With visitors from more than 30 countries, over 70,000 plays to date, and front page “feature” exposure on some of the biggest online Flash game websites around, the East Coast Interactive sledging game has proven to be a bit of a hit over the 2008 festive period.

Overview

Super Sledge Challenge started life as an idea near the end of November 2008 as a virtual Christmas card for East Coast Interactive to send to their clients. The idea was both simple and seasonal – To sledge down a hill as quickly as possible while dodging trees and the edges of the course while picking up presents for time bonuses. Like a lot of ideas ECI have, it quickly grew wings. While the primary function of being an interactive e-card remained very much intact, it also developed into a fully fledged online flash game with a high score table. To “go that extra mile” the ability to customize the game to add a personalised festive message was added along with a “send to a friend” feature.

Created to run on the Flash platform, the online game development technology of choice at East Coast Interactive, a number of technical options were investigated and implemented to add that extra level of playability, with a 3D library being used to give a more realistic feeling of space and motion and custom sound effects recorded to add to the atmosphere.

Exposure

After wishing our clients a Merry Christmas, we released Super Sledge Challenge as a publically available Flash online game. The Community Manager for 4mations (Channel 4, Aardman Animations and Lupus Films) was seeking out festive themed games for the 4mations website and featured it on their front  page. The next port of call was newgrounds (”the original – and still the largest – Flash portal on the web”) who accepted Super Sledge Challenge to run on their site and finally the game was submitted to Kongregate. From here the game went viral, being picked up by other gaming websites and being mentioned on the pages of Digg, the feed of Twitter and even from word of mouth, the play count has continued to rise hourly.

Building an interactive online christmas card is pretty much a given for any digital media agency these days, what East Coast Interactive set out to achieve initially was no different from any other company at that particular time of year. What ECI have shown is that with a bit of extra drive, innovation and effort, it is not only achievable to get your work in front of some of the biggest names in the industry but also to get it out to a large and varied audience globally.

Super Sledge Challenge was launched mid December 2008 and (at the time of writing) continues to be very well played.

http://www.supersledgechallenge.com

To celebrate the festive season this year we’ve created a fun e-card with a flash game. The only impact on trees is virtual (if your steering isn’t very good). Our Christmas game is a 3d sledging challenge where you need to get to the bottom of the slope as quickly as possible, by avoiding the trees and picking up presents for time bonuses on route.

To play the game go here: http://festive.eastcoastinteractive.co.uk/

You can also create your own free custom version too for your friends which will display your own Christmas greeting.

For further information, head on over to www.flashonlinedesigners.com

Full Browser 3D with Flash ActionScript3.0

I was thinking about how great it would be to have a full web page that looks just like a normal html page but is infact a full browser 3D flash page. The aim would be to briefly trick an html/css purist before unleashing some 3D trickery. Anyway I downloaded the Five3D library and expanded one of the examples to recreate my blog in 3D.

Check out the result here.

The page looks and scales like normal html, but doesn’t reveal it’s 3Dness until you click on it. I expect stuff like this will probably explode onto the web with the next few versions of the flash player. Google’s new ability to index swf’s in a human clicking style might just satisfy the SEO slaves.

Unfortunately at the moment the performance drops off rapidly as more text is added. For that reason I haven’t put too much onto the page. If you play with the code you can uncomment the next few paragraphs and see how it performs. In his interview with FWA, Mathieu Badimon says that he thinks Flash Player10 will offer some of the same functionality as Five3D. So this should give the performance a boost.

The Code

You will need the Five3D classes in your classpath to compile it of course, get them from the Five3D site. For flash to always fill the browser I refered to these articles, at adobe and here (AS2 but gives html publish settings).

To get your swf to always fill the browser you need these html publish settings.

Set dimensions, width and height to 100%.
Set Scale to noscale
Alignment: Set horizontal to left. Set vertical to top

The code wont teach you anything more about five3D than the basic tutorials do. You will see that the code laboriously places everything sentence by sentence, shape by shape.

If anybody writes code to process generalized html and display it in 3D, please let me know!! Adobe???

Or get everything here.

It starts with Export for Actionscript

In AS2 if you wanted to access the properties of an instance on the stage from code you had to ensure that the “export for actionscript” checkbox was selected in the linkage properties for that MovieClip in the library. If it wasnt your code wouldn’t see the instance and would fail silently. This was pretty confusing at first and even once you got used to it there would be times that it would still catch you out.

When you dont need to Export for Actionscript

In AS3 you do not need to select the “export for actionscript” checkbox to access the properties of an instance on the stage. Any MovieClip instance you drag onto the stage at design time becomes a property of the document class and can be accessed from code as long as it has an instance name.

If you do select “export for actionscript” for a clip in the library, like this.

When you click OK you will be greeted with the following slightly alarming pop-up message.

