Starting next week, Branden and Keenan will be writing guest posts for INSPIRE, a publication from the Adobe Experience Design Team. Specifically, we will be writing about the recently released jackassworld pranks application that we helped develop. We will touch on the technical and non-technical challenges of developing the casual social game, as well as our ideas for the social gaming platform.
Be sure to head over to INSPIRE and check out the great content they have, and definitely check it out next week when we'll be featured!
Topics:
Communicating between AIR applications and external SWFs
Overview of the "fecal dynamics" engine - taking PNGs + sound effects + pixel bender and creating something really gross!
The struggles of creating a truly occasionally connected application
Using JSFL and custom components to create custom developer tools (we created a custom set of tools for creating the ragdolls used in the skit-based pranks)
AIR, Flex, & FacebookConnect: How to authenticate your desktop application with Facebook using FacebookConnect
When you slap the [Inspectable] tag above a getter/setter pair in an ActionScript class you can then go and attach your class to a symbol in Flash (and tell it that the symbol is a component) and WHA-LA! you have a property that's inspectable in the Component Inspector panel.
That's all fine and good. The problem is when you're trying to actually USE that property. The problem is that your component FIRST has it's constructor called and THEN all of the properties that you set in the Component Inspector get set. Whoops.
What you need is some way of making sure that you have some code that runs AFTER all of your properties are set. Well, the easiest way to do this is to tap into the oft-ignored Event.EXIT_FRAME event as I explained in this answer I posted up on StackOverflow.
Check it out! Tom Krcha of Flash Realtime did an interview with Branden at Flash in the Can (FITC) in Amsterdam. The interview is more of a human interest piece. If you've ever wondered what voice to use when you read his posts, now you know.
