This guide explains how to set up a Flash and Flex development environment with Eclipse, FDT, Flash Builder and a couple of other editors that you want for ActionScript coding and Flash development with style! This guide is based on Windows because that’s what I’m using but I’m sure you Mac and Linux guys can figure out the parts that differ on your OS! Let’s get started …

• Java Runtime – In case you don’t have it installed yet. Choose either the Standard Java Runtime from Sun or  – my recommendation – the JRockit Runtime from Oracle. The latter is a highly optimized version of the Java Runtime. It’s free but you have to register an account at Oracle to download it.
• Eclipse Platform Runtime Binary – We want the bare bones version without all the additional junk. We’re going to add the stuff we need later. Don’t worry! It’ll be a smooth ride if you follow this guide.
• Powerflasher FDT – The best tool for ActionScript coding … with a price tag! But you don’t want to skimp on professional tools for professional work, do you?! We’re going to install this from within Eclipse later!
• Flash Builder PlugIn – I’d list this as optional since the only advantage of it over FDT is currently it’s visual editor. You don’t want to code ActionScript in this once you’ve used FDT, believe me!
• Other Eclipse PlugIns: HTML-, JavaScript-, XML-, CSS- Editors, Apache Ant (via JDT). These are all tools we need every now and then. Gratifyingly, the Eclipse project provides excellent versions of all these.
• Even more Eclipse PlugIns: Subclipse and Mylyn. Both optional! Subclipse for accessing SVN repositories and Mylyn as a great coding task tool. Both get installed later via Eclipse.

Other Tools you might need/want:

• Flex SDK – FDT ships with it’s own Flex SDK but they are usually a step behind the latest version so I prefer to use SDKs that stand on their own regardless of what FDT ships. Be sure to pick the ‘Adobe Flex SDK’, not the ‘Open Source Flex SDK’ since that one is missing a few things. Also you might want to have several different SDKs installed like for example Flex 3.x and Flex 4 which you can target individually from FDT. If you want to use Ant build files later to build your projects it’s a good idea to place the SDKs in a clean and easy folder hierarchy, e.g. let’s say I have Flex SDK 3.5 and 4.0 on my system then I would put them under C:\Users\username\Applications\FlexSDK\3.5.0 and C:\Users\username\Applications\FlexSDK\4.0.0. I remember having trouble with spaces in path names when I experimented with Alchemy hence I decided to not put the SDKs into a subfolder in ‘Program Files’.
• Flash Player Runtimes – Debug versions, release versions, browser plugins and whatnot. I typically disregard all the versions that come with any Flex SDK or Flash IDE and copy the newest version into a folder that always stays the same (for example C:/Program Files/Adobe/Flash Player/Debug/FlashPlayer.exe and C:/Program Files (x86)/Adobe/Flash Player/Release/FlashPlayer.exe) because it can get messy if you have X different SDK versions plus the Flash IDE, plus Flash Builder etc. installed that all come with their own runtimes.
• Adobe AIR – because Flash development would be only half the fun without it!
• Adobe Flash – The ol’ Flash IDE. If you code with this you will become impotent but it’s still great for putting visual assets together and use these as SWC’s with FDT.
• Alcon – My own little debugging and logging tool. There’s a good choice of similar loggers out there but Alcon still serves me well. Suit yourself.

1. Java Runtime
   This should be straightforward! Choose the one you prefer from the links above and install. If you go for the JRockit one, you might want to set an environment variable (under Windows) named JAVA_HOME that points to your JRockit runtime path. For example I have my JRockit installed in C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jrrt, (under Windows 7) open the Start menu, from there navigate to Control Panel/System and Security/System, click the Advanced system settings link on the left of the window, in the System Properties dialog click the Environment Variables button, then click the New… button under System variables and enter JAVA_HOME as the Variable name and C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jrrt\jre (in my example) as the Variable value. You might have to reboot or at least relogin for this setting to take effect.
2. Eclipse
   Download the Eclipse Platform Runtime Binary (currently v3.5.2, ~47MB) and unpack it. Copy the Eclipse folder to where you like, typically something like  C:\Program Files\Eclipse but I prefer to have my installation under C:\Users\username\Applications\Eclipse. The reason for this is that under Windows with UAC turned on Eclipse will create an additional folder in your user location where it stores all your installed PlugIns so you end up with two locations in that things get installed. This led to discrepancies more than once for me before due to ambiguous PlugIn installs. Very, very annoying so eventually I decided to keep it simple and have it in a non-UAC protected location.  The C:\Users\username\Applications folder is my place for all applications that have trouble with UAC.
   Either way, you have your Eclipse where you want it, next step is to edit the eclipse.ini. Your default eclipse.ini will look similar to this:

