Actionscript 3 Tools – MonsterDebugger

I recently came across a really great tool for debugging Flash applications – It is called MonsterDebugger.

Overall it is a very helpful tool. It allows you change public variable values on the fly and features trace filtering and a tree listing for tracing lists such as Objects, Arrays, JSON, XML, etc… It also gives you a detailed list of all active display objects. It has a very simple API and also features a walkthrough minigame to help familiarize you with the features. It gives you the current frame rate as well as memory usage information. There is one one caveat. It reports memory usage for all flash applications currently running. So, if you have a bunch of flash games running in background tabs, don’t be surprised if your ram usage looks insanely high!

Incorporating MonsterDebugger into your projects is very easy. It has a very lightweight API that is easy to use. I had it integrated into some large projects within minutes and I have found myself using it more and more. Its trace output is much nicer and more organized than searching through Flash’s console output. I tend to use MonsterDebugger along side Flash’s console. I use Flash console to trace simple text messages and variable values. Then, I use MonsterDebugger to trace larger data structures such as Objects and Arrays. The expandable tree listing for Objects and arrays is very nice.

To integrate MonsterDebugger into your projects, just install the MonsterDebugger.air application and export it’s .SWC library to your project classpath. Then, this is all the code you need to get started:

/** initialize the debugger - Remove this code for Release */
MonsterDebugger.initialize(this);
/** Sample Trace Output to MonsterDebugger */ 
MonsterDebugger.trace(this, "Hello World!");

Note: You will need to have the MonsterDebugger air application running to see its trace output. Otherwise, nothing will happen.

I have found MonsterDebugger to be a huge help on my projects. Maybe you will too! It is definitely worth checking out!

Seriously, Adobe, are you serious?!

Adobe just announced that it is going to start charging fees to developers who use advanced features introduced in the latest versions of the Flash Player browser plugin.

How exactly this is supposed to “…encourage the kind of innovation and experimentation that often helps to spark inspired and inventive games…!” is beyond me.

I find it difficult to understand why Adobe would want to do this. This decision seems driven by pure greed… or… Is the Flash platform hurting so much that this is the only strategy for survival?

My initial reaction is to think that this will hurt Flash platform overall and Adobe will start hemorrhaging developers left and right. It is a shame, because IMO, Flash was just starting to get interesting again with Stage3D and Alchemy. It has really become a polished product since the Flash Player 11 release. It is truly no joke that you are able to create console-quality games in the browser. Nothing else even comes close (in the realm of browser plugins). But to put all of that cost onto developers backs could drive away small and independent developers, making only the largest game publishers able to afford to make Flash Games. That might actually might be their intention. It seems like Adobe is trying to get people to look at Flash Player more seriously as a “real professional” platform. They might even be purposefully trying to cut the fat and drive away those who would develop shoddy flash applications and give the platform an undeserved bad reputation.

Another spin on this is that with new publishing platforms such as Unity. Adobe is a losing a market for Flash publishing. They want to leverage some profits from those using different publishing platforms since they are losing potential customers who would have normally purchased licenses for the Adobe Flash CS suite. Instead, content creators will develop 3D content with applications such as Unity, Maya, etc… and not from Flash. Of course, Flex has enabled developers to publish .swfs without Flash for years now.

Only time will tell. This could be the best thing that ever happened to Flash… or the worst. One thing is for sure… it seems to be the most “Evil”. 😛

Note:
These new fees apparently do not apply to AIR apps, so anyone developing mobile or desktop AIR apps that take advantage of Stage3D and Alchemy should be fine… for now. Also, the use of Stage3D or Alchemy individually do not require the fees. Fees apply specifically the use of Alchemy2 and Stage3d together. For more info read Adobe’s blog about it.

Flash Player Mobile is Dead… Long Live Adobe!

Since November 2011 last year, there has been a lot of talk about Flash’s death at the hands of Apple. When Adobe announced that it will no longer be developing Flash Player for mobile devices, everyone immediately assumed that this signified the end of Flex/Flash for mobile devices.

