Daryl Teo

Gah! What is with all the clipping issues I get? The problem arises specifically at angles close to multiples of 90. I suppose these are problems arising mathematically due to some special trigonometric properties, and seriously hope they get fixed soon.

Again, of course, the library is still currently in Beta status. So it is probably not perfect. However these are the kind of things I’m hoping they will iron out as time goes along.

Unfortunately, I can’t seem to grasp 3D Rendering techniques, and I won’t be making my own engine anytime soon! There goes my Rubik’s Cube idea…

Seems that my contact form has finally been spidered by spammers. Therefore, I will be taking it down, since it is flooding my mailbox.

Some people really need a life… No I don’t need a new ToyAta or a Lexus give me a break!

Recent speculation suggests that the Adobe Flash Player plugin would be coming sooner for Apple iPhone’s Safari sooner than we’d thought/dreamed.

I can’t even begin to speculate the amount of possibility this opens up to flash developers. This is perhaps far more revolutionary than WiiFlash! Imagine the touchscreen capability of the Nintendo DS, opening up to the Flash platform, allowing for a whole new slew of creative works for Flash. One thing I’d definitely want to see, if the above does turn out to be true, is a port of Ouendan!.

That aside, though, there will be a number of things to think about. Firstly, public adoption of the iPhone seems rather low at the moment to me, due to price and also network restriction. Not to mention its only only available in the US. The other interesting thing I’d like to see being taken advantaged of would be the iPhone’s Multi-Touch technology. Most “WiiFlash” games that take advantage of the WiiMote are no more than glorified Flash games using the mouse. How would Flash developers be able to take advantage of the different Multi-Touch capabilities?

Although this may never come, its still something worth keeping a tab on.

Recently I’ve begun my foray into the web developing world, where I was asked to develop a site for a small start up company. After a year of operation, my client decided it was time to revamp the website in order to impress her bigger clients. “Flashy” was the buzz word thrown about during our initial discussion regarding the redesign.

By that time I had already decided to investigate AJAX technologies, and apply them to this project. (Some of you who know me might know how much I shun Full Flash websites, and was reluctant to use it despite the term “flashy” used a few times). And in a short time I was using the MooTools JS library to perform most of the grunt work.

Having the MooTools library granted me a considerable speed boost in developing, and I had an impressive and “flashy” gallery frontend coded in 2 nights (that surprised even me, a newbie in this arena). By that time I was hooked. Images were loaded dynamically, with images resizing and fading into view. Then the terrible blow came when I passed it on my friends to try it.

Lo and behold, it died. Turns out my site doesn’t render very well in some other browsers. Not only that, it was completely inert without Javascript!

Thus I embarked on a google-quest for the holy-grail, and came across numerous articles on both sides of the epic battle. It was then that numerous “flaws” of AJAX was revealed to me. But the main problem, however, was me! I was abusing AJAX, and that worked against me. Which brings me to the first point: just because something can be done easily doesn’t mean you should do it.

The speed at which I was developing AJAX lured me into thinking that I could use it for the entire site. This meant that it suffered from many userability issues that was prevalent with Flash websites. I was falling into bad habits again without noticing it!

And what are the problems?

• Firstly, one cannot guarantee that Javascript is enabled.
• Secondly, most experienced internet users would be most comfortable with the “backspace” or back button. AJAX destroys this functionality. Sure , there are workarounds for it, but it doesn’t do the job half as well. Furthermore, if a person were to press the back button, and go forward again, you lose data that he was trying to access previously

Of course, one could easily build 2 version of the site. But while that allows Javascript to gracefully degrade, it doesn’t take away the problems associated with abusive AJAX in the first place.

So my conclusion is that one should always take care not to abuse AJAX. Building entire sites for public view is not a good idea. However, so called RIAs or Web Applications use AJAX as a given. The key here is being able to distinguish between an Application and a Site. If all you’re making is a site, you’re better off not using AJAX for anything at all.

The best way to look at it is to imagine yourself using your site. Turn off Javascript. Then try navigating your site. If you have difficulty, its time to rethink your strategy.

