hi need to have a timer class that actually has very descent timming:
var playTimer:Timer = new Timer(1000);
playTimer.addEventListener(TimerEvent.TIMER,playhead);
playTimer.start();
function playhead(e:TimerEvent):void
{
for ( i = 0; i<myArray.length; i++)
{
soundArray[0].play();
break;
}
}
The above works but sadly the sound is not accurate, the sound playing is a clap like noise, theory i would presume it would clap on an even interval but it doesnt. any help would be apreciated
Not sure exactly what you are trying to do by playing a sound multiple times, based on the length of myArray, and then breaking.
But anyways, the the play() method of a Sound does accept parameters, and one of them is how many times you'd like to loop.
try this alone, without all that timer code etc :
sound.play(0,5);
The 0 cues it at the beginning of the sound, which is the default.
the 5 specifies to loop 5 times.
Related
Hey everyone so I have a lot of timers in my game to be specific around 8 timers. They all control different Movie clip objects that appear on the stage at different times. I also change the timers in my difficulty update function. Now I have read a lot to understand that Timers do cause lag and decrease the performance. I am creating this game using AS3 Adobe AIR for Android devices. My game seems to freeze for half a second every second which I believe is do to the timers as well as the garbage collector. Either way I was wondering if I remove all these timers and instead replace them with TweenLite TweenLite.delayedCallfuncion if it would dramatically increase performance. I Have tried this on one of my old timers that i removed and replaced with the tweenlite function and it seems to be working just fine but not sure if this is the correct way of doing it here is how i have it set up in my constructor:
TweenLite.delayedCall(6.0, addWatch);
and the addWatch function:
private function addWatch():void
{
TweenLite.delayedCall(6.0, addWatchTimer);
var newWatch:mcWatchTimer = new mcWatchTimer();
stage.addChild(newWatch);
aWatchTimerArray.push(newWatch);
//Start screen sound
watchSoundChannel;
watchSound = new watch();
watchSoundChannel = watchSound.play(0, 9999);
}
this seems to loop it without me having to attach an ENTER_FRAME Eveent listener to it. But not sure if this would be wise since I want to be able to change the delayedCall in my difficulty update to a faster time interval.
Any feedback on the situation would be appreciated. Hope I made enough sense.
For a long time I've been searching for a solution to this problem, so I decided to post a tread instead when the search didn't clarify anything.
I have a textfield that is supposed to move across the screen. I've solved this by adding a speed to its x-value dynamically through an "enter-frame function". However, the movement is very "laggy" and consists of sudden "jumps" in the movement. I've tried a couple of possible solutions to this, all of them without luck.
embedding fonts
changing the textfield's antiAliasType
using BitmapData like this:
bmd = new BitmapData (myTextField.width, myTextField.height, true, 0);
bmd.draw (myTextField);
bm = new Bitmap (bmd);
bm.x = myTextField.x;
bm.y = myTextField.y;
bm.cacheAsBitmap = true;
bm.smoothing = true;
this.addChild(bm);`
And then moving the "bm" instance
None of these methods worked.
EDIT: By request, I am adding the relevant code for the actual movement of the text.
stage.addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, time);
private function time(evt:Event):void
{
bm.x-= textSpeed;
}
The variable textSpeed is defined as a public static var. Its value is 2.
*EDIT2: I've prepared a clean fla-file with nothing but moving text. The same lag occurs for me also here. The code is in the actions panel. Download link
the way Flash IDE works, is that setting the framerate is actually the 'maximum' framerate. That is, it doesn't force the animation to run at that rate - it can vary depending on the machine and available resources.
As far as I know, there's no way to force Flash to run at a certain framerate - the best way to make animations 'smooth' is to use Tween classes like TweenLite.