The other part of Adobe’s announcement was relatively unhyped. They promised further development of the Adobe AIR platform for mobile devices. AIR 3.2 is currently in pre-release RC status and it is looking very good so far! Adobe has added more native application support as well as stage3D support to the mobile version of AIR. This has huge potential especially for gaming.

I recently came across this blog posting demonstrating AIR’s new 3D support for devices:

Five AIR 3.2 Stage3D Mobile Demos That Will Knock Your Socks Off

This looks extremely promising! Curious, I immediately downloaded the RC version of AIR 3.2 from Adobe Labs and then proceeded to port my Starling Framework Test to my Nexus One android dev phone. Everything worked as expected and the framerate was very smooth. It does appear to me that Flex/AIR is still a very capable mobile platform. Also, the Flex SDK is open-sourced do there is little to no cost to develop Flash and AIR applications with it.

As of late 2011, Adobe recently donated Flex to the Apache Foundation in what appears to be community-friendly exit strategy while they shift their focus to HTML5 solutions. While the implications of this move indicate that Adobe is moving away from Flex/Flash. It certainly does not signify the death’s of those platforms. It could be the best or the worst thing to happen to Flex. It remains to be seen. It all depends on Adobe’s dedication to contributing to the development of the Flex platform.

Here is a link to Adobe’s “Roadmap for the Flash Runtimes” whitepaper:
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplatform/whitepapers/roadmap.html

Inside, it mentions that they perceive Flash as the gaming console of the web. It also mentions their future plans for the web Flash Player and the next permutation of Actionscript. It is actually an interesting read, if you’re into that kind of thing.

So, while Flash Player for mobile devices is dead. It looks (to me) like AIR is very much alive… for now.

Oversoul Update- Rolith’s Spellserver

You may already be familiar with Oversoul’s Mage graphics Engine. There is another major component to Oversoul that we are working on called “Spellserver”. Spellserver is being developed by Rolith. It is a fast and lightweight multiplayer socket server developed in C#. We will be using Spellserver to handle multiplayer functionality in Oversoul.

Spellserver is a huge undertaking and I have a ton of respect for Rolith for doing undertaking this massive task. One of the huge benefits to developing our our socket server is that we will be able to handle more simultaneous connections at one time and it should be very lightweight and affordable compared to some of the more fully-featured enterprise solutions.

Spellserver is being developed parallel to Oversoul and we have just gotten to the point where we can start merging the two projects together. This is a very critical stage in the development of Oversoul – because once we hook all of this up – it will be very interesting to see what breaks! So far, login and walkaround is working flawlessly. Right now we have started porting the battle logic to the server. So far things are going slowly but smoothly!

Nulgath’s conceptual Oversoul preview – Estimated release Summer 2012:

BoxBreaker – Free Game Source Code

Last July, I taught myself how to program in Lua by creating a physics-based breakout clone called “BoxBreaker.” I used an open-source game engine called Love2d to create it. This was a learning project that I slapped together over a few weekends. My goal was learn Lua and to create a game that I could actually play on my Debian Linux PowerPC system. Love2d just happened to be one of the few game engine options that fulfilled my needs and was actually compatible with my hardware. The Love2d community was also very helpful and active and some members actually contributed code snippets and game levels.

I produced this game using only free and open source tools on my Debian machine. I used Emacs as my code editor, GIMP for the graphics, and zynaddsubfx to create the soundfx.

Anyway, I made BoxBreaker available on Github for anyone who is interested. Admittedly, this is not the best code that I have ever written. My Lua skills have improved a lot since this project, but it helped me to learn and I hope that it can help someone else learn too.

Overall, I think the game actually turned out to be pretty fun and since Love2d is available on Windows, Mac and Linux, it is cross-platform as well! 😛

Here is a link to the project:
Boxbreaker on Github.

Note: BoxBreaker was a personal learning project and is unrelated to my work with Artix Entertainment, LLC.