getting the feeling that I need to pick “one or the other” approach before starting a new project.

Am I wrong? What is the best way to setup a project, directories, and paths to make it easy to switch back and forth…art and animation in flash, and everything else in Flex?

What are you guys doing for this? Does anyone have any tips for a good workflow approach?

Topic: Collaborations / Need a programmer

20% is generally pretty high actually. Programming is just one part of developing something and everyone wants a piece of the pie…designers, artists, writers, musicians, QA, support, marketing, sales, administration, etc. etc.

20% in this case is more than fair, unless the programmer is doing all of the work past “here is an idea and I’ll get some ad revenue”.

Dealing in percentages isn’t always the best option anyway…I’d rather have 1% of Microsoft than 50% of youtube. Anyway, there are other options to look at for revenue sharing..

When negotiating with someone, you could ask for the first $x generated (for example, you could ask for the first $10,000 generated in revenues) or a tiered percentage…you want 50% of revenues in the first six month, 20% in the following six months, and 5% thereafter. Be creative, there are lots of ways to work out revenue sharing or compensation beyond “I want x%”. Remember also, if you demand too much (and 20% is a lot in some situations, not all), the other person (or people in the event we are talking about a team) will be disincentivized and won’t be very eager to go out and make money that you will be getting a lion’s share of.

Just my two cents : )

Topic: Kongregate / The Future of Shockwave Games

“The one thing that puts Director way ahead of Flash, is 3d—specifically, the Havok 3d engine (the one used in Half Life, I believe) which is packaged with Director and available for your use as a developer.”

Uhm, Havok is a physics engine, not a 3D engine. Half Life was created with the Half Life Engine by Valve. Something like Havok is sort of a subsystem and middleware. Speedtree is another example…it isn’t a standalone engine (client or client/server) but it “plugs into” another engine for a particular use (in this case, doing gorgeous trees and other flora).