If you NEED to animate by incrementing position values, then I suggest making it time based instead, for example:
var fps = 24;
var moveTimer:Timer = new Timer(1000/fps);
moveTimer.addEventListener(TimerEvent.TIMER, onMoveTimer);
moveTimer.start();
function onMoveTimer(e:TimerEvent){
bm.x -= 1;
}
Again, this doesn't solve the smoothness of the animation, but it will be much more reliable across different machines than using enter frame.
Try increasing the framerate. Because you naturally try to read text as it animates, you can generally notice the gaps between frames at 24fps. Try setting stage.frameRate to 30, 48, or 60 (60 being the max) and see if that solves your issues. I've had similar issues with animating text in the past and increasing frame rate has fixed them.
I would also recommend only increasing it as needed. You are much more likely to drop frames with a higher frame rate (makes logical sense; each frame has less time to calculate as frame rate increases), so you might want to do something like:
stage.frameRate = 48;
// run animations here
stage.frameRate = 24; // in an Event.COMPLETE handler
That will make sure your animations are smooth while giving the rest of your application the best shot of running well on lesser devices. If you are running a lot of animations, you might consider keeping it elevated permanently.
You should also look into using the Greensock animation library (TweenLite/TweenMax) instead of Flash's built-in tweening. Greensock has a vastly superior API, both in terms of features and performances, especially on mobile.
One of the things I most love about the MOD format is the ability to loop back to any given point in the song, making it perfect for songs that have an "intro" followed by a "main loop".
Of course, MP3 can't do this.
Up until now, I've done things like this:
<audio src="/path/to/song.mp3" onEnded="this.currentTime = 12.345;"></audio>
Where the float value is the time at which the main loop starts.
While this works there is a noticeable fraction-of-a-second pause as the audio restarts. I can lessen the effect of this pause by setting the target time a little ahead of where it should be, so the beats are at least kept closer in time, however it's not really ideal.
The main alternative I can think of is to manually loop the audio file (eg. in Audacity by copy-pasting) to produce a song that is longer than it would most likely be needed for, but the problem with that is that it would result in a lot of wasted hard drive space and bandwidth, and it wouldn't solve the problem of people liking a song and stopping to listen to it for a long time.
So I was wondering if there's any way to loop an MP3 stream. If I understand the format correctly, I should be able to determine at what position in the file (in bytes) the main loop starts (in seconds), so in theory I could construct a stream that loops indefinitely. However, would such a stream be supported by HTM5 audio?
Try measuring the delay each time:
function playSeamless(clip, next) {
if(!next) {
next = clip.cloneNode(true);
next.controls = false;
}
var start = Date.now();
clip.play();
setTimeout(function() {
var time = (Date.now() - start) / 1000;
var position = clip.currentTime;
var delay = time - position;
setTimeout(function() {
// Set desired currentTime on next here and adjust delay above
playSeamless(next, clip);
}, (clip.duration - clip.currentTime - delay * 2.35) * 1000 | 0);
}, 200);
}
playSeamless(yourAudioClip);
It was better, but not entirely accurate, so I need to adjust * 2.35 or make it a subtraction or something.
I have NetStream attached to video control in flash movie.
I cannot understand how to jump forward or backward.
var ns:NetStream = new NetStream(nc);
ns.addEventListener(AsyncErrorEvent.ASYNC_ERROR, asyncErrorHandler);
ns.play("Video.flv");
vid.attachNetStream(ns);
I need somethinf like
btnSkip.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, playClicked);
function playClicked(e:MouseEvent):void {
ns.pause();
//ns.step(1000)
//ns.seek(1);
ns.resume();
}
ns.step() - doesn't work and I don't know why.
ns.seek - works fine, but I don't know where is a position, there's no ns.position and no ns.fps properties to add ns.seek(ns.position+(ns.fps*3)) to skip 3 seconds forward.
It is rather simple actually. Use the seek method on your netStream. To get the position use the time method and then add the offset you need
For 3 sec forward:
ns.seek(ns.time + 3);
For 3 sec backward:
ns.seek(ns.time - 3);
This article might help you a little further: Netstream and step() or seek()?.
