H1DD3N.R350URC3 » Tools

Alcon 3 Preview

sascha — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 05:05:31 +0000

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!

AIR application: FEAT (Freelancer’s Estimation Assistance Tool)

sascha — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 17:16:32 +0000

I finally came to play a bit more with AIR and it’s specific features and wrote a small tool that is helpful for freelancers like you and me to make pricing estimation calculations. With FEAT you can calculate your hourly rate based on your expenses and some other factors and it provides a wizard to calculate project pricing estimates (another thing that is hard to get used to for many freelancing starters). It also stores all your values and changes its color if you want and can cook coffee and wash vegetables and …. ok wait, the last part is not true but still, this is a nifty little tool! Find more info and download at this LINK!

Alcon 2.0 Public Beta released

sascha — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 08:59:55 +0000

I’m happy to announce that Alcon 2.0 has finally been made public. The new version was completely rewritten using ActionScript 3 and Flex 2 and contains several new features that I missed in version 1. The most significant additions are the following:

- Output of up to four log files. You can define which log files to output by changing the settings in the AlconConfig.xml file. Like this it is easily possible to watch the flashlog.txt file that can be created with the Flash Debug Player (more info on this here and here).
- Alcon now features an Inspect panel for inspecting objects.
- A hexadecimal dump of an object can be made. Don’t ask me what this might be useful for now but you never know.
- Alcon now features a stopwatch that can be used to measure passed time more easily.
- You are now able to monitor the current host application’s stage framerate and memory usage.

For more info and download check out the Alcon page over at osflash.org.

Please note that this is a beta version! It still has bugs and the Debug class for ActionScript 2.0 is not yet included.

Tools of the Trade Part 5: Filter Forge

sascha — Thu, 28 Dec 2006 04:21:06 +0000

Filter Forge is a new software for Windows that allows creating Photoshop filters in a tree node based editor. Yep, thats right! You design filters by connecting components together with virtual wires. Imagine the possibilities! The application ships with a standalone tool as well as a Photoshop PlugIn and after you played around a bit with the trial version you might want to file this tool under “apps with that I could spend the whole day long, experimenting with it”!

>> Continue reading "Tools of the Trade Part 5: Filter Forge"

Tools of the Trade Part 4: Console

sascha — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 09:08:23 +0000

This is not really a true productivity tool but I think it has enough value that it deserves to be mentioned. If you’re on Windows and work with the Command Prompt a lot, you might be fed up with the overly dull look of the black Windows command console and you look over to the Linux guys with their stylish terminals with envy. Then it’s time for you to grab and install Console, a Command Prompt enhancement that adds several useful features like multiple tabs, text editor-like text selection, different background types and – the real deal – transparent background. This alone is reason enough to throw the old console look overboard. The console font as well as window size and position can be configured. Get the latest release version 1.5 at sourceforge.net/projects/console/ for free.

Tools of the Nuisance Part 1: XMLSpy

sascha — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 15:03:49 +0000

If you’re working with XML on Windows and you like your tool full-featured there’s a good chance that you have worked with Altova XMLSpy, a first of all very good and powerful XML editor but on second look becomes a nasty bugger that calls home as if there is no tomorrow.
Thats fine and good! Let them try it to call it home as long as they want, I can block it with my Firewall! It was noted by some other blogs that XMLSpy not only transfers data to check the legal ownership but also transfers private data that is none of Altova’s business, so there is good reason to block the spy (what a fitting name!) off!
But what if you want to use the Eclipse (or Visual Studio) XMLSpy PlugIn? If you block Java’s JRE, Eclipse also can’t connect to the web anymore. But fear not, there’s an easy solution. Here’s how to block off XMLSpy …
Go straight to your WINDOWS/system32/drivers/etc/ folder and add the following line to the host file:

127.255.255.255 link.altova.com

This redirects every access to link.altova.com to the local machine, thus blocking of connection attempts. With that you’re free to let Eclipse access the net while XMLSpy has to stay inside the system.

Tools Of The Trade Part 3: FreeMind

sascha — Sun, 23 Jul 2006 15:22:52 +0000

In my book “How to become a Flash Game Developer of World Class” I surely will not forget to mention this useful tool … FreeMind, a Mind Mapping tool that is not only free but also very intuitive! It is written in Java and therefore available for all common Platforms. Where other Mind Mapping tools or even MS Visio fails with being intuitive, FreeMind comes to the rescue!

