I just tried packaging a game, written in AS3, for my iPad, PlayBook and BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha device – works pretty well!
You can play this game, a clone of the Intellivision classic, Worm Whomper, here.
Category Archives: Software Engineering
Chinese Handwriting Recognition App
Unlike the iPad, the BlackBerry PlayBook has rather poor international keyboard support, with no method for entering chinese characters. I like the way iOS achieves this, so went about building my own version in ActionScript. Continue reading Chinese Handwriting Recognition App
SmoothBitmap – How to ensure Bitmap pixel smoothing in AS3
A common oversight in Flash projects, when using a Bitmap with loaded content is that Flash will revert a Bitmap’s smoothing parameter to false when you replace its bitmapData. That is, when the data loads into the Bitmap, anti-aliasing will get turned off. This is simple enough to fix, but since you may not know if someone is going to replace the bitmapData of a Bitmap you have created – then it’s much better to code defensively for it.
This little SmoothBitmap class is for just such an occasion. Instantiate it like a regular Bitmap and, no matter what another developer does with it, smooth, anti aliased pixels when scaling/rotating will be ensured. Enjoy 🙂
CODING WRONGS – Where do I start with the bad?
It gets scary out there sometimes. During my freelance career I’ve worked at a lot of different companies and have seen such coding horrors as you cannot imagine. So I thought I’d start immortalising some of them – so that we can all learn better coding practices, by looking at the bad.
Starter for 10 – What’s wrong with this picture?
public function doSomething(stuff:String):void
{
var newPixels:BitmapData = new BitmapData(someUint, someUint, true, 0);
someBlitUtil.blitStuffTo(newPixels, stuff);
someBitmap.bitmapData = newPixels;
}
Did you spot the fubar? It’s not an obvious one. Continue reading CODING WRONGS – Where do I start with the bad?