Monthly Archives: April 2010

Drawings and Animations

By Zevan | April 30, 2010

So there are 434 posts on this site to date. I hope to keep posting but it isn’t always easy to come up with new ideas. Another project I’ve been working on is a series of drawings and interactive animations over at my other website (shapevent). I’ve been creating entries for this part of shapevent pretty regularly - go have a look:

http://www.shapevent.com/log/

Posted in Announcements, projects | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Circle Mouse Toy

By Zevan | April 24, 2010
CLICK HERE TO COPY
Actionscript:
  1. var circles:Array = [];
  2. for (var i:int = 0; i<30; i++){
  3.     var c:Sprite = makeCircle();
  4.     c.x = stage.stageWidth / 2;
  5.     c.y = stage.stageHeight / 2;
  6.     c.scaleX = 1 + i/2;
  7.     c.scaleY = 0.5 + i/4;
  8.     addChild(c);
  9.     circles.push(c);
  10. }
  11. addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, onLoop);
  12. function onLoop(evt:Event):void {
  13.     circles[0].y += (mouseY - circles[0].y) / 4;
  14.     for (var i:int = 1; i<circles.length; i++){
  15.         var pre:Sprite = circles[i - 1];
  16.         circles[i].y += (pre.y - circles[i].y) / 4;
  17.     }
  18. }
  19. function makeCircle():Sprite{
  20.     var s:Sprite = new Sprite();
  21.     with(s.graphics){
  22.         lineStyle(0,0x000000);
  23.         drawCircle(0,0,10);
  24.     }
  25.     return s;
  26. }

This morning I woke up with a vision of this simple mouse toy in my head. I decided I might as well code it up... I may do more simple things like this in the next few days, it's relaxing.

Posted in Graphics, misc, motion | Tagged , , | 5 Comments

TextLineMetrics

By Zevan | April 23, 2010
CLICK HERE TO COPY
Actionscript:
  1. var word:String = "TextLineMetrics are useful";
  2. var letters:Array = word.split("");
  3.  
  4. var pre:TextField;
  5. for (var i:int = 0; i<letters.length; i++){
  6.     var t:TextField = new TextField();
  7.     t.defaultTextFormat = new TextFormat("Arial", 40);
  8.     t.autoSize = TextFieldAutoSize.LEFT;
  9.     t.textColor = int(Math.random() * 0xFFFFFF);
  10.     t.text = letters[i];
  11.     if (pre){
  12.         var metrics:TextLineMetrics = pre.getLineMetrics(0);
  13.         t.x = metrics.width + pre.x;
  14.     }
  15.     pre = t;
  16.     addChild(t);
  17. }

Sometimes you need to do something to a TextField one letter at a time. One way to do this is to create a separate TextField for each letter and position them based on the TextLineMetrics object. This snippet creates textFields for a string and colors each TextField randomly.

Posted in string manipulation, strings | Tagged , , | 6 Comments

QuickBox2D Editor

By Zevan | April 16, 2010

When I first created QuickBox2D I simultaneously developed a simple editor to aid in the creation of complex simulations. The result is very alpha and should be used cautiously. There is no UI, it is entirely key controlled. It generates actionscript files that can be copy and pasted into working simulations. It also has a preview mode for previewing simulations as you develop them. This is by no means a full featured editor, there is a good deal of work to be done on it. I am releasing the code as a simple zip for people who would like to develop it further. If there is enough interest I'll create some kind of code repositiory, but for now I'm just releasing the below zip.

Take a look at the editor

Download the Source

I may post further instructions for the editor in the future... Remember to save your work frequently and to create new versions for every change that you make to a file.

Suggested Features:
Simple GUI
Base64 encoding for get string

Known Issues:
Making joints that don't touch things can break the preview app.

Posted in QuickBox2D | Tagged , , , , | 27 Comments