Innovation through Creation - Flash | PHP | HTML | XML | CSS | SQL - By Eliott Robson

Artificial Intelligence – overview

Oct19
2010 Leave a Comment Written by Eliott
This entry is part 1 of 15 in the series Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence has always fascinated me. To be able to take a lot of options and return the best one is hard. And I’m not talking robots, I’m talking RTS’s or simple classics like ‘naughts and crosses’.

I’m not ‘just’ talking though – that’s right, we’re coding…

The steps we’ll take:

  1. Identify what we’re going to do (turn based logic)
  2. Logic
  3. Simple ‘part code’ examples

And then

  1. Identify how turn based logic can be applied to ‘naughts and crosses’.
  2. Logic
  3. Advanced logic and simple integration
  4. Full integration
  5. Final product

And by the end we ‘should’ have some A.I

Posted in Ramblings - Tagged

Alternating table colours (with Php)

Oct17
2010 Leave a Comment Written by Eliott

Easy – css!

With CSS3 came a brand new feature… Alternate row colours :) 

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tr:nth-child(even) {background-color: #000000}
tr:nth-child(odd) {background-color: #F0F0F0}

Simple, no – not really. Many browsers cant read CSS3 – rendering that useless. Your probably going to want to use something better then…

In ‘for’ loops!

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<style>
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	.even { background-color:#000000; }
	.odd { background-color:#F0F0F0;}
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</style>
<?php
echo "<table>";
userNames = new Array(John, Fred, Bill, Connor);
for($i=0; $i<userNames.length; $i++){
	if($i % 2 == 0){
		$class = "even";
	}else{
		$class = "odd";
	}
	echo "<tr class=\"$class\">";
	echo "<td>userNames[$i]</td>";
	echo "</tr>";
	echo "<table>";
}
?>

Simple…

In ‘foreach’ loops

Here you can use the same principle…

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foreach(userNames as $i => $value)

and then you can easily check if it’s even or odd using the above code(s)

Posted in HTML, Php, Tutorials - Tagged , , , ,

AS3 finding key codes

Oct15
2010 Leave a Comment Written by Eliott

I’ve given you an example – now to find em

I could give you a list – plain and simple. Nah let’s code it…

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stage.addEventListener(KeyboardEvent.KEY_DOWN,key_Down)
stage.addEventListener(KeyboardEvent.KEY_UP,key_Up)
 
function key_Down(event:KeyboardEvent):void{
    trace("Key Pressed: " + String.fromCharCode(event.charCode) + " (Key code: " + event.keyCode + " Character code: " + event.charCode + ")");
}
function key_Up(event:KeyboardEvent):void{
    trace("Key Released: " + String.fromCharCode(event.charCode) + " (Key code: " + event.keyCode + " Character code: " + event.charCode + ")");
}

Now we’re on the same lines!

Posted in Actionscript, Flash, Tutorials - Tagged ,

AS3 key press detection

Oct13
2010 Leave a Comment Written by Eliott

AS3, hmmm

AS3 is very different from AS2, the main difference being that all the functions are different and variables need to be pre-defined for use. The code I use is this:

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import flash.events.Event
 
var keyUP:Boolean = false
var keyDOWN:Boolean = false
var keyRIGHT:Boolean = false
var keyLEFT:Boolean = false
 
stage.addEventListener(KeyboardEvent.KEY_DOWN,key_Down)
stage.addEventListener(KeyboardEvent.KEY_UP,key_Up)
stage.addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME,enter_Frame)
 
function key_Down(event:KeyboardEvent){
	switch (event.keyCode){
		case 37 :
			keyLEFT = true
			break;
		case 38 :
			keyUP = true
			break;
		case 39 :
			keyRIGHT = true
			break;
		case 40 :
			keyDOWN = true
			break;
	}
}
 
function key_Up(event:KeyboardEvent){
	switch (event.keyCode){
		case 37 :
			keyLEFT = false
			break;
		case 38 :
			keyUP = false
			break;
		case 39 :
			keyRIGHT = false
			break;
		case 40 :
			keyDOWN = false
			break;
	}
}
 
function enter_Frame(event:Event){
	if (keyUP){
		trace("up")
	}
	if (keyDOWN){
		trace("down")
	}
	if (keyLEFT){
		trace("left")
	}
	if (keyRIGHT){
		trace("right")
	}
}

replacing the trace events with whatever you want to happen and replacing the case values with those of other keys (as applicable).