   -startup
   plugins/org.eclipse.equinox.launcher_1.0.200.v20090520.jar
   --launcher.library
   plugins/org.eclipse.equinox.launcher.win32.win32.x86_1.0.200.v20090519
   -showsplash
   org.eclipse.platform
   --launcher.XXMaxPermSize
   256m
   -vmargs
   -Xms40m
   -Xmx256m

   And this is how it ‘should’ look after you edit it:

   -vm "C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jrrt\jre\bin\javaw.exe"
   -startup
   plugins/org.eclipse.equinox.launcher_1.0.200.v20090520.jar
   --launcher.library
   plugins/org.eclipse.equinox.launcher.win32.win32.x86_1.0.200.v20090519
   -showsplash
   org.eclipse.platform
   --launcher.XXMaxPermSize
   256m
   -vmargs
   -XX:MaxGCPauseMillis=10
   -XX:MaxPermSize=128m
   -XX:PermSize=64m
   -XX:+UseParallelGC
   -Xms128m
   -Xmx1024m

   If you don’t use JRockit you can skip the first line, if you do use JRockit you need to adapt the first line to point to your JRockit jawaw.exe!
   The -XX:MaxGCPauseMillis=10, -XX:MaxPermSize=128m, -XX:PermSize=64m and -XX:+UseParallelGC lines are not mandatory but they improve performance (or so I’ve heard!). Just be sure to set Xms and Xmx high enough, to at least 128 and 512, but better 1024 (Eclipse and FDT need LOADS of RAM!).
   Next fire up Eclipse and choose your Workspace location. Eclipse will present itself with its nice and warm intro screen …
   

3. JDT & Ant
   Click through to the Workbench (the arrow on the right) and from the menu choose Help/Install New Software… then in the Install window  where it says “Work with:” choose the Galileo update site (Galileo – http://download.eclipse.org/releases/galileo) and in the tree list that shows up, unfold the Programming Languages branch and check Eclipse Java Development Tools. Then click the Next button and follow the install procedure. Restart Eclipse when it asks you to do so after the installation.
   
4. HTML-, JavaScript-, XML- and CSS- Editors
   This is the exact same procedure as in step 3 with the difference that you unfold the Web, XML, and Java EE Development category and check the Eclipse Web Developer Tools, Eclipse XML Editors and Tools and the JavaScript Developer Tools.
   
5. Subclipse
   Next things next! For Subclipse we need to add the update URL to Eclipse. Open The Eclipse Install window again, click the Add… button and enter Subclipse 1.6 as the name and http://subclipse.tigris.org/update_1.6.x as the location (or you might wanna check the official Subclipse site for any newer update URLs) …
   … Hit OK and choose the required Subclipse components from the tree list. You need at least the parts that are marked as required but I also pick Integration for Mylyn, the SVNKit Library, SVNKit Client Adapter and the JNA Library. Can’t hurt to have them on board! After that click Next ansd from there on the procedure is very much the same as before with step 3 and 4.
   
6. Mylyn
   We can install Mylyn and all its dependencies again from the Galileo update site just as above under step 3 and 4. You’ll find Mylyn in the Collaboration category. I’ll go for Mylyn Task List, Mylyn Task-Focused Interface, Mylyn WikiText and Mylyn Bridge: Eclipse IDE. There are some other bridges for other Languages if you want them but since FDT has no support for Mylyn yet there’s nothing for ActionScript. However we can still put Mylyn to good use for our ActionScript programming, we just don’t get the same task-focused integration as with Java or C++.
   
7. FDT
   Time to install the FDT trial! We need to enter the update site just as with Subclipse in step 5. For the update site enter FDT as name and http://fdt.powerflasher.com/update/ as the location (or check the Powerflasher website in case the URL changed). Pick the FDT version(s) that you want to install from the tree list, hit Next and go drink a coffee! Installing FDT will take a couple of minutes. Don’t forget to restart Eclipse after install!
   
