From Tom Higgins blog:
The new Flash 8 Asset Xtra will allow developers to incorporate Flash 8 authored SWF files into their Director projects in order to tap into the new Flash player features like the improved Flash video codec and the imaging filter effects. This new Flash 8 Asset Xtra will also expose a new function/sprite method named “convert”, that function converts between Lingo image objects and Flash bitmapdata objects as well as between Lingo linear lists and Flash array values. There are plans to expand the convert() method/funtion over time but for now it’s focused on only a few data types.
Good thing I’m starting to learn a bit of Flash, since it does have a few nifty things that Director doesn’t. Together they make a great tool.
Read the full post for more information.
February 20th, 2006
On the Adobe Director Forums someone posed a question about how to get started with a “virtual pet.” There are different ways to think about such things. As a physics guy I like to think about pets that obey rules of physics. In this example I set up a pet (let’s just say it is a dog) that will wander around on the screen. If you throw a bone (by clicking on the stage) it will head for that bone, but on occasion it will see something else of interest and forget about the bone. It slowly gets hungry, and if you don’t coerce it in to getting to the food bowl bad things will happen.
The behavior has a nifty “chase” algorithm in it. I’ll probably do more with this file in the future to expand upon my pet.
Can you call that a virtual pet?
The code uses a few DirMX 2004 specific features (named sprites), but could quickly be adjusted to run in older versions (these issues are commented in the code). The graphics in this one are rather primitive to say the least.
Walk to the bone source code.
February 19th, 2006
When people first begin learning Lingo it is very common to do things such as sprite(21).visible = 0 or member(155).color = color(200,0,0). However, it is always advantageous to create behaviors that don’t make use of “hard coded” numbers so that the behavior can be reused in the future without having to adjust the sprite or member numbers or names.
When I first started playing with Lingo my code was full of these hard coded things. Now when I look back at stuff from a decade ago it kills me. Of course, when under pressure I’ll slip in a few of those things at the very end of a project. I always wish I could avoid it, but time pressures often cause the brain to ignore reason.
On the Adobe Director Forum a question was raised about changing the color of text on a mouseEnter event without having to recode each behavior for different member numbers. A very simple way to do this is to write a behavior that allows you to choose the color you want as you drop the behavior on each text member that you apply the behavior to.
Sample file: text_color_rollover.zip
Once you have written a good behavior, you end up using it for many years and many projects.
February 17th, 2006
What are your favorite source for info about Director? Where do you go when you need an answer on a tough Lingo question? Where do you go if you are just starting out with Director?
Tom Higgins posed the question on his blog, so get over there and let him know what you think.
February 17th, 2006
Two great articles in the past 24 hours over at the Lingoworkshop. Be sure to read up on Xtras and Standard Practices.
The standard practices article is pretty good. I do a few things a bit differently (future posts!) but nothing major. One things I seem to do far less than others when doing the actual coding is globals. When working on my own stuff I haven’t used a global since behaviors were introduced in Director 6, but I’ll get in to my reasoning on that one day.
I got in to a good discussion the other day about using duplicate(). I realized I don’t think I’ve ever used it, and we debated exactly when/where/how it should get used. I’m still looking forward to using it someday! (and yes…I do use lists all the time)
Other than a Fortran class I had that used punch cards (one of the last U’s here in America that used them) I’ve never had a programming class, so maybe I’m a bit out there. Oh well, Director keeps paying the bills, so I won’t complain.
February 16th, 2006
A question was brought up in the Macromedia forums related to menus with submenus, and how would one could make one that functioned similar to the ones at the top of the forums.
I would like to create a sub-navigation that looks something like this:
Nav1 | Nav2 | Nav3
sub1 | sub2 | sub3
Is it possible to hide the sub-navigation until one of the main navigation(Nav2) links is rolled over? Can I have it stay there until another main navigation link is hit or when the user is taken to another frame?
There are a lot of ways to create menus, ranging from using Flash, imaging lingo, and dynamically generated sprites. In the forum JB basically answered the question with the very basic approach that allows for very quick development of this sort of thing with just a few lines of code.
You can download a sample file that was done in DirMX 2004.
Source for menu_demo.dir
There is also an article on Director Online related to menus, and using One Sprite Widgets at LingoWorkshop can make complex menus.
February 15th, 2006
Still many things to get done on the site. I added some cute little icons for various types of links/files that go up in the future. Have played with the RSS feeder plug-in so I can pull in headlines from a few places (going live later this week). I got the Akismet plug-in running to deal with comment spam. I still have a bunch of links to add. I also need to put up my email address or a contact form up. Getting email up sounds like the easiest thing to do so I bet I go with that option.
After all that maybe I’ll have time to actually start getting a few posts up on occasion. And maybe getting a little contest for fun (see prior Sudoku post).
February 14th, 2006
There is currently a good ongoing discussion on Direct-L mailing list related to the massively popular game called Sudoku. From Wikipedia:
Sudoku, sometimes spelled Su Doku, is a logic-based placement puzzle, also known as Number Place in the United States. The aim of the canonical puzzle is to enter a numerical digit from 1 through 9 in each cell of a 9×9 grid made up of 3×3 subgrids (called “regions”), starting with various digits given in some cells (the “givens”). Each row, column, and region must contain only one instance of each numeral.
Several on the list have presented ways to solve and create these puzzles in Lingo. There are already many other solutions (open source, shareware, commercial) that let you do such things (see Wikipedia link).
One thing that might be fun is trying to see who could create the “fastest” code for both creating and solving a puzzle. Anyone up for this challenge? We’d have to set up some rules for this contest of course…something to think about in the near future.
I’ve never been much of a puzzle solver, but thinking about the math/coding behind such things is often fun.
February 14th, 2006
MacRumors.com had a link to a job on Monster. Apple is looking for a Mac OS X Visual Interface Designer. Among the required experience items it lists Must have demonstrated experience with prototyping tools and environments such as Director and Lingo.
Full job listing
February 13th, 2006
Integration New Media (makers of well known Xtras and more) has written a great white paper outlining the transition to Intel-based Macs for Director users and multimedia developers in general.
In the paper, in addition to an overview of the situation, we offer some suggestions and strategic solutions to help you jump onboard the Intel-Apple train!
To further help developers and publishers who wish to support this new standard, we have put together a new service package to assist with the transition process.
Full white paper.
February 11th, 2006
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