So I have a little flash app I made for an experiment where users interact with the app in a lab, and the lab logs the interactions.
The app currently traces a timestamp and a string when the user interacts, it's a useful little data log in the console:
trace(Object(root).my_date + ": User selected the cupcake.");
But I need to move away from using traces that show up in the debug console, because it won't work outside of the developer environment of Flash CS6.
I want to make a log, instead, in a SO ("Shared Object", the little locally saved Flash cookies.) Ya' know, one of these deals:
submit.addEventListener("mouseDown", sendData)
function sendData(evt:Event){
{
so = SharedObject.getLocal("experimentalflashcookieWOWCOOL")
so.data.Title = Title.text
so.data.Comments = Comments.text
so.data.Image = Image.text
so.flush()
}
I don't want to create any kind of architecture or server interaction, just append my timestamps and strings to an SO. Screw complexity! I intend to use all 100kb of the SO allocation with pride!
But I have absolutely no clue how to append data to the shared object. (Cough)
Any ideas how I could create a log file out of a shared object? I'll be logging about 200 lines per so it'd be awkward to generate new variable names for each line then save the variable after 4 hours of use. Appending to a single variable would be awesome.
You could just replace your so.data.Title line with this:
so.data.Title = (so.data.Title is String) ? so.data.Title + Title.text : Title.text; //check whether so.data.Title is a String, if it is append to it, if not, overwrite it/set it
Please consider not using capitalized first letter for instance names (as in Title). In Actionscript (and most C based languages) instance names / variables are usually written with lowercase first letter.
Related
When I run my PsychoPy experiment, PsychoPy saves a CSV file that contains my trials and the values of my variables.
Among these, there are some variables I would like to NOT be included. There are some variables which I decided to include in the CSV, but many others which automatically felt in it.
is there a way to manually force (from the code block) the exclusion of some variables in the CSV?
is there a way to decide the order of the saved columns/variables in the CSV?
It is not really important and I know I could just create myself an output file without using the one of PsychoPy, or I can easily clean it afterwards but I was just curious.
PsychoPy spits out all the variables it thinks you could need. If you want to drop some of them, that is a task for the analysis stage, and is easily done in any processing pipeline. Unless you are analysing data in a spreadsheet (which you really shouldn't), the number of columns in the output file shouldn't really be an issue. The philosophy is that you shouldn't back yourself into a corner by discarding data at the recording stage - what about the reviewer who asks about the influence of a variable that you didn't think was important?
If you are using the Builder interface, the saving of onset & offset times for each component is optional, and is controlled in the "data" tab of each component dialog.
The order of variables is also not under direct control of the user, but again, can be easily manipulated at the analysis stage.
As you note, you can of course write code to save custom output files of your own design.
there is a special block called session_variable_order: [var1, var2, var3] in experiment_config.yaml file, which you probably should be using; also, you should consider these methods:
from psychopy import data
data.ExperimentHandler.saveAsWideText(fileName = 'exp_handler.csv', delim='\t', sortColumns = False, encoding = 'utf-8')
data.TrialHandler.saveAsText(fileName = 'trial_handler.txt', delim=',', encoding = 'utf-8', dataOut = ('n', 'all_mean', 'all_raw'), summarised = False)
notice the sortColumns and dataOut params
I have a variable area which stores a number.
When the app is restarted, it is reset back to it's original value. How can I keep area persistent after being closed?
I'm using Flash CS6 for Android
You'll have to save the variable. There's multiple ways to do this but using a SharedObject is the easiest IMO.
First thing is you don't actually create a new instance of the SharedObject class, you instead call the static function getLocal and this sets your variable. So somewhere near the start of your program you'll want something like this:
var gameSave:SharedObject = SharedObject.getLocal("gameSave");
This either creates a new locally persistent shared object if one does not exist or it grabs the one with the same initialized name ("gameSave") on your computer. This way you can access the saved variables across multiple playthroughs.
Now to save a variable you simply use the dataObject on the shared object and write values to it, then you call the function flush when you're done writing values to immediately save the shared object to your computer.
So saving your area value would look something like this:
gameSave.data.area = Main.area;
gameSave.flush();
After that you'll want to set the area value to whatever the saved value is when your game launches:
if (gameSave.data.area !== undefined) Main.area = gameSave.data.area;
We check if the value is undefined because it might not exist yet if you're playing the game for the first time and the area hasn't been saved yet.