8. Flash Builder PlugIn
   At last we install Flash Builder! This step is wholly optional! If you don’t have any use for Flash Builder’s visual editor I actually recommend to skip this step and instead enjoy a more lightweight Eclipse without Flash Builder.
   Head over to Adobe and download the Flash Builder PlugIn trial version (at the time of this writing it’s the Flash Builder 4 beta 2 which can be found at the Adobe Labs). You might be required to register at Adobe to download the trial.
   Next quit your Eclipse and start the downloaded Flash Builder installer. Go through the installation steps and when it asks for the Eclipse install choose Plug into another copy of Eclipse and enter the path to your freshly prepared Eclipse location …
   … continue the installation, then go drink another coffee, installing Flash Builder takes long!
9. Bonus Step
   Download this slick Splash screen and replace the unlucky default Eclipse Splash screen with it by copying it to your Eclipse/plugins/org.eclipse.platform_x.x.xxx… folder.
   

And that’s all for now! With this setup you have your one-stop-shop for Flash and Flex development at your fingertips! In the next part I will try to guide through some configuring of Eclipse, in particular on how to use FDT and Flash Builder on the same project.

So today I finally figured out how to install the plug-ins that I really need and nothing else (well … almost nothing else). The following guide describes how you can set up your own custom Eclipse tailored for Flash/Flex development which features FDT plus Subclipse, a HTML, CSS, JavaScript and XML Editor and then some. The CSS Editor becomes especially useful for Flex Stylesheets.

1. First I recommend to wipe your standard Sun Java runtime and install JRockit instead. JRockit is a highly optimized Java runtime from Oracle which is free and can be downloaded here. I recommend getting the ‘Real-Time’ version (you have to register at their site to be able to download but I’d say it’s worth it).
   You might also want to add a system variable under Windows named JAVA_HOME that points to the JRockit runtime path if you want the Flex SDK compiler to make use of JRockit.
2. Go to eclipse.org and download the “Eclipse IDE for Java Developers” (~85MB). Currently the latest version of Eclipse Ganymede is v3.4.2. The reason I choose the Java Dev distribution is because it is not as loaded as the Classic version or some other versions (we don’t need Plug-In development do we?!) but it contains some niceties which can be very useful for us, notably Mylyn, a decent XML editor and a cool Snippets plug-in which can be useful even though we already get the Templates feature with FDT.
   Note for Vista users: If you’re under Windows Vista and use UAC like me, I recommend not to put the Eclipse folder into your Program Files. If you do this Eclipse will split up your installation and put all your additional plug-ins into a sub folder in your user folder. And so far I’ve always ran into troubles with this when updating Plug-ins at a later time. Instead I’ve created a folder named ‘Applications’ in my user folder into which I install all applications that have trouble with Vista’s UAC, and so Eclipse is placed there as well (e.g. C:UsersusernameApplicationsEclipse).
3. Next edit your eclipse.ini to something like the following:

   -vm "C:Program Files (x86)/Java/jrrt/jre/bin/javaw.exe"
   -showsplash
   -framework
   pluginsorg.eclipse.osgi_3.4.3.R34x_v20081215-1030.jar
   -vmargs
   -Xms768M
   -Xmx768M
   -XX:PermSize=256M
   -XX:MaxPermSize=512M
   -XX:+UseParallelGC

   … of course you need to correct the path to the JRockit runtime and you might need to change Xms/Xmx as your system fits, however a minimum of 512MB is recommended for use with FDT. (While you’re at it, you might wanna replace the splash.bmp file in Eclipse/plugins/ org.eclipse.platform_x.x.xxx.vxxxxxxxxxxxx which this one).

4. Install Subclipse by adding the Subclipse update URL from the Subclipse website to your Eclipse Help/Software Updates dialog. I recommend the 1.4.x release as in the 1.6.x release SVNKit seems not to be supported at the time of this writing. Be sure to install …
   • Subclipse
   • Client Adapter
   • Native Library Adapter
   • JNA Library
   • SVNKit Client Adapter
   • SVNKit Library

   … and – if you want – Subclipse Integration for Mylyn and Subversion Revision Graph. Restart Eclipse after install.

