Alex White

3D with the drawing API

I remember when I was but a small lad and my parents took me to the movies to see the latest attempt at 3D film. It was absolutely awful in retrospect, but to my adolescent mind it was an extraordinary experience. I walked out of that cinema in awe and said to my parents, entirely in earnest, “I wish the real world was 3D, too!”

Dynamic Flash: PHP

The world is absolutely chock-full of acronyms, isn’t it? I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that though, as you only need to look as far as Macromedia and their recent decision to move away from version numbers with the launch of the mysterious sounding Flash MX. There’s also HTML, XML, HTTP, and a whole cacophony of other acronyms we’re bombarded by on a daily basis.

Introduction to Events and Handlers

One of the most important changes in Flash MX is the new event handler model. This totally changes the way we are able to code animation and interaction with the keyboard and mouse. You already learned a bit about this earlier in the book, but now we are going to get into them in a bit more depth.

Taking Things Further

In this chapter we’re going to build upon what we’ve looked at so far. The central example here will be another image—viewing interface. We’re going to work on a number of things that will improve what we’ve already built. We’ll look at loading images dynamically and also keep the list of images external to the Flash movie so we can modify the site without reopening the FLA.

Animation and Interactivity with the Drawing API

In the past, using Flash to create graphics at run-time required at least some form of using predefined symbols and manipulating them with code. Sure, you could take a single pixel image in your Library and do some interesting things with it, but you were rather limited in your ability to create useful, dynamic, graphics if you hadn’t drawn them manually beforehand. As an example, one of the first experiments many Flash-users attempt is a drawing program, but all quickly learn that only so much can be accomplished with a 100×100 pixel hairline and duplicated movie clips.

Case Study: SphereCage

In the last two chapters we’ve been learning about using the drawing API to help create run-time 2D and 3D content for our Flash movies. It’s now time we used that knowledge and these new features to actually create some content. In our case, this will be a complete 3D game made exclusively using the drawing API, our ActionScript, and a healthy dose of imagination. Well, I said ‘exclusively’, but that’s only 99% true. One of the terrific advantages of Macromedia Flash MX is that it allows you to quickly and seamlessly bring together your pre-built graphics and code in a user-friendly environment.

Advanced Collision Detection

In the last chapter, we looked at the possible ways in which the user can interact with the objects on the screen. Now we’re going to look at how objects can react to each other through collision detection. A whole chapter on collision detection? Well, we are going to cover a lot of peripheral issues that will enable you to become a collision expert.

Flash Math and Physics

I hope you’re looking forward to working through this chapter as much as I was looking forward to writing it, but I strongly advise you to make sure that you’re up to speed with the stuff we’ve covered in the book so far. We’re going to speed up from here on out. OK, you’ve been warned!

Flash, ColdFusion and Remoting

ColdFusion is another server-side scripting language serving a similar purpose to that of PHP.

Working with external files

Anyone involved in web development will frequently encounter the need to separate the design of a site from its content. Professional web authoring tools such as Dreamweaver use templates to allow designers to create the building blocks of a web site that can be passed on to subject experts to fill in the content.