Monthly Archives: December 2008

25 Lines Contest

By Zevan | December 11, 2008
CLICK HERE TO COPY
Actionscript:
  1. for (var i:int = 1; i<26; i++) with(addChild(new TextField())) x = 10, y = i * 10, text = "line" + i;

code will create 25 TextFields that say "line1", "line2", "line3" etc...

If you don't already know, Keith Peters has started up the 25 line actionscript contest again... The first round of results are in and you can view the 12 finalists swfs and code here.

I was particularly impressed with this one...by Cay Garrido... when I looked at it I really couldn't figure out how that kind of seemingly complex flocking could be done with 25 lines. You can see the code here.

Inspired by the entries, Peters created a strange attractor in 6 lines.

I can't wait to see next months entries.

Posted in misc | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Yahoo Weather RSS

By Zevan | December 10, 2008
CLICK HERE TO COPY
Actionscript:
  1. var temp:Number;
  2. var weatherData:XML;
  3. var yweather:Namespace;
  4.  
  5. var zipcode:String="11211";
  6. var units:String = "f";  // "f" or "c" for Fahrenheit or Celsius
  7.  
  8. var yahooURL:String = "http://weather.yahooapis.com/forecastrss?p=" + zipcode + "&u=" + units;
  9.  
  10. var yahooWeather:URLLoader = new URLLoader();
  11.  
  12. yahooWeather.load(new URLRequest(yahooURL));
  13. yahooWeather.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, onLoaded);
  14.  
  15. function onLoaded(evt:Event):void {
  16.  
  17.     weatherData=new XML(evt.target.data);
  18.     yweather = weatherData.namespace("yweather");
  19.    
  20.     temp = weatherData.channel.item.yweather::condition.@temp;
  21.      
  22.     trace(temp);
  23. }

This snippet comes from a student question about how to get the temperature from yahoo weather.

You could use this snippet to get lots of additional information based on a zipcode... like latitude, longitude, humidity, wind chill etc... The trickiest part of this code is the Namespace stuff... which I find generally annoying... probably just because I'm not used to it.

You can read some detailed info about the content contained in the RSS file here.

Posted in XML, external data | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

2D Vector

By Zevan | December 9, 2008
CLICK HERE TO COPY
Actionscript:
  1. var map:Vector.<Vector.<int>> = new Vector.<Vector.<int>>();
  2. map[0] = new Vector.<int>();
  3. map[0].push(1);
  4. map[0].push(0);
  5. map[0].push(0);
  6.  
  7. map[1] = new Vector.<int>();
  8. map[1].push(0);
  9. map[1].push(1);
  10. map[1].push(0);
  11.  
  12. map[2] = new Vector.<int>();
  13. map[2].push(0);
  14. map[2].push(0);
  15. map[2].push(1);
  16.  
  17. /*
  18. map:
  19. 1,0,0
  20. 0,1,0
  21. 0,0,1
  22. */

This creates a two dimensional Vector of ints (flash 10 player only). The first line is the real snippet... took me a few minutes to get the syntax right the first time I needed a 2D Vector.

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

Draw Spiral

By Zevan | December 8, 2008
CLICK HERE TO COPY
Actionscript:
  1. stage.frameRate = 30;
  2. var xp:Number = 0;
  3. var yp:Number = 0;
  4. var counter:Number = 0;
  5. graphics.lineStyle(0,0x999999);
  6. graphics.moveTo(200,200);
  7. addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, onLoop);
  8. function onLoop(evt:Event):void {
  9.     for (var i:int = 0; i <20; i++) {
  10.         counter += .05;
  11.         xp=200 + counter * Math.cos(counter);
  12.         yp=200 + counter * Math.sin(counter);
  13.         graphics.lineTo(xp, yp);
  14.     }
  15.     if (counter> 400) {
  16.         removeEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, onLoop);
  17.     }
  18. }

Draws a spiral over time.

Posted in Graphics, motion | Tagged , , | Leave a comment