http://www.automatastudios.com Fri, 21 Nov 2008 18:45:00 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Adobe recently announced the first public release of a research project code-named Alchemy. Alchemy is a C/C++ to ActionScript compiler that opens up a huge new world for the Flash platform. Automata Studios has worked closely with engineers over at Adobe for the past few months testing Alchemy and preparing some ... http://www.automatastudios.com/2008/11/21/understanding-adobe-alchemy/ A project we're working on requires third parties to be able to load SWFs of their own design into an overall "shell" that we're building. So far, so good - particularly with the new unloadAndStop method that's part of Flash Player 10. That means I can fully unload the SWFs ... http://www.automatastudios.com/2008/10/16/spiking-greedy-swfs/ Recently, Branden and I were tasked to build a Flash UI on top of a web service.  Seems like pretty standard development...but, as you have to know by now, nothing is ever "standard" at Automata.  After some research, trial & error, and hand-wringing, we realized that the device we were ... http://www.automatastudios.com/2008/10/15/soap-is-just-xml/ Automata Studios is proud to announce the hiring of Maureen Farrington (that's me!), project manager extrordinaire.  Branden likes to add the title "Producer" to describe my position since my job will consist of "making things happen" as I ease into actual code-producing duties. This is my first foray back into world ... http://www.automatastudios.com/2008/09/05/welcome-aboard-maureen/ Yes, it's been a while. We've been busy. The good news (for you) is that we've been making fun new things (i.e. code libraries) that we'll be sharing soon! Now, on to the actual topic of this post - finite state machines. What is a finite state machine you ask? Well ... http://www.automatastudios.com/2008/07/24/simplifying-code-with-finite-state-machines/ During a recent project of ours we found ourselves in the position where the developer creating the server-side code was a full 5 time zones away. This meant that we often had to do debugging over email. This was, as one would expect, excruciatingly slow. The issues that arose during ... http://www.automatastudios.com/2008/04/09/charles-a-great-web-application-debugging-tool/ Branden and I were working in the office today when Branden came over and asked me if I've ever run into the following problem: You are creating tweens using the Tween class in AS3. These tweens are inside of a method (or a loop). The tweens appear to ... http://www.automatastudios.com/2007/12/11/does-your-tween-stop-in-the-middle/ Just as a public service message - it's not "auto-mata" - it rhymes with "manamana" as demonstrated by the Muppet Show: (Thanks to Tom Pizer over at Performtech who dug up the video) http://www.automatastudios.com/2007/12/10/how-to-pronounce-our-name/ I've been dealing with piles of two types of files that are somewhat awkward to work with on the Mac - ZIP files and EPS files. On the PC I can just double click on a ZIP file and peer into what's inside without actually unzipping it, on the Mac, ... http://www.automatastudios.com/2007/11/27/making-leopards-quicklook-feature-more-useful/ The slides from Branden's presentation at FITC Hollywood 2007, Flash on the Beach 2007, and FITC Winnipeg 2007 - "The Nooks and Crannies of ActionScript 3" are now available for download. Enjoy - and if you have any questions or comments drop us a line. The Nooks and Crannies of ActionScript ... http://www.automatastudios.com/2007/11/17/the-nooks-and-crannies-of-actionscript-3/