Snippets File for Actionscript 3

I recently discovered the Snipmate plug-in for Vim. It basically lets you “auto-complete” large blocks of code. For instance, you can type “for” then press a key to generate the entire for-loop, or you could type “html” then press a key to generate the entire HTML skeleton. In fact the whole thing is much more clever than that but you have to see it to believe it. Check out a video showing off the plug-in after the fold as well as a custom snippets file targeting Actionscript 3. With this new snippets file you can quickly churn out common code patterns such as for-loops, classes, getters and setters, and much more.

August 19, 2009 | Filed Under Software Development, Tips & Tricks | Comments

Moving fonts between Photoshop and Flash CS4

While working on Adlib I came across a problem importing text from Photoshop. Fonts which looked great in my design were looking awful in Flash CS4. After some investigation I found a workaround which I’d like to share with you. Using my solution you can get pretty close to a 1-to-1 match with Photoshop for dynamic text fields. Check out an example demonstrating the problem and a possible workaround after the fold.

August 10, 2009 | Filed Under Game Development, Tips & Tricks | Comments

Check out Touch My Pixel

A while ago I shared a game named Scary Girl with you. Since then I’ve come across Touch My Pixel’s blog (the producers of the game) a number of times. Each time I come back I find they’ve got a bunch of really great resources for game developers. Oftentimes their posts center around flash, so they’re particularly useful for any of you working in that environment, but I think a lot of their observations are generally useful. Anyway, I thought I’d share them with you as they’ve definitely impressed me!

June 11, 2009 | Filed Under Game Development, Tips & Tricks | Comments

Steering Behavior Performance in Actionscript 3

Since last week I’ve continued working on the steering behaviors to see if I could improve their performance. The initial demo I shared with you was able to run about 40 boids (bird + android cuz it’s flocking and a computer) at once. I’ve since tried a couple micro and macro optimizations to varying degrees of success and thought I’d share them with you. Check out the results, updated source code, and some explanation below.

June 9, 2009 | Filed Under Game Development, Tips & Tricks | Comments