ActionScript 3.0 :: Optimizing Modular Apps (Load Time / Flexibility)
Jan 26, 2010
I'm working on a large application that is broken up into many independent swfs. There is a master swf that loads a navigation shell and the foundational logic, and a module loading system that loads child swfs into the main display area. This is all working smoothly, and now I'm onto building the modules, and I'm starting to feel like my methods aren't as efficient as they should be. The module swfs (and corresponding flas) are located in a "modules" subdirectory of the main project's src folder. These modules share a large number of classes. In fact, most them define no new classes that are specific to just that module. The shared classes have a complicated structure of inheritance and interface usage, and are located in a view/structure subdirectory of the main src folder.
Currently, in order to use the shared classes from view/structure in my module swfs, I add the main project's src folder to the source path in each of the module flas. Besides being a bit tedious to do every time, it.
1.) Redundantly compiles the shared classes into each module increasing file sizes across the board,
2.) Requires addition of new source paths to the modules for every developer who wants to work on/test the application because they are absolute values and different on every os's file system, and
3.) Doesn't allow modules to be built independently without access to the main project src folder
I'm working on a large application that is broken up into many independent swfs. There is a master swf that loads a navigation shell and the foundational logic, and a module loading system that loads child swfs into the main display area. This is all working smoothly, and now I'm onto building the modules, and I'm starting to feel like my methods aren't as efficient as they should be.The module swfs (and corresponding flas) are located in a "modules" subdirectory of the main project's src folder. These modules share a large number of classes. In fact, most them define no new classes that are specific to just that module.The shared classes have a complicated structure of inheritance and interface usage, and are located in a view/structure subdirectory of the main src folder.
Currently, in order to use the shared classes from view/structure in my module swfs, I add the main project's src folder to the source path in each of the module flas. Besides being a bit tedious to do every time, it 1.) Redundantly compiles the shared classes into each module increasing file sizes across the board, 2.) Requires addition of new source paths to the modules for every developer who wants to work on/test the application because they are absolute values and different on every os's file system, and 3.) Doesn't allow modules to be built independently without access to the main project src folder.
I've always just kind of randomly chosen DateTime or TimeStamp. What are the pros/cons of each and what do you use and why? (I realize some have more detail, I'm usually looking for year/month/day/hour/minute/second resolution and I'm currently working with PHP, AS3, and Objective-C.
I wanted to know flexibility with flashpaper in terms of actionscript. Can you access flashpaper functions, like searching for keywords, and things like that? Or does flash paper generate an independent swf that you cannot use at all through actionscript?
I was looking a tutorial that shows how to make modular functions, the user only used numbers, i was wandering if there is a way to use this with movieclips or childs.[code]...
I am developing an app which allows the user to customise every component such as button line colour, text colour etc. Clearly I need a lot of flexibility in these components to ensure detailed customisation.I am deciding whether to use MXML or AS for my view part of the components, I am aware AS is lighter on memory but harder to write, but am unsure on whether MXML is flexible enough for my requirements?
i want to create some crazy sites with Flash i created the site in Photoshop and then i imported the psd into flash but i come in one post that i should optimizing the content before publishing on internet but how and why should i do that??
I have an as3 app which utilises an sqlite db to save metrics data. It is well known that as3 is single threaded, so when I save to this db, the Stage Video I am playing becomes jumpy! I have heard that saving db data in batches can speed up this process so I save in a loop:
for (var i:int=0; i < metricsObject.metricsComponentData.length; i++){ switch (metricsObject.metricsComponentData[i].mouseType) { case MetricsCollator.MOUSE_OVER: this._query_txt = "INSERT INTO " + this._tablePath[0] + " VALUES (null, " + this._sessionID +
[code]...
I have looked into pseudo threading examples but they all require a sprite or stage instance, the class I am executing this code in, is not a display class, I don't really want to pass an instance of the stage into this class.
It seems to me everytime I export a PSD design into flash the images come out a little pixelated. Granted I do use 72 dpi though I thought that was the webstandard. By using flash can I use higher dpi images? Or is there another method I should be using instead of the direct import to lirbary?
Some AS operations are more CPU intensive than others. What are good ways to compare operations so that I can see for myself how demanding something is? Are there built-in AS3 methods for tracing system use or CPU use? Are there non-flash tools that people use?
I have created a X-mas card for my company. When the card opens, the 3 circles are buttons to different scenes within Flash. The text in the bottom left is a button to the final scene.
The card can be viewed here: [URL]
1) When I click on the circle button that has the red garland and tree ornaments in it, if you listen close at the very beginning of the scene, a squeek sound plays. I use this squek sound in the hamster wheel movie symbol used in other scenes, but not in this scene. I don't even have the sound in this scene of the Flash project anywhere. I can not figure out where it is coming from.
2) Does anyone have some optimization tips? My project file is huge and a lot of the people we will be sending this out to probably don't have the most up-to-date processers. Should I split each scene into it's own Flash movie that is only loaded when the button for that scene is selected instead of the whole thing loading?
I'm working on a flash website that consists of 3 frames (1 = preloader, 2 = instances of symbols, 3 = the main page/view). I've gone through and optimized all my static bitmaps/movieClips and removed any symbol that I've exported for ActionScript from exporting in the first frame. Even after all these steps frame one is still the longest to load (797kb on a 32.6 kbps simulated download), only showing the preloader when the whole file is at 86% complete. Any further steps to take to get frame one's size down?