ActionScript Class Warning
A definition for this class could not be found in the classpath, so one will be automatically generated in the SWF file upon export.

This is actually nothing to worry about but may induce mild panic, you just click OK to continue and your swf still works fine. What the message is saying is that you are creating a new type, in other words a new class.

The MovieClip you have created in the library extends the definition of the flash MovieClip and adds extra features to it, at this point just the graphics you have drawn in it. The message is complaining that this extension of MovieClip doesn’t have a definition in code, there is not an .as file for it. However it lets you off lightly and generates the code inside the swf ( no .as files ) at compile time for your new type.

When you do need to Export for Actionscript

In AS3 “export for actionscript” should be selected when you want to add a MovieClip to the stage at runtime from actionscript. The syntax for doing this in AS3 with a MovieClip called Square in the library ( with export for actionscript selected ) looks like this.

In the first line an instance of the new type Square is created and named mySquare. At this point mySquare doesnt exist on the display list ( so cant be seen on the stage ) it only exists as a variable in actionscript. The next two lines set some of the properties of the mySquare variable, in this case position. Then finally with the addChild command I hook the mySquare MovieClip variable onto the display list. mySquare now exists as a variable in actionscript and is referenced and displayed on the stage.

In AS2 it was easy to think of MovieClips as things on the stage that your code could reference but with AS3 it becomes clear that a MovieClip is actually a type just as String or Number are.

In the case above Square extends MovieClip. In purely Object Oriented terms this means that if I create an instance of Square it will have all the methods and properties of a MovieClip such as mySquare.x or mySquare.visible plus any extra I add to it. However so far I havent provided code for any extra methods hence the ActionScript Class Warning when the clip is created in the library. If I wanted to add extra methods to Square I could do so by adding a new .as file called Square.as if I wrote the .as before creating the clip in the library I wouldnt get the warning.

Square.as

Timeline code in my fla file

The output now traces “hello”. As well as using the standard MovieClip methods and properties mySquare can also call the new method sayHello because it is of type Square and Square extends MovieClip.

One last point, notice that this time I have declared mySquare as type MovieClip and before I declared it as type Square. Either could be used, this duality of type is what is known as polymorphism in Object Oriented speak.

Hope that is of use to somebody!

The basic set-up includes one .fla file and one .as file.

First create a fla. You can name this whatever you like. Maybe myFirstApp.fla. At this point you could start writing code directly into a frame on the timeline however best coding practice is to define a document class.

The document class can be specified by entering the name of a class into the property panel for the document. This is the same place where you would specify the size of your swf. Think of a name for your document class, maybe: myFirstApp. The document class doesnt have to have the same name as your main fla there is no link between them.

By typing myFirstApp into the property panel you are telling flash to create an instance of the myFirstApp class when the fla runs.

When compiling your fla flash will go and look for the code for the myfirstApp class. It will look for a file called myFirstApp.as by searching the directory the fla is in or in the directories specified under classpath from preferences.

The next step is to create the myFirstApp.as file. This just a text file with the extension changed to .as. Place the file in the same directory as your fla.

Contents of myFirstApp.as

The package tag places the myFirstApp class into the root package. Which means this class wont be stored in a subfolder just in the same directory as the fla.

The myFirstApp class extends Sprite. This means that the document class as well as having any further methods and propertys that you define will also have all the methods and properties of a Sprite. The import flash.display.Sprite statement lets the flash compiler know where to look for the definition of Sprite at compile time.

Note that the myFirstApp.as file should only contain a class called myFirstApp or you will get errors.

The document class unlike other classes must extend Sprite because the document class automatically represents the swf stage. Any movieclips instances you name and place on the stage at author time become properties of the document class and can be accessed by name from actionscript inside the class.

This part defines the constructor for the myFirstApp class.

The constructor function for a class is a function that has the same name as the class and is called whenever an instance of the class is created. For the document class an instance is created when the swf runs. This means that the constructor is the entry point for our application and the trace statement is the first line of code to be executed at runtime. The creators of flash have borrowed these concepts from the java world.

And thats the basic set up!

The entry of new competitors into the interactive flash streaming and server market (such as wowza pro and red5) has meant the new versions are now a lot less restricted in terms of bandwidth and connection limitations than they were previously. The new streaming only version creates a much lower entry point to the technology by providing a cut back feature set focussing purely on streaming without any of the real time interactivity tools of the full Interactive version.

New features include H.264 streaming video for enhanced quality, AAC audio, additional cryptographic and security enhancements, improved performance and flash lite 3 support for mobile applications.

Installation
Installation on a windows server is sufficiently straightforward that the included document is more than adequate, however there are a few potential snags in the the linux setup that are worth documenting for those less familiar with a bash prompt. In the example below I use Centos 5 on a xen vps.

