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Building a Web-based Media Player - Part 1

August 31, 2008

For the past month I've been tinkering with Flex and my little Linux server. One of the projects that grew out of this was a web media player with which I could listen to all my tunes wherever there happened to be some scraps of internet. This has been one of the coolest projects I've worked on in some time. It successfully blends nearly all of my programming skills: PHP/MySQL, Javascript, XML, Flex/Actionscript 3.0, and some C++. I'm going to write a series of tutorials walking through what I've done in hopes of bringing this coolness to the masses. I'm going to be fairly verbose covering subjects that any seasoned programmer can pretty much skip over. In the first installment I'm going to cover creating the database and getting song information from the MP3s.

Continue reading Building a Web-based Media Player - Part 1

Tags: media player programming flash actionscript c++ tutorial
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Returning to my Roots

July 14, 2008

They say all good things must come to an end. Such is true for my one week of summer vacation. It was brief, yet enjoyable. Got to celebrate my birthday with my family, eat grilled food and lots of potato salad, and also take the usual trip to Tulsa. It's a pity that it was so short, but I'm complaining too much. The school is giving me a bachelor's degree in less than two years, so this time next year I'll be out of school. But that's a story for another day.

As you may recall, last month began my two month long journey through the wonders of Flash. Last month focused primarily on Flash as it pertains to design, teaching us the interface, motion tweens, and just a hint of ActionScript. This month, however, is dedicated to nothing but ActionScript. To demonstrate these "newly acquired skills" our final project consists of making a game.

Now, I put "newly acquired" in quotes for a reason. For anybody who's frequented this blog long enough you should know by now that I am, or at least used to be, heavy into coding. Because of this I have an unfair advantage over the rest of the class in this regard and as such I am taking my project to ridiculous extents (far above the scope of the course). The nice thing, though, is that the instructor actually acknowledges the fact that I am as proficient as I am, so much so that I took the place of the lab instructor for one day (whilst the real one was waiting in line for his iPhone 3G). Being able to talk to the instructor about geeky stuff as equals is a nice departure. But, enough ego stroking, about the actual project itself.

I chose to challenge myself and create essentially a dumbed down clone of Street Fighter, but be completely extensible through external configuration files. The first thing I avoided was the use of graphics inside Flash itself opting instead to load sprite sheets from external sources. Everything is configured through XML sheets that define how a character should react, define where animations are within a sprite sheet, stages, etc. Amazingly, I've achieved most of this and all very, very quickly. The biggest problem I foresee is the addition of enemy AI, but I've got ideas on how to achieve this as well. Overall, though, I'm loving being back at the helm of the coding ship. I'd forgotten how much of a thrill can be derived from hours of typing if statements and nested for loops. Damn, it's good to be back.

Tags: programming flash school vacation
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It's Super Awesome Vacation Time!

June 25, 2008

Summer is here, and with it vacation. Unfortunately for us Full Sailors, we only get about a week of summer vacation (I get ten days because all my classes let out early). However, that's not to say I'm not going to take advantage of the time off. Quite the contrary. Tomorrow I will be heading back to the good old midwest and chill with my folks. It's been over half a year since I've seen them, so I'm definitely looking forward to going back. I'm especially looking forward to potato salad. Mmmmmm....

Interestingly enough, tomorrow is also one year from my graduation. It hardly seems like I've been here for nine months, but there it is. It probably helps that I'm usually pretty busy and that most of this is pretty fun. Though, I will admit, Flash was pretty boring. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed working on my projects, but they were small enough that I finished pretty quickly. And the last half of the course was a beginners guide to programming, something that I really don't need. So, while I did try to do more advanced things than what the project originally called for, there wasn't a whole lot of room to flex my muscles, as it were. You can check out my final project here. Yes, it is an homage to egoraptor's series of awesomeness (who I had the great pleasure of helping recently). My other class this month was 3D modelling. That class was a lot of fun. The teacher was cool, the project was fun; I just enjoyed the entire class. I'll have my final project up on YouTube sometime soon.

In other news, I have begun and am about half way through animating a real Flash cartoon, one which will be entitled Phoenix Awesome. I hope to have it up on Newgrounds sometime over break.

Well, that's about everything. I'll leave you with my MGP final project which I never actually posted on here. Enjoy



Tags: school flash motion graphics video
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The Flashes!

May 11, 2008

You've seen Metal Gear Awesome 2, and other wonderful things Newgrounds. But, now, egoraptor has a new adversary! Lo and behold the glory that is MY FLASH!





For the heck of it, go check it out on Newgrounds as well.


Tags: flash cats video
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