I'm working with a few .flv movie clips in my timeline based flash file. I've imported and embedded the files into movieclip symbols. My file is now sluggish and close to 10mgb.What's the best way to optimize the videos so my .fla and final .swf are as small as possible?
I've got this simple GUI that has a search box and a couple result fields for "Word" and "Definition"...I've also got an XML file with about 800 or so terms and definitions.Currently the flash works just fine, it reads in the XML glossary, splits it into a word array and definition array and when I search through it, it creates a List filled with terms that match the string that I search for. We wanted it to update the list of possible matching terms each time you changed the search term: a, ap, app, appl, apple... etc.
Everything works, its just incredibly slow when you throw 800 terms at it to search through.I was wondering if anyone could either optimize my search somehow, show me another way of doing it.Here is the code pulled from the whole GUI.
ActionScript Code: var glossary_xml:XML; var xmlReq:URLRequest = new URLRequest("glossary.xml");[code].........
It uses bitmap data to draw each frame of the video, which is streamed using the netstream class. My question is - how can I optimise the speed at which it plays? It plays fine when the stage is small, but when on full screen it starts to get jerky.
My app draws a handful of very large Shapes to the screen very frequently. I've already implemented some logic to reduce that frequency in certain situations, but I'm wondering whether there is anything else I can do.My Shapes' graphics are basically rectangles with BitmapData fills. (Smoothing's turned off.) I can use some simple logic to find the regions where their boundary rectangles intersect the Stage. If I redraw my Shapes' graphics so that they only draw to those intersections, will my app take less time to render?
I have written a small bit of actionscript code which is designed so that small objects fly across a window from left to right at varying speeds, and then get moved back again with different attributes once they reach the right edge. The code is fully functional.My problem is that this eats a huge amount of system resources, and runs slowly on a 1Ghz machine. Is there a more efficient way to achieve this?
//Frame 1 Code - create 20 objects of varying scale, x/y position and alpha.
dcount = 1; dupcount = 20; while (dcount<=dupcount) {[code]......
I recently completed the battle engine for my game.But the problem is that it is lagging horribly.optimize the code(because the graphics I'm using are really very basic)
What are the best practices for optimizing a transparant png image? What things can be done to make such a png file as small as possible without loosing to much of its quality? Best tools? Best Photoshop plugins? Other tips?
I'm trying to take into account the Garbage Collector (GC), so I decide to optimize this code:[code]For instance, is it useful to put "xmlOne = null" in every iteration? I'm checking with the Flashdevelop's profiler, but I don't see the difference.maybe, I can also reuse the item object rather than creating it every time, right?
I have a 10MB flash file that I have uploaded to my website. No idea if this is large or small for a Flash file! The Flash appears on my index.html page. I have noticed that different browsers react differently, but when I open the page initially the video does not start playing straight away.
We have a big project, which include about 700 classes and based on Robotleg frameworks.at some point looks we reach some limitation of flash ide, we got this error and can't render properly.[url]...
Considering we have already done the following actions:
Flex Framework as RSL Compiling with debug=false Loading most images at runtime Drawing other simple images with flash draw features
[code].....
We believe we spent a lot of time into asset optimization and most of the work is remaining on the code.By analyzing our link-report, our guess is that the heavy part of the code is comming from Flex .mxml nested components. We don't think there is much to do on our pure AS classes.Is there any analysis or coding best practice in order to reduce the impact of the code on the swf filesize ?
I have two mc's on the stage, the first one is called missiles and the second one is called boxes. So accordingly I put boxes in the boxes mc and missiles in the missiles mc. My problem is how to detect whether any of the missiles collide with boxes and make damage to the box.
I am using simple and effective algorithm which works but it is very slow when there are many missiles and boxes on stage. I am using two nested "for" cycles which is a bad practice, but I don't have other idea at the moment.
Here is the code
public function onEnterFrame(e:Event) { for(var i:int=0;i<ground_mc.boxesLayer_mc.numChildren;i++){ mc1=ground_mc.boxesLayer_mc.getChildAt(i); for(var j:int=0;j<ground_mc.bmLayer_mc.numChildren;j++){
[code].....
Are there other techniques to solve this problem. I have already tried to add detection code in every missile but it is also slow with "for".
I'm trying to make my first game in Actionscript 3. Its a simple artillery game where you have a gun at bottom left corner and AIs flying across the screen which you have to shoot down. Now, in a classing shooter game how this is achieved is either by firing a bullet from the gun and doing a hitTest of that bullet with the AI movieClip or by simply removing(or playing the death animation) the AI movieclip. But here's the problem. I dont wanna do either of them. I want to show a gun with a rapid fire rate and hence no bullets. And I also don't want the player to click exactly ON the AI movieclip to destroy them (just the gun/turret pointing at the correct direction should be enough). So here's what I tried. This image should help picture the whole thing.
Tried attaching a 'line' to the turret and checking for collision with AI clip. This obviously failed because of the bounding box problem when the line is slanting. I tried putting multiple tiny movieClips ON the line and iterate through them in a loop and checking for any collision with the AI. This method partially worked, but it was too slow and didn't seem like the 'correct' method. I draw 2 hypothetical lines. One between p1 and p2 and other connecting p3 and p4 (please see the image above). p3----p4's lenght = AI.width and is a horizontal line running right through the center of the AI MovieClip. Upon mouseClick I check for any intersection between these two lines. Now if I have multiple AIs on the screen, Again i need to iterate through each of them, draw a fresh p3-----p4 and check for intersection with p1-----p2.