You can lay out all imaginal hierarchical structures, be it your shopping list, you time plan or the story concept for your next game. After creating a new document with FreeMind, it has one root node. From now on you can add child nodes with the Insert Key, add sibling nodes below with the Enter key or above with Shift+Enter. This way it becomes a breeze to create a large tree structure of your project.
You can assign different color and font styles to your nodes. Another useful feature is the ability to link two nodes together with a bezier line. The tool has a MinMap and a Browse Mode and you can even browse your harddisks file structure with it if you want. You can also link files to nodes.

This is the number one tool I would recommend for brainstorming but it is very useful to lay out projects in more detail as well. There is also a FreeMind Document Reader that has been written with Flash, though I’m not sure if it can be downloaded and used offline.

Alcon v1.0.8 – Added AS3.0 Support

sascha — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 16:12:48 +0000

I’ve updated Alcon (ActionScript Logging Console) to v1.0.8! The only thing that has been added in this version is a Debug Class for use with ActionScript 3.0, everything else hasn’t been changed. The AS3.0 Debug Class can be found in the com.hexagonstar.util.debug package.
Note that you must use Debug.trace() since I’m not even sure if it’s somehow possible with the MXMLC to redirect to a custom trace method (like it is possible with MTASC). If you got any hints on this, please let me know! The new version can be found as always on it’s page at the Flash Game Programming Wiki! Enjoy!

mdm Rebus – Turning AS3/Flex2 applications into .NET2 executables

sascha — Sat, 01 Jul 2006 02:05:38 +0000

mdm is working on a new tool named Rebus that can turn AS3 (and Flex2) files into .NET2 executables. It’s still in beta but registered users can download and test it. I’ve did a quick test and compiled my SWNameGen with Rebus and it went surprisingly smooth and flawless. It will offer some new and interesting extensions, to quote from the mdm support forums …

>> Continue reading "mdm Rebus – Turning AS3/Flex2 applications into .NET2 executables"

Tools Of The Trade Part 2: Hi-Logic MainType

sascha — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 06:26:59 +0000

MainType is a relatively new font managing tool (for Win only) that puts Extensis Suitcase to shame! I’ve been trying Suitcase for a while but finding and activating fonts with it was a major pain in the butt. You had to dig around in the preview list on the right and then to activate the font you once again had to search for the same font in the left side list (all with no mousewheel support).

After I was fed up with Suitcase I went with OT1 fontmanager for quite a while but this manager, while a crapload better than Suitcase, runs a bit unstable and doesn’t support some important formats. It also can only install/uninstall fonts but not activate them temporarily. There are also a ton of other font managing tools out there but almost all I’ve came across so far didn’t fulfill my requirements.

>> Continue reading "Tools Of The Trade Part 2: Hi-Logic MainType"

Flex Application: Star Wars Name Generator

sascha — Thu, 11 May 2006 05:35:24 +0000

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).

(Please open the article to view the Flash media.)

Tools Of The Trade Part 1: Alias SketchBook Pro

sascha — Mon, 25 Jul 2005 13:32:32 +0000

As a one-man-game developer of worldclass (exaggeration intended!) it’s good to have a bunch of tools at hand that help with the tasks for creating games! In this series I will introduce helpful ‘nice to have’ or even ‘must have’ tools that make a game developers/designers day easier. In this part I will cover Alias SketchBook Pro …

I’ve bought myself a periphery some days ago about which I was pondering to buy for a long time already, a Wacom Intuos 3 graphics tablet! I choose the smallest version 4×5 since I’m not a drawing pro and have limited desktop real estate and the smallest one suffices pretty well for just some sketching.

>> Continue reading "Tools Of The Trade Part 1: Alias SketchBook Pro"

Alcon – ActionScript Logging Console

sascha — Mon, 25 Jul 2005 13:30:22 +0000

Alcon is a lightweight external output console for Flash ActionScript that allows developers to view debugging information without relying on the Flash IDE. SWF files can be debugged and monitored no matter if they are in the web browser, Flash Player or a standalone executable. While that Alcon tries to keep inclusion into projects as simple as possible. In fact all that needs to be done is importing the Debug class into a project and you are ready to send debug information to the console with a simple Debug.trace() command.
Included into a project Alcon keeps a small footprint and takes less than a Kilobyte of filesize while still offering some other helpful features.