Recently a flash game was published on a site which I frequent, and as a result it riled up a few members of the community. Now, flash games of all varieties have existed for many years. Gory and violent games that could rival Manhunt can be commonly found. But this particular SATIRE touched on a topic of controversial nature, and after a series of events, the game was eventually taken off voluntarily by the developer, although it can still be found on other sites.

A few issues come to mind. Why is it that Flash Games seem to be free of the regulation constraints that plague our mainstream games? Similarly, why aren’t websites that distribute these games required to moderate their content, especially since Flash Games can reach a much wider audience, far wider than your mainstream game, and is distributed faster and to an enormous demography of internet users?

Another big issue is that of opinions. Who could be responsible for rating these games? Efforts in this area such as TIGRS depend on the developer, and do not enforce this. Some of them are simply tedious and require too much effort on the developer’s part to even bother. And just because a developer does not find his game offensive, does not mean that everyone else will think the same.

Thus, the question in the end is “what does the future hold in store for us developers”? How long more will we be able to enjoy this freedom on the internet? And what can we do to ensure developers can enjoy this luxury?

Part of my current course requires me to learn Assembler, which is basically the 2nd most basic level of coding (after Machine Code). Gone are the luxuries of parameter passing, return values, classes and primitive methods, and your best friends are Bytes, subroutines, and branches.

As I do more and more of it however, the more I begin to appreciate how much high level languages do for us. Things like control structures (for, while loops), conditionals (if, switch), and other simple methods like getting the length of a string are all tedious coding tasks in Assembler (getting the length of a string in Assembler would require some 10-20 lines!). Things that may seem simple enough in high level languages(like parameter passing) require fiddling with stack pointers, and memory allocation. Now that I think of it, learning C should be a walk in the park compared to learning Assembler (And I plan to do that soon enough)

So next time you pass parameters to a function, or declare a variable, just remember… things could be much much much harder!

Yes I am well and truely alive. Still settling into life here in Melbourne, applying for jobs (and not getting them, not surprisingly), and concentrating on studies. Meanwhile, Flash CS3 has launched, and I don’t have enough money to get it. What a bummer. Also, Patrick Mineault of AMFPHP has announced he has retired from the project. Aral Balkan releases a new solution that could possibly replace AMFPHP.

So what are my plans now? Uni definately comes first. I have a couple of game ideas I want to realise, and I also run a course-notes site for my course. Portfolio, and site are also on the list. And a job.

But hopefully I will get back into the groove of blogging (and also have things to blog about!). See you guys around!

Ain’t they just the greatest?

I’ve got tons to prepare for the start of school, and lots of backlog to clear before I leave too. So I’ll be doing just that. However, that doesn’t mean I will be neglecting what I prefer to be doing, which is, thinking of horrendously complicated solutions to simple problems. In this case, it’s a little project I’m working on, experimenting a little with file operations in Flash. This is where FileReference comes into the picture. (more…)

I have a strange coding habit.

Sometimes I need to create a class. Say I need to have a dog. So I create this dog class, and make it bark. Then I think to myself, what if I wanted to create a cat? How would I do that. Throw in an Animal class, and subclass it, making sure that each animal will have a correct sound. And since I’m doing that, I better make sure that I can define whether the animal is domesticated, 4 legged or 2 legged, big or small, or what colour it is too. All inside a fully versatile package, together with all the error detection anyone would ever need, and custom functions.

But all I wanted was a dog that barked.

Does anyone ever suffer from this “compulsive versatility” your applications or classes must have? When all you wanted was something that does a specific thing, and instead you build a full encapsulated class brimming with methods and functions that you probably won’t use, but others might?

I bring this up because, as some of you may have noted, I’ve been working on using Wordpress as a CMS, for Flash and AMFPHP. And Patrick Mineault of 5etdemi, and developer of AMFPHP, asked for volunteers to create a package to integrate Wordpress and AMFPHP. Now, as much as that sounds good and all, but for my purposes, I don’t need a full package, and I probably won’t finish it. Maybe its my self-perceived quality of work doesn’t seem up to scratch.

Well, hope I can keep at it. The other bad habit I have is losing steam really quickly.

Domain is still shaky. Not sure if its the hosting, or its just random instability.

Furthermore, I will be migrating over to Wordpress 2.1 soon. So I’ll have to make sure nothing breaks. Wish me luck!