Via Navneet @ onClipEvent.com/enterframe.
Dude, it’s so funny reading that article that Navneet just posted. It’s like reading “The Geeks’ Version of Flash & Director Compositing”. Course, Director comes a close second. Mainly because the article discusses the off-screen buffering of screen drawing, Flash does not give you direct access to the screen, but rather limited control of objects that utilize commands that can happen faster than such a screen refresh via updateAfterEvent(). Director on the other hand gives you direct control to the on-screen drawing via updateStage(), which you call wayyyy more than once a frame.
All the stuff I learned in art school, they are breaking it down technically so programmers realize what they can do with Avalon’s graphic compositing engine. For someone like me, I go, “Duh, I already have that.” Course, this is an OS we’re talking about with about 1 step away from a hardware call. That’s where the fear comes in. You pray for the Japanime ‘esque cocoon Central is currently in to be infused with mad optimizations, hax, and mods to the Flash 7 Player, so when it emerges, it is the faster Flash Player to date.
The real problem is Avalon, or whatever the heck Visual Studio will morph into, doesn’t sound like it’ll have a timeline. Just as the thought of developing Flash Appz via MXML (Flex) is sickening, so to is using XAML to do the same thing in Avalon. The same Ravenloft horror check programmers experienced and (some failed) because of Flash’s timeline is reversed in this case for someone like me. I respect those people who are comfortable and dig tweening engines, like Robert Penner’s DynTween, and all of what is built into the Flash MX 2004 AS2 component framework. But that’s not for me. Suddenly, although I feel compelled to dive into a C# sharp book, at the same time, I’m praying that Microsoft realizes I, as well as many other animation-talented Flash Developers, are a valuable asset to promoting their products, and therefore provide some familiar way for us to contribute.
Maybe there could be a powerful merging, as I explain layering techniques, they explain thread mutagation. Bleh. Come on Central, don’t let me down… :: crosses fingers and prays ::