Last thing in case you want to expand the scope of this and save more values: you can only write specific values to the shared object. The way I understand it is you can only write certain class types and primitives. If you try to write anything that's not a primitive or the exception classes, it'll automatically convert that item to an Object and it more or less becomes useless. The classes that it can accept that you'll probably use the most are: int, uint, Number, String, Boolean, Object, and Array. It has a few others like ByteArray and XML, but you'll either not use those at all or not use them very frequently. If you want to save any other class type you'll have to add that functionality yourself.
In our pipeline, we ultimately publish HTML5 using Toolkit for CreateJS. However one of the steps to get us to that HTML5 includes publishing an SWF that outputs some Javascript code. I've mostly managed to automate this using JSFL. However, at present there is one line of AS3 that our artists have to find on the timeline and change manually, but it interrupts their workflow, and if they miss it or mess it up it is hard to catch, so I would like to automate it too:
Object(root).log.text += " root.skillAnime189 = factory();\n";
From the above, "skillAnime189.fla" is the name of the .fla file which contains this code. This is the case if the artist is working on Skill Animation #189, but if he is doing #304 or #6 or #1022 (no padding) the number changes accordingly, and he has to update that line accordingly.
So, I would like to change that line to something like:
var flaName:String = getThisFlashFileName().split(".")[0];
Object(root).log.text += " root." + flaName + " = factory();\n";
but I am at a loss as to how to access the name of the .fla file containing the code.
The common way to get the swf name is to parse stage.loaderInfo.url parameter:
var url:String = stage.loaderInfo.url;
url = url.split("?")[0]; //remove query string after "?"
var swfname:String = url.substring(url.lastIndexOf("/")+1);
trace(swfname);
output:
astest.swf
But this code gives swf but, rather than fla, so you need to maintain the same names for flas and published swfs (any case usually they are the same, so it shouldn't be the problem)
I've looked everywhere for this answer..but I am not quite sure on how to do it exactly...
I am making a Flash Game using Flash AS3...
I need options where user can save and load their progress..
can somebody give a step by step on how to do this please? I am very new to actionscript...
usually other tuts shows u how to save certain variables
Cookies!
Lucky us it's very simple. Unlucky us it's not obvious how it's done:
// have that referenced all the time:
var cookies: SharedObject = SharedObject.getLocal("myGameData");
// start saving
cookies.data.progress = 50;
cookies.data.lives = 5;
cookies.data.anyRandomVariable = "my name or something";
cookies.flush();
// now it's saved
// start loading
var progress: Number = cookies.data.progress;
var lives: int = cookies.data.lives = 5;
var anyRandomBlah: String = cookies.data.anyRandomVariable;
// now it's loaded
(following the comments above...)
Yes, pretty much along those lines. I was asking questions to try to get you to see that you do actually have variables/data which you'd save. =b
If you want to save in the middle of the level, it is up to you... I don't know how you've designed your game, but basically you can write the saving code to trigger whenever you want based on any conditions you want.
For saving in the middle of levels, since you are handling the saving and loading you could try having a value like level "7.5" or whatever notation you want to indicate a level that is partway done. Or just use whole numbers like 750 and treat it as a percentage (level 7 at 50% done). And so forth. It's up to you.
A very similar question has been asked how to save a current frame value using a SharedObject. In your case, replace 'current frame' with whatever values you want to save:
Actionscript 3 saving currentframe location to local hard drive?
I asked similar question sometime ago, but I am making new one to be much more specific with my question with some example!
I´ve found this code snippet/tutorial from googling, but I cant seem to figure out how to modify it for my needs:
// open a local shared object called "myStuff", if there is no such object - create a new one
var savedstuff:SharedObject = SharedObject.getLocal("myStuff");
// manage buttons
btnSave.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, SaveData);
btnLoad.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, LoadData);
function SaveData(MouseEvent){
savedstuff.data.username = nameField.text // changes var username in sharedobject
savedstuff.flush(); // saves data on hard drive
}
function LoadData(MouseEvent){
if(savedstuff.size>0){ // checks if there is something saved
nameField.text = savedstuff.data.username} // change field text to username variable
}
// if something was saved before, show it on start
if(savedstuff.size>0){
nameField.text = savedstuff.data.username}
So what I am trying to figure out how to do, is to save users current frame to local hard drive, as my flash progress is based on frame location. yeah, so how do I modify it so that it stores data of current frame? and how about current frame inside movieclip, if that is makes things different?
help MUUUCH appreciated! thanks!
In your example it looks like it is already saving something to the shared object:
savedstuff.data.username = nameField.text;
Just replace it with the movie clip frame value instead (and probably under a different property name other then "username").
Then on load, there is another line where it loads the data:
nameField.text = savedstuff.data.username;
It would be the same way, except replace "username" with whatever property name you choose. Then you may have to parse into an int again and use it to restore progress however way you have it set up.