Comments on: Actionscript Caveats, Gotchas, & WTF – Part 1

By: Adam

Adam — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 12:05:45 +0000

@Nintendo Maniac 64: Now that’s a challenge I never want to take on! However there are some interesting games written for DHTML, especially Lemmings: http://www.javascriptgaming.com/search/label/DHTML?Tech&updated-max=2009-03-08T08%3A32%3A00-07%3A00&max-results=10

By: Nintendo Maniac 64

Nintendo Maniac 64 — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:23:16 +0000

There’s always other standard in-browser technologies such as those in HTML5 (canvas, svg, audio tags, etc) that would enable browser-based gameplay without using flash at all.

By: Syniphas

Syniphas — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 01:53:52 +0000

Yeah, I guessed so, but still my point is not that you make it just a standalone game, but a standalone game not made in Flash, and rather a decent programming language such as C.

Also, I just realized that not only Squarez and Jetpack were made by Adept Software, but also God of Thunder! I recently found a shareware version in an old 1994 CD I had lying around for ages. I just downloaded the full version from the site, this game is epic!

By: Adam

Adam — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 01:24:24 +0000

Ahh the color depth might be the culprit, I’ll look into that.

It will be standalone also, but making it a web game makes it more accessible.

By: Syniphas

Syniphas — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 16:30:12 +0000

Those are some of the reasons I never liked Flash.

If you want my opinion, you shouldn’t be doing it as a browser game, but again as actual standalone game like Jetpack (perhaps even another DOS game, people still like those and play them with DOSBox, I know I do).

By: Denilson

Denilson — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 23:18:04 +0000

That rectangle box MIGHT be related to using “High color” (15 or 16-bit color depth) instead of “True color” (24 or 32-bit). I remember I had something similar to what you describe loooooong time ago, in Flash 5.

By: Tim Kloske

Tim Kloske — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 00:52:21 +0000

I’ve never noticed anything like the two mysteries you’ve mentioned. Probably (hopefully) rare, hardware specific issues. MOUSE_WHEEL can be wonky too, so I’d stay away from that too as a primary aspect of gameplay… it’s especially wonky for (seemingly) random Mac users.

The mysterious keyboard issue is probably some sort of driver issue.

Two other possible hacks for your registration point problem are:
- to use simple trig to offset the x and y to make it appear to rotate around a different center.
- to nest a bitmap inside two MovieClips (or more likely sprites), and offsetting the x and y of the inner MovieClip. I’ve tested this method just now with MovieClips, and it definitely works. Not sure if this would impact performance, but it probably would knowing Flash.

I’ve noticed the performance issue with alpha=0 as well.

As long as the matrix transformation works, I’d probably stick with that. You might want to do a performance test and try all three of these methods though if you have the time.

If I had the space I’d vent about more of my flash issues (like the lack of the ability to unload FLVs… I’ve looked and tried everything). Not that you would for this project, but don’t put a lot of static text in your fla. It doesn’t matter how much you spread the text out frame-wise, it will lag the entire IDE to a halt.