Monthly Archives: November 2008

new Sprite() One-liner

By Zevan | November 14, 2008
CLICK HERE TO COPY
Actionscript:
  1. var s:Sprite = Sprite(addChild(new Sprite()));

A way to make a new sprite, add it to the display list and store a reference to it.

Figured this out on my own... but have since seen it around on a few flash blogs here and there... thought it deserved a post.

Posted in instantiation, one-liners | Tagged | Leave a comment

Alphabet with Base36 and Binary

By Zevan | November 13, 2008
CLICK HERE TO COPY
Actionscript:
  1. var canvas:BitmapData=new BitmapData(280,100,false,0xefefef);
  2. addChild(new Bitmap(canvas));
  3.  
  4. // pixel alphbet in base36
  5. var alphabet:Array=["", "67erkgi", "e3j6dss", "75rue4u", "c5ltok8", "75s2tji", "75s2tjk", "75rugj2", "95yfnf6", "21blls4", "10nt5xo", "973it1u", "85aef4u", "59lu6nl", "cnz0hbn", "67ej51o", "67eq49c", "67ej53e", "67eq7gy", "66978m4", "6ywdqpw", "95y780c", "53b00as", "8nmdpyi", "5374thm", "53avnus", "6xsfdam"];
  6.  
  7. function drawBase36(num:String, xp:int, yp:int):void {
  8.     // convert base36 to binary
  9.     num=parseInt(num,36).toString(2);
  10.     while (num.length <35) {
  11.         num="0"+num;
  12.     }
  13.     // draw letter
  14.     for (var i:int= 0; i<35; i++) {
  15.         if (num.charAt(i)=="1") {
  16.             canvas.setPixel(i % 5 + xp, int(i / 5) + yp, 0x000000);
  17.         }
  18.     }
  19. }
  20.  
  21. // draw the entire alphabet
  22. for (var i:int = 0; i<alphabet.length; i++) {
  23.     drawBase36(alphabet[i], i * 10,10);
  24. }
  25.  
  26. // draw some words
  27. var words:Array=[0,1,3,20,9,15,14,19,14,9,16,16,5,20,0,9,19,0,3,15,4,5];
  28. for (i = 0; i<words.length; i++) {
  29.     drawBase36(alphabet[words[i]], i * 10,30);
  30. }

I had lots of fun writing this. If you run it in your timeline it will draw this:


... along with the message stored in this array [0,1,3,20,9,15,14,19,14,9,16,16,5,20,0,9,19,0,3,15,4,5].

Binary can be used for representing small images. For every 0 draw white for every 1 draw black. So when the base36 numbers are converted to binary, the 1's and 0's are used to draw each letter.

An interesting side note is that counting in binary to some very high numbers will enumerate all possible two color images at a given size. There are tons of projects related to this... here is one I found with a quick google search: every icon

I also found the wikipedia entry on base36 to be interesting. Apparently base36 can be called hexatridecimal, sexatrigesimal, hexatrigesimal or alphadecimal.

Posted in BitmapData, pixel manipulation, strings | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

2D Z-Sort

By Zevan | November 12, 2008
CLICK HERE TO COPY
Actionscript:
  1. var shapes:Array = new Array();
  2.  
  3. for (var i:int = 0; i<300; i++){
  4.     var s:Shape = new Shape();
  5.     s.x = Math.random()* stage.stageWidth;
  6.     s.y = Math.random()* stage.stageHeight;
  7.     s.graphics.lineStyle(0,0x000000);
  8.     s.graphics.beginFill(0xCCCCCC);
  9.     s.graphics.drawCircle(0,0, Math.random()*s.y / 5);
  10.     shapes.push(s);
  11. }
  12.  
  13. // comment this out to remove sorting
  14. shapes.sortOn("width", Array.NUMERIC);
  15.  
  16. for (i = 0; i<shapes.length; i++){
  17.     addChild(shapes[i]);
  18. }

This uses Array.sortOn() to do some basic z-sorting based on the width property of some circle shapes.

Posted in arrays, sortOn | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Set Multiple Properties

By Zevan | November 11, 2008
CLICK HERE TO COPY
Actionscript:
  1. // set multiple properties of an Object
  2. function setProps(o:*, props:Object):void{
  3.     for (var key:String in props){
  4.          o[key] = props[key];
  5.     }
  6. }
  7.  
  8. // example:
  9.  
  10. var s:Sprite = new Sprite();
  11. s.graphics.beginFill(0);
  12. s.graphics.drawRect(0,0,10,10);
  13. addChild(s);
  14.  
  15. // set some properties
  16. setProps(s, {x:100, y:100, scaleX:2, scaleY:2, rotation:45});

This was inspired by tweening engines like TweenLite.

Basically the same thing using a with statement:

CLICK HERE TO COPY
Actionscript:
  1. with(s) x = 100, y = 100, scaleX = 2, scaleY = 2, rotation = 45;

Posted in Object, properties | Leave a comment