Blog

  • Printing Gotcha

    Found a gotcha this week when making AS2 style components and exporting for Flash Player 6.

    The new way to include your assets in your components is to make a layer called “assets”, and then put your component’s assets on that layer, preferably on frame 2, or the farthest frame that your component will never actually reach. The old way was to put it on an assets layer, but guide it out.

    However, since that new layer is not guided out, it will export with the SWF, and is now printable. If you use the print command and target your component, it will print your assets. We couldn’t figure out why when printing one of our components that it kept printing out a bunch of assets on a 2nd printed page when we assumed it would only print one page… and then I guessed right that it was printing the assets frame.

    The quick fix is to click on each asset, and change it’s alpha to 0. That way, at least the printer won’t actually print anything onto the 2nd page (assuming there isn’t an automatic company letterhead attached). That way, the user/client will think it’s their st00pid printer and not blame you. Besides, they can reuse the 2nd blank page anyway, so it’s not like your wasting paper.

    I’m assuming you have tighter control over the Flash Player 7 PrintJob & associated printing commands, but if your still going to 6, but using Flash MX 2004 to make AS2 components, just something to watch out for.

  • Central Rants

    Friend of mine who I worked on a minor contract job with late last year, and who I originally met in college is currently heading to Santa Cruz. Can’t remember where he started, but as of 2pm eastern time (GMT -5), he was in Texas bouncing emails with me. He is pretty stoked about Central, so…

  • Star Wars Galaxies Flash Site

    Via <a href=”http://www.mediadiva.net/mt/”>her majesty</a>.

    Star Wars Galaxies Flash Site
    <a href=”http://www.lucasarts.com/products/galaxies/”>http://www.lucasarts.com/products/galaxies/</a>

    I don’t play anymore as her majesty is about to absorb my account as well, but for those of you who haven’t, they have fixed 1000 bugs of 20,000, so it’s very playable. Anyway, the above site shows you just a few aspects of the game as it is a lot deeper than the site portrays. Oh yeah, and don’t be fooled… the Imps (Imperials) are a bunch of woosies who stand behind their AT-AT’s, so the Rebs (Rebels) portrayed as being pinned down is a misnomer.

  • FLV v1.1, metaData, and getting the length of a FLV file

    Catching up on the developments in the FLV arena, Flash’s video format, it seems there is finally a way to get the length of an FLV file. One critical flaw in the FLV design when they implemented the ability to dynamically load FLV files in the Flash 7 player was no native length property. Now, in the Flashcom world…