turn-based glory and pixel pleasure

When writing classes for a framework I usually put a custom toString method into important classes so that debugging becomes easier. Normally they would go like something along the lines of:

override public function toString():String {
	return "[ClassName]";
}

… Sometimes adding properties to the returned String that give back information about the class, e.g.

override public function toString():String {
	return "[ImageClass, size=" + _size + "]";
}

But writing them rigid like that is a disadvantage when you decide later to refactor class names. Admittedly it’s also not a very elegant way so I got the idea to take the class name that is returned by getQualifiedClassName(). The only problem is that getQualifiedClassName not only provides the type name but also the whole package String of the class. Regular Expressions to the rescue! After twiddling around with them for a while (I’m by no means a RegExp expert) I got my toString method into the shape that I desired:

override public function toString():String {
	return "[" + getQualifiedClassName(this).match("[^:]*$")[0] + ", size=" + _size + "]";
}

This way it matches the String returned by getQualifiedClassName with the Regular Expression [^:]*$ which checks from the right end for an arbitrary text up to the first occurring colon, but without including the colon. Taking the first element of the Array returned by match() and you got what you need!

A nice way of using this is when writing abstract classes that contain the toString method and any subclass can use that toString method without the need to override it … that is of course unless you want ot add other output information.

It took longer than expected thanks to obstacles like a crashed harddisk and other minorities in between but it’s finally done and I now can announce the immediate availability of Alcon 3! It runs currently on Windows and Mac and hopefully soon on Linux too. When I tested it on Ubuntu it installed and started fine but the LocalConnection seems not to cut it in the current alpha release of the Linux AIR Runtime. Anyone know more details about this?

I recommend to check out the Alcon Page for more details and of course the download link. Enjoy your debugging!

Since so many of you (well, at least four people) are feverishly waiting for the release of Alcon 3 here’s a preview screenshot to comfort your waiting time. The shot shows Alcon’s trace output panel with some bogus Array being traced iteratively and as a hex dump. the top of the window displays Alcon’s new App Monitor which can be used to monitor framerate, frame render time and memory consumption. It also shows the version of the runtime that the monitored application is run in (clicking on the version text will list all System.capabilities properties in the Trace panel).

Then there’s the Options dialog with Trace options opened where you will be able to set font, colors etc. On the File Loggers Options you will be able to optionally enable up to two File Loggers that can be used for example to log the flashlog.txt to see output made by ActionScript’s own trace method.
There’s of course the new Object Inspector and a new Help panel for Quickstart Help and API Docs. Alcon 3 is being written 99% in ActionScript 3 using FDT (the 1% left being the Main.mxml that is necessary to compile a Flex application). It’s only a matter of a few days now until release, some bug fixing, finishing touches and a few more documentation to write and it will be out so please endure!

Alcon 3 is in the works! The new version is being written for Adobe AIR and that means no more hackish OS integration! Thanks to AIR the debugging tool will run nice and smooth on any supported OS and it will restore your windows size and position where you last left it, Stay On Top works properly, auto-update etc. etc. etc.

Some of the new features besides the already existing Trace Command and File Loggers are a Memory Consumption and Frames-Per-Second Monitor, a completely new and improved Object Inspector that is finally useful for Debugging, an Options dialog to comfortably configure Alcon, proper AS2 support and a couple of other minorities here and there.

The progress moves on quick enough that I dare to say that the release date is only a few weeks away from now so sit tight, it’ll be there in a heartbeat.

Not from myself but I’d like to second his words … A Love Letter to Flash

In game development randomness is often necessary for certain tasks, be it the random distribution of graphic tiles, a random factor in NPC AI or random stats in a roleplaying game. Especially for the latter purpose the static Dice class provides a set of methods to roll dice as it is common in a Role-playing game, to be exact four-, six-, eight-, ten-, twelve-, twenty-sided and percentile dice.

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The AnimatedBitmap class provides functionality for Bitmap objects that are animated by using a series of still images. When creating a new AnimatedBitmap you provide a BitmapData object that contains an image that consists of the ‘single-frame’ images for the animation.

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Here’s a small demo that I threw together yesterday which shows how the effects in the Hexagon Framework effects package can be used. The effects package contains classes that are used on display objects to apply an animated effect on them. That is not all however. The effects send a signal back to the calling class when they are finished and there are two more classes with that effects can be arranged, namely the EffectChainer class and the EffectCombiner class.

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I’ve been reading this book by Joey Lott and Danny Patterson since yesterday and thought I’d loose a couple of words about it …
The book starts with a chapter about application design where it explains how to go through the analysis-, design- , implementation and testing phase. It introduces how to utilize Use Case- and Class Diagrams and then gives a lesson on how to use FlexUnit for unit testing. In the second chapter is a good explanation about why and how to use Interfaces (instead of Inheritance) and after that it goes into detail with teaching nine of the more common Design Patterns, namely MVC, Singleton, Factory/Template Method, Proxy, Iterator, Composite, Decorator, Command, Memento and State. In part 3 of the book you’ll find in-depth information about AS 3.0 features like Events, data IO, E4X and Regular Expressions.

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I finally spend some time to make myself more familiar with the Flex 2 Beta and this is what came out as a result: Star Wars Name Generator! It’s a small and modest tool to generate random names (obviously). If you’re a fan of the Star Wars Pen & Paper Role-playing game (like me) you might find this tool useful!

You can generate names for planets and for characters, there are some parameters that can be chosen from before pressing the Generate button. After that it will spit out a list of more or less useful names (some of them sound very exotic). Interesting names can then be dragged and dropped onto the right side list. All names in this list are stored in local shared object on the users computer until the Clear button is pressed. The Switch button displays the saved names in a text area from where the names can be copied to the clipboard. (Small update: Works now with latest Flash Player v9).