Posted in Actionscript, Flash, Tutorials - Tagged ,

Live form field checking

Oct11
2010 Leave a Comment Written by Eliott

There may come a point where you may need to check a live form field (input)

The answer is simple…
Using a “onChanged” handler and some substrings.

Ok, so for this example i’m going to be using “serials”, say for example you sold your flash’s and had serials, you could remove the serial I use and replace it with a server request etc…

So – the code!

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stop()
Serial = "sheep"
_root.InputBox.text.background = true
_root.InputBox.onChanged = function(){
	if(InputBox.length!=0){
		SerialNum = InputBox.length
	}else{
		SerialNum = -1
	}
	if(InputBox.text == Serial.substr(0,SerialNum)){
		_root.InputBox.backgroundColor = "0x00FF00";
	}else{
		_root.InputBox.backgroundColor = "0xFF0000";
	}
	if(InputBox.text == Serial){
		Unlocked = true
	}
	if(Unlocked == true){
		_root.nextFrame()
	}
}

As you can see, I first set a serial then using the onChanged event check the text box’s content. I calculate the length of the input in the text box and then with a substring calculate how much of the serial is correct. In this example I have included visuals but you would probably not have a changing background – to decrease predictability of the code. The usage of this would be that you could effectively do this 4 times for separate text-boxes. Or if you used logic then for example – the last four digits add to 10 and last eight times for 1000 etc… As this could easily be applied using the template above.

Posted in Actionscript, Flash, Tutorials - Tagged ,

HTML Special Characters

Oct09
2010 Leave a Comment Written by Eliott

For when regular isn’t good enough

You never get urls such as:

http://example.com/page 2
instead you would get
http://example.com/page%202

In flash when importing values such as value = +100
it would be decoded as value = 100
dropping the + as a number, what if it’s a string? Then we need to preserve this and this is where the special characters come in!

Use the table below to help you:

READ MORE »

Posted in HTML, Tutorials - Tagged , , , , ,

HTML parameters (with javascript) – part 2

Oct06
2010 Leave a Comment Written by Eliott

Part 2, the search function

OK, so we want to display the correct parameter via a function:

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<script language="javascript">
	function findParameter(search){
		var parameters = location.search
		var parametersStart = parameters.substr(1)
		var parametersList = parametersStart.split("&")
		var param = 0
		while (param < parametersList.length){
  			parametersList[param] = parametersList[param].split("=")
  			param += 1
  		}
		for(var searchID = 0; searchID <= parametersList.length-1; searchID++){
			if(parametersList[searchID][0] == search){
				found = parametersList[searchID][1]
			}
  		}
  		return found
	}
	document.write("Name = "+findParameter("name"))
</script>

and that’s it…

http://www.stormation.info/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/parameters3.html?name=john&age=30&location=earth

you should get Name = john

ok, what’s happening in the function…

we are making each element into sub elements:

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parametersList[param] = parametersList[param].split("=")

so

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parametersList[0]

would be name,john and

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parametersList[0][0]

would be name and

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parametersList[0][1]

would be john. The rest should be pretty simple, if not tell me :)

Posted in HTML, Javascript, Syntax - Tagged , ,

HTML parameters (with javascript)

Oct04
2010 3 Comments Written by Eliott

What are parameters?

Take an url such as example.com/test.html?name=john
the name parameter is john…

Ok, so let’s see… We could just start at the ? and read onwards right?

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<script language="javascript">
	var parameters = location.search.substr(1).split("?")
	document.write(parameters)
</script>

and when I visit http://www.stormation.info/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/parameters1.html?name=John I get name=John, so it’s working but when I visit http://www.stormation.info/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/parameters1.html?name=John&age=30 I get name=John&age=30.

It’s working but we need to parse the data… Lets try splitting it up.

