One of my big goals when looking for a new job was to seek out someone that knew more about Flash than I did. In my interviews I encountered many bright and knowledgeable individuals; however, I believe I struck gold at Game Show Network’s Facebook development team. I am working side by side with a […] [...more]
One of my big goals when looking for a new job was to seek out someone that knew more about Flash than I did. In my interviews I encountered many bright and knowledgeable individuals; however, I believe I struck gold at Game Show Network’s Facebook development team. I am working side by side with a fellow named Rob Dixon, Rob was on the Adobe Flash team from 2003 – 2010 and additionally co-wrote several manuals and language references on Flash and ActionScript 3.0. Full Article
“An underlying theme I have discovered with Flash is that you are often better off writing your own code than trusting Adobe’s classes and functions, data structures are no exception.” – taken from my flash particle system article After the launch and first few patches of Lego Universe, work at NetDevil has calmed down enough […] [...more]
“An underlying theme I have discovered with Flash is that you are often better off writing your own code than trusting Adobe’s classes and functions, data structures are no exception.” – taken from my flash particle system article
After the launch and first few patches of Lego Universe, work at NetDevil has calmed down enough that I have the time and energy to explore private projects again. The current project I am working on is large and it is still in the design, test, research phase since it needs to very optimized. I saw that I was going to be doing quite a few rectangle intersects and intersection operations (the function that determines whether two rectangles overlap and the function that returns the overlapping rectangle respectively) so I took a look at the speed of Flash’s native rectangle class. I clocked Flash’s intersects function speed at over 150 simple operations (adds, multiplies, and accessing class members all count as one simple operation from my benchmarking series). I thought to myself “I can do better than that” – I was right, and I managed to write a faster intersection function too (free code).
A particle system is the quintessential video game effect used for clouds, fog, mist, smoke, rain, snow, fire, explosions, dust, debris, sparks, magic, spray, splatter, and other phenomenon. They have been around since the early 1980s, William T. Reeves is the inventor, but its most notable debut to the public was when the group that […] [...more]
A particle system is the quintessential video game effect used for clouds, fog, mist, smoke, rain, snow, fire, explosions, dust, debris, sparks, magic, spray, splatter, and other phenomenon. They have been around since the early 1980s, William T. Reeves is the inventor, but its most notable debut to the public was when the group that eventually became Pixar (employed by Lucasfilm Ltd. at the time) used a particle system in Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan (1982) for the ‘genesis effect’. It is mystifying that such a classic creative tool is missing from Flash.
Featured in: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Pop City Blog PittsBlog Tech Burgher Blog and on AM 1360 WMNY The American Entrepreneur 2/28/09 “Ron Morris talks with Todd Waits” [...more]
These are tips I have personally used and have indisputable results. Of all the things you can do to improve performance these are the most effective and efficient changes that you can make. [...more]
These are tips I have personally used and have indisputable results. Of all the things you can do to improve performance these are the most effective and efficient changes that you can make. Full Article
Data structure trials focus on comparing speeds of variables, object types, classes, and the speed at which you can access and modify your data. [...more]
Data structure trials focus on comparing speeds of variables, object types, classes, and the speed at which you can access and modify your data. Full Article
