MadeByPi® Blog

JPEGlitch update…

Just a quick update on some new features and improvements to my JPEG glitching code for AS3.

Check out a little demo of newly added 'decode glitching' here and see some test images saved from the Flash, here.

It should work with most JPEGs -  I've implemented and tested parsing for progressive/baseline/optimised etc. But if you find one that won't load, let me know and I'll see if I can add support for it.

This is still a work in progress, so all the user control of glitching and the source code will come at a later date.

Enjoy.

Read more  3 Comments   ActionScript, AS3, Flash, Glitch, Player 10

JPEGlitch

I've been experimenting with glitched JPEG encoding in Flash and have created a version of Thibault Imbert's optimised JPEG encoder that gives control over various glitch parameters.

JPEGlitch Example

A simple test suite that lets you control parameters, experiment with the JPEGlitch class, and load/save images locally. This example uses the minimalcomps ui component library from bit-101.

JPEGlitchRhythm for HYPE

I also made a rhythm for the HYPE framework using the JPEGlitch encoder.

This example is an audio visualiser based on a HYPE sound analyser example and plays 2 short tunes endlessly. The rhythm encodes and re-encodes a bitmap, adding the freshly rendered oscillator canvas on top each time.

This is also my entry to the HYPE 'Friday 13th' competition.

All source

Feed your code-eyes

Update 14/01/10 - JPEGlitch get's an honorable mention in the HYPE competition

(more...)

Read more  8 Comments   AS3, Flash, Glitch, HYPE, JPEG, Player 10, Visualiser

AS3 WOFF Parser

I recently stumbled upon the Web Open Font Format (WOFF) when trying out the Firefox 3.6 beta, and thanks to the well documented WOFF file format, made this AS3 WOFF parser for Flash.

Initially the parser was just an experimental project that would let me get my teeth into a bit of ByteArray manipulation. After all, parsing a WOFF file lets us read the original font tables and any metadata or private data contained - but the font tables aren't much use in Flash without further parsing.

Then I remembered reading about Thibault Imbert's research into converting TTF fonts to AFM (Adobe Font Metrics) at runtime using a c library compiled to AVM bytecode with Alchemy - and realised this parser class could probably be used in conjunction with something like that. So it may end up having uses after all.

I'm making the WOFFParser class available here with an open source licence, along with a FlashDevelop project and a WOFF file to test it with. I created the WOFF for my test with a command-line tool (included) and embedded a test metadata xml file in it. The WOFF file specification also allows vendors to include a chunk of unspecified private data - the class will also allow access to those bytes if present. I included a PNG image as the private data in the test WOFF file, which you will see if you build the project.

For further WOFF resources; I used the command line tool sfnt2woff to create the WOFF file for this project and font squirrel support the WOFF format with lots of resources in their @font-face sections.

AS3 WOFF parser source

Read more  0 Comments   ActionScript, AS3, Flash, Font, Typography, WOFF

Reducing the drudgery of embedding fonts in AS3

Using and managing embedded fonts in Flash is a lot easier than it was a few years ago, but I still find myself repeating tedious steps of set-up each time I need to create a new font-asset swf.

So, I created an Air application to do it for me

Skip to the end to download the app and source, or read on for all the juicy details...

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Read more  3 Comments   ActionScript, Air, AS3, Embed, Flash, Font, opensource, Unicode ranges, Utility

Something in the air…

Yes, it's close to that time of year again. So here comes the snow...

The example above (mouse-over to activate) is a Flash 9 example with 1000 blurry snow particles continually falling on random paths. There is also a slightly tweaked version targeting Flash Player 10 (no noticeable performance gains here I'm afraid, just replaced a few Arrays with strictly typed Vectors), and an AS2, Flash 8 version.

The AS2 version can't handle as much snowfall, but the 300 particle example in the source download gives (me) the same processor load as 1000 particles in the AS3 versions (~30% on an old 2GHz pentium, and ~2% on a 2.83GHz Core2Quad)

For speed, I've implemented a linked-list for the particles and there are no transformations on them in motion, except for x/y translation. I'm also pre-drawing and blurring each particle bitmap when the class initialises, then re-cycling them when they leave the snow bounds.

The compiled size of the Snow class is about 4KB for the AS3 versions, and 5KB for the AS2. I've embedded the winter trees image in the examples, so the end file sizes are about 36KB larger than they would be with just the snow.

Feel free to use the code as you want, any feedback or details of how and where you've used it would be great

Snow (includes all source files and the example above)

Read more  0 Comments   ActionScript, AS3, Flash, Particles, Player 10, Snow

AS3 Java-style .properties parser

You might be familiar with .properties files if you've worked with ant or Java in general.

If not, in short they're text files containing name-value pairs, usually used for application or build configuration. They allow comments and property values split over multiple lines, with a \ line-end delimiter.

For a recent project I needed to be able to parse, in Flash, .properties files coming from a java-based cms - so made the PropertiesParser.

I'm making it available here, with a small example showing the parsing of a .properties files and reading values from the result.

I hope it comes in useful

Get the code

Read more  0 Comments   AS3, code, Flash, Java, properties

FlashPlayer 10 audio fun

After seeing these experiments over at everyday flash, I felt compelled to make something using the fp10 version of as3dmod.

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Read more  3 Comments   AS3, audio, Experiment, Flash, MP3, Player 10, Visualisation

AS3 – XML Include…

A while back now I needed to insert data from one xml file to another at runtime (in flash). After a failed search for something that would do it for me (in AS3 at least), I made this...

XIncludeXMLLoader

In the zip there's a FlashDevelop project set up with an example to get you started. There's no documentation at present, but it's fairly straight forward to use.
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Read more  3 Comments   AS3, Flash, XML