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<script language="javascript">
	var parameters = location.search
	var parametersStart = parameters.substr(1)
	var parametersList = parametersStart.split("&")
	var param = 0
	while (param < parametersList.length){
  		alert(parametersList[param])
  		param += 1
  	}
	document.write(parametersStart)
</script>

Ok, so we find the search items – remove the ? then split it into sections based on the & sign. Then we loop through them all running alerts!

http://www.stormation.info/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/parameters2.html?name=John&age=30&location=Earth

To be concluded!

Posted in HTML, Javascript, Tutorials - Tagged , ,

Sniper game tutorial – part 5

Oct02
2010 1 Comment Written by Eliott
This entry is part 6 of 6 in the series Sniper Game Tutorial

Finalising the scope

This is the last tutorial about the scope and will just be showing you how you can improve it…

Ok, so remember when I said is was all about the rotation of the scope – well you may want to reduce it, so on the gun movieclip inside the stage movieclip update it with the following:

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onClipEvent(load){
	function updateGun(){
		m = {x:_root._xmouse, y:_root._ymouse, sw: Stage.width, sh: Stage.height}
	}
	function updatePos(){
		_x = (((m.x/m.sw)*m.sw)/4)+_width/2
		_y = ((m.y/m.sh)*m.sh)/4
		difx = (m.x-(_parent._x+_x))
		dify = (m.y-(_parent._y+_y))
		radians = Math.atan2(dify, difx)/2
		degrees = 360*radians/(2*Math.PI)
		_rotation = degrees+(135/2)
	}
	updateGun()
	updatePos()
}
onClipEvent(enterFrame){
	updateGun()
	updatePos()
}

Lines 10 and 12 are all that interest me – see the “/2″, this is the reduction. You could change it to “/3″ if you wanted an even bigger reduction…

Now blurring, you wouldn’t actually be able to see the scope contents clearly so let’s blur them…

So on the frame in the gun movieclip update the code with this:

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import flash.display.BitmapData
import flash.geom.Matrix
import flash.filters.BlurFilter
 
updateScope = function(){
	bitmapScope = new BitmapData(Scoper._width*6, Scoper._height*6, false, 0x00000000)
	scopeReflect = this.createEmptyMovieClip("scopeView", 2)
	scopeReflect.attachBitmap(bitmapScope, 3)
	offset = new Matrix()
	offset.tx = -_root._xmouse+(Scoper._width*3)
	offset.ty = -_root._ymouse+(Scoper._height*3)
	bitmapScope.draw(_root.Background,offset)
	scopeView._x = Scoper._x-(Scoper._width*3)
	scopeView._y = Scoper._y-(Scoper._height*2.5)
	scopeView._rotation = -_rotation
	scopeView.setMask(Scoper)
	Blur = new BlurFilter(10,10,1)
	Filters = new Array()
	Filters.push(Blur)
	scopeView.filters = Filters
	Shadow.swapDepths(getNextHighestDepth())
}
 
onEnterFrame = function(){
	updateScope()
}

Note line 3 where we import the API and lines 17 – 20 where we implement it!
And you should get:

Get Adobe Flash player

And because I’m so kind – the sources…

  Sniper - CS4/CS5/CS5 Uncompressed Universal (173.6 KiB, 150 hits)

Posted in Actionscript, Flash, Tutorials - Tagged , ,

Flash to javascript integrating

Sep30
2010 Leave a Comment Written by Eliott

Flash and javascript eh?

Ok, so these are completely differerent languages and to be honest should not be able to talk to each other – but they can…

For the following you will need your flash player set to Flash Player 7, and that’s very important!

Ok, so firstly you need a html document – a blank one could be:

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<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />
<title>Stormation's blank page!</title>
</head>
 
<body>
</body>
</html>

Now to insert your functions, so in the head of your page add the script tags containing your javascript – for example:

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<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />
<title>Untitled Document</title>
<script type="text/javascript">
function popup(){
	alert('Hello')
}
</script>
</head>

and then on a button or the timeline (in Flash) add the code:

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getURL("javascript: popup()")

that’s it – just remember it’s only Flash Player 7 as it was a security hole and was removed in Flash Player 8…

Posted in Actionscript, Flash, HTML, Javascript, Tutorials - Tagged , , ,
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