5. Next up is Aptana, or at least the parts that we want from it. By default Aptana comes with a freight full of web dev stuff that we as Flash deveopers probably wont ever need. However I find it useful to have a decent HTML, CSS and Javascript editor at hand.
   Grab the Aptana update URL from their site (probably http://update.aptana.com/update/studio/3.4 ) and proceed the same way as with Subclipse. Aptana will first install a bootstrap installer after which Eclipse is restarted and then starts with the real installation. At that point you are able to choose which components of Aptana you want to install. I choose the following …
   • Aptana Editor Infrastructure
   • HTML Editor
   • CSS Editor
   • Javascript Editor

   Let it download and install those parts. After install and Eclipse restart for some strange reason Aptana will continue to nag us with the install dialog to install other parts of the Aptana package (probably the Aptana Web Development Tools). But we don’t want all that baggage, right?! To get rid of the install nag, press cancel, quit Eclipse and then do the following …

   • navigate to Eclipse/features and delete or move the
     com.aptana.ide.feature.eclipseXX. aptana.bootstrap _X.X.X.XXXXX-XXXXXXXX folder.
   • navigate to Eclipse/plugins and delete or move the files:
     com.aptana.ide.eclipseXX.aptana.bootstrap_X.X.X.XXXXX.jar
     com.aptana.ide.server.portal_X.X.X.XXXXXX.jar
     org.mortbay.jetty_X.X.XX.vXXXXXXXXXXXX.jar

   Removing the first three parts kills the install nag. The last file is not really necessary to delete but doing so prevents a feature of Aptana that establishes a HTML preview server even though we only want to build Flash projects.

6. At last we install our main tool, FDT. Get the update URL from the FDT website, add it to your Eclipse Software Updates dialog as usual and proceed to install. I choose the latest beta which is at http://fdt.powerflasher.com/update_beta/. Installing FDT might take a while as the package is quite large, including a shipped version of the Flex SDK.
7. Finished! Enjoy your light-weight (in Eclipse terms) setup and start coding your soul out! I hope this guide was useful for anyone to get their Eclipse install right! However I’m by no means an Eclipse expert so if you got any hints or improvement notes to make the install even better let us know!

Besides that Alcon is now code-signed there is exactly one new feature in v3.1 which I called Key Tracer. You can toggle Key Tracing Mode from the Log menu. If you enable it you are able to press any keys and their key code (and if available character code) will be listed in Alcon’s output window which is a useful feature if you want to know the codes for some specific keys quickly.

More features where planned (and already started) like a Search function, Log Level Filtering and even a Calculator but these haven’t made it finished yet into v3 so most of them will come with version 4, which is – yet again – a complete re-write (I do loathe my source code that is over one year old ).

The newest version can as always be found here.

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.

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

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!

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.

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.

The Dice class (and it’s supporting classes) are rather elaborated, using for example the Linear Congruential algorithm in the process of generating ‘true’ random numbers so it might not be the most speed-optimized method for calculating random numbers. For absolute performance the LCA and rounding routines can be removed to speed up calculations.

Using the Dice class is very simple! For example rolling two ten-sided dice can be done with the following call …

var result:int = Dice.tenSided(2);

… rolling the percentile die is even simpler as it does not need any arguments. It always returns a value between 1 and 100 …

var result:int = Dice.percentile();

… the class also provides the roll method with that any x-sided die could be rolled, 3 sixteen-sided dice for instance …

var result:int = Dice.roll(16, 3);

The following small Flex application uses the Dice class and can be used to test dice throw probability according to the bell curve (the more dice are used the lower the probability to roll boundary results).

(Please open the article to see the Flash content.)

Update: The Dice class is now part of the hexagonLib and can be found here.

Makes me wonder why nobody else has yet written anything about this bug … when using any container component like for example a Panel or TitleWindow with a different borderStyle than the default, e.g. borderStyle: solid all your contents of that container reach into the the chrome of the Panel/Window/etc. pretty much messing up your layout. How could this escape the eyes of Adobe’s Flex devs? Here’s the thread at Adobe’s Flex forum. This is bad because it sort of prevents me from writing any Flex/AIR applications until this issue has been fixed, I’m using a custom theme for all my projects that use a solid borderStyle (similar to the one used in the Flex Style Explorer). The marvels of open beta software pushed by corporations for mere publicity purpose!