Download the package from http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/tdrc/index.cfm?loc=en%5Fus&product=flashmediaserver (you’ll need to log into your Adobe account, so no wget download direct from their server unfortunately)

Extract FlashMediaServer3.tar.gz from the zip and upload to your server. It’s about 50mb and contains documentation and sample files that you can remove if you don’t need them (I’d recommend leaving the sample applications ‘vod’ and ‘live’ though so you can quickly check everythings working ok once you’ve installed).

I created a directory in root for extraction

cd /mkdir
fms3
cd fms3

Copy the file into your new directory and decompress with

tar -xzf FlashMediaServer3.tar.gz

Later in the install process you’ll be asked for which user and group the server runs under, create these now if you don’t want to use the default user (nobody)

groupadd fms
useradd -g fms fms

The install requires the ‘netscape portable runtime’ which without you’ll get an error -’Error: Flash Media Server needs the nspr library installed’.

To install:
yum install seamonkey-nspr.i386

you should see a message saying ‘Installing’ with some progress bars displayed, when it finishes it displays ‘Complete!’ and returns you to the prompt.

If you’re using redhat (the only officially supported linux distribution)
To install you now would use from within the extracted directory:

./installFMS

If you’re using centos 5 like me then this would give you an error message and will quit.
Instead:

./installFMS -platformWarnOnly

There are now a series of prompts to answer.

If you are just installing the developer version just press enter when asked for your serial number.
It will ask you if you like to try again, again just continue with enter unless you have a full licence.

You can press enter when asked for directory,server port and admin port as these can be configured later.
It’ll also ask if you want to run as a daemon, this is the linux version of a background service so enter yes of you want this.

Now navigate to the default installation directory:

cd /opt/adobe/fms

and enter

./fmsmgr server fms start

to initialise. Hopefully after a few seconds (it pauses and thinks for a bit) you’ll be returned to the prompt and the services are running – use top to list running processes. You should see the following processes listed:

fmscore
fmsedge
fmsmaster
fmsadmin

If not, things worth trying:

Read this:
http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=c533ee36&sliceId=1

You might be missing other required dependencies which you might be able to install using these:

yum install compat-libstdc++-33.i386
yum install seamonkey-nspr.i386
yum install libstdc++.so.5

Note:

If you create an application directory via ssh (i.e mkdir myNewApplication), remember to chown to your fms user group else you might not be able to write to the directory. cd to your applications directory then (presuming user fms and group fms):

chown fms:fms myNewApplication

Flash CS3

• Coding enhancements including a better debugger and improved editing e.g collapsing
• Advanced QuickTime export – wahoo! At last, you can use nested and scripted elements within video output, no more arsing about trying to render from director or trying to get a screen cap movie without dropping frames..
• Convert animation to code – handy for taking a complex path and being able to manipulate programatically.
• Improved import with proper Illustrator handling
• New lightweight UI components – flex quality widgets hopefully.

Photoshop CS3

• As somebody that enjoys photography (in particular panoramas) the ‘align layers’ features is killer, I’ve been using it heavily in the cs3 beta. Chuck a bunch of photos in, 30 seconds later you have an (almost) perfectly aligned set of images just needing slight ‘crossover’ adjustments using dodge and burn tools to match exposures , and some deft eraser work to fade any glitches.
• Faster startup
• Video frames to layers – plus these can then be edited in a ’stack’.

Dreamweaver CS3

• AJAX widgets built in
• ‘Check browser compatibility’ feature – flags up common problems in certain browsers

Aftereffects CS3

• puppet tool: chop up and animate images easily with inverse kinematics type linking of elements
• swf integration
• photoshop cs3 vanishing point manipulated image to animatable 3d model in aftereffects

Encore CS3

• Output a dvd project directly to web (with all menus + video!) as a swf

The webcast was also a great example of why it’s a good idea to have a backup Plan B when presenting a live broadcast, as when their projector failed.. then they tried to do an impromptu q & a to the gathered crowd to try and fill the down time.. damn they looked awkward and ill-prepared as they struggled with the answers lol.

Shame the downtime cut back on the full program of announcements when they resumed, but details will be out soon as they all go on sale in the next few weeks.

My current toolbox includes:

xray and also it’s online console built using flex,

charles web debugging proxy (fantastically handy tool not only for flash, but for all sort of web development – it monitors and logs client side/server side communications and data transferred)

I’ve just come up with a third which is great for firefox users – using the firebug extension, we can use flash’s externalInterface class to add log entries to firebugs console. If you have firebug installed click on the swf below which will start logging data to the console window. You can download the source here.

Grampian Business Awards – June 2006 – Ardoe house

Northern Star Business Awards – September 2006 – Aberdeen Exhibition Centre

Camera note: At these kind of events you don’t really want a) to be carting around a big camera b) annoying people with flash photography, these pics couldn’t have been done as easily without one of the best compact digicams around – the fuji finepix f11 (now superseded by f30/40) . Full manual control and exceptional low light performance with high ISO in a small package.