Software, Fitness, and Gaming – Jesse Warden

Blog

  • JSFL: JXL-Withrow Text Effect

    Wrote this over the weekend. I remembered a text effect I was taught by one of my past managers, so wanted to see if I could recreate it for any block of text.

    Low and behold, I did!

    Simply click on a text field with text in it to select it, run the command, and walla, you have a reusable, graphic symbol with the effect!

    It’s not very customizable in terms of speed; it only looks good at 31 or 61 frames per second. Keep in mind it creates a graphic symbol, not a movie clip. Therefore, the graphic symbol must reside in the same amount of frames on the timeline that the graphic symbol itself has on it’s own timeline. Confused? Just convert it to a movie clip. At any rate, pretty neat one can automate some of this stuff. I wish I could spend a week just writing a bunch of these, and then package them up!

    JXL-Withrow Text Effect – MXP | JSFL

    Sample

  • Game Reviews

    BTW, Fable came out today! I couldn’t buy as I still have too many games to finish already…

    Francis A broken phone annihilated my internet. It’s about as flaky as a box of Kellogg’s. Florida is definitely not a hurricane buffer state… or, if it is, Francis was a bad arse. At any rate when I’m not coding, drawing, or cleaning it’s gotta be about the games. Here’s a rundown of what I’ve hit and what I think in case your thinking of doing the same. I’m only dicussing games I’ve either beaten or played enough to know, fairly, whether they are good or not.
    (more…)

  • High Level vs. Implementation Details

    Am I the only one that has problems seperating the 2 in conversations? I reckon older(insert your own definition) developers would have no problems with this, but to me, it’s tough. Hypothetical example being:

    “Let’s talk about solving this server architecture problem. What is the best way to keep a service that we can talk to client side without having to worry about the service being clustered?”

    Now, the second someone says, “We’ll in Web Logic, you can write this Java class, blah blah blah…”, that’s considered an implementation detail. It’s like, if you veer off the path of audiotorial UML diagram in your speech, and actually talk about how those things work, game over, go to jail, do not pass go, do not collect $200 dollars. Know what I mean?

    I had to submit a paper at work today and discuss it’s findings in terms of defining facts and opinions, clearly seperated, and how they apply to finding a technical solution to a problem. I still, however, think I failed. I mean, in the facts, I tried not to reference technology solving THE problem, but rather solving THEIR or “a problem related to this was solved this way”. I don’t know if that violates the programmer ettiquete…

    Like, if I asked you I need an animation on the web, most of you (I would hope) would immedately blurt “use Flash, yo”. I’d counter with, “that’s an implementation detail”. That feeling is what I’m talking about. It seems the correct answer is, assuming you know all of the details behind what the web animation needs to do, you’d simply respond by stating the facts of how the animation needs to run, look, and the target platform that the user needs to view it on. At that point, once there is no fuzziness in terms of what really needs to happen, you can then pick the technology that will solve the problem, vs. having technology drive the problem. Make sense?

    It sounds simple, elegant, and a great process, but to me, it’s hard. It feels the same way research projects go. You don’t actually solve the problem… you merely research possible solutions and “sound” objective in your conclusions.

    Is this something developers are taught in college or something?

  • Flashcom Components: Dungeons & Dragons Tools

    I’ve been working on these components as a fun side project the past 2 weeks. As usual, I’m bored and want to do something else. I’ve included docs (a ton) on why you should care, what they are, and how they are made.

    Benefits:
    – neat (I think) use of cell renderers
    – easier way to get avatar chat via above
    – using AS2 + Flash MX 2004 components + Flashcom Components together
    – free components & code!

    The docs are in order, so if you actually take the time to read, I suggest you do in order since that’s how my thoughts actually came out, and therefore is your only hope in following.

    Since the documentation is a book, I couldn’t make it a blog entry… just too big. Therefore, if you have any comments, please comment in this entry here.

    Flash Communication Server Dungeons & Dragons Components

    …geez, that’s a div breaker there (kind of long). How about:

    FCS D&D Components – Documentation | Source v2 | Source v1