What are you trying to play? If it's just a static video you might be able to use the regular video objects, then you'll be able to use the playheadTime property (which might not be very accurate by the way - depending on the number of keyframes).
Good luck!
I'm creating a Flash game which is based on the old Pacman and I'm not sure which is the best way to control the animation.
As I understand it these type of games were originally dependent on a game loop which ran faster or slower depending on the CPU, which is why I imagine that the most similar to use would be the ENTER_FRAME event.
This however presents the problem of having to have a specific frame rate and changing it later is out of the question, not to mention being limited to very few different "speeds" (see below). An example could be that the sprite has to move 12 pixels before the next move is determined. If the speed is then 4 pixels per frame, the math is quite simple:
[...]
public var stepCount:uint = 0;
[...]
function enterFrameHandler(e:Event):void
{
if(stepCount==0) {
//Some code to evaluate next move. Let's say it evaluates to MOVE RIGHT
}
if(MOVE_RIGHT)
{
x += 4;
}
stepCount++;
if(stepCount > 2)
{
stepCount = 0; //Now ready to evaluate direction again.
}
}
This all works fine, but let's say that I want the sprite to move 5 pixels per frame. Then the number of frames before making the next evaluation would not compute. The stepSize would have to be a multiple of 12, which limits the different possible speeds (1,2,3,4 and 6 pixels per frame).
This is why I attempted to base the movement on a Timer instead, which I also managed to get to work, but the movement was somewhat erratic and it seemed like the Timer was using far more memory than the ENTER_FRAME event. Instead of an even movement the Timer made the sprite slow down and speed up and slow down again.
Another possible solution could be the Tween class, but it seems extravagant.
Does anyone have experience with what works best in other games?
Morten Twellmann
You have several separate issues here. Your first question is, should you execute your game loop in a frame event or a timer event? The answer is easy - you should do it in a frame event. The reason is that regardless of how you move your characters, the screen is updated precisely once per frame. So any time you're calling your game loop more than once per frame you're wasting CPU, and any time you call it less than once per frame, you're sacrificing visual quality. So this one is easy, don't bother with timer events at all.
The next question is whether your game's movement should be tied to frames or miliseconds, and the answer is that it depends on the game. Ask yourself this: suppose that some user is playing your game, and their spaceship (or whatever) is flying along at a given speed. Suddenly, the user's anti-virus package does something heavy, and the CPU spike causes Flash to stop updating for one second. Once the spike is over, do you want the spaceship to continue moving from where it was when the spike started? Or do you want it to jump forwards to where it would be if it had continued moving during the spike? If you want the former, you should tie your movement to frames; if you want the latter, you should tie it to miliseconds. But which one is best depends on how you want your game to work.
The final question is, how exactly should you move the characters in your game? Based on what you wrote, I'd do it as follows. For frame-based movement (i.e. the first approach described earlier):
// the ship moves 25 pixels per second
var shipSpeed:Number = 25;
// the number of seconds per frame, based on the published framerate
var frameTime:Number = 1 / stage.frameRate;
// game loop called each frame:
function gameLoop() {
// ...
playerShip.x += shipSpeed * frameTime;
// ....
}
This way, the ship's movement on screen is constant, regardless of what framerate you publish your SWF at. Using a higher framerate simply makes the movement smoother. Likewise, to tie your movement to time instead of frames, simply change "frameTime" in the code above to refer to the time elapsed since the previous frame, as described in Allan's answer.
Yes frame rates will vary depending on CPU amongst other things. Therefore you need to take this into account with your game loop. What I like to do is get the time difference between the current frame and the old frame and use that value in my calculations. So if it happens that there is a delay the larger difference value will then make up for the fact less frames ran.
var _previousTime:Number;
//gameLoop is the function called on ENTER_FRAME
public function gameLoop(e:Event):void
{
var currentTime:Number = getTimer();
var difference:Number = currentTime - _previousTime;
_previousTime = currentTime;
//use difference variable with calculations involving movement
}