I have a KeyboardEvent that switches Boolean, if true an FR var drops -2/frame to a bottom of 10, if false it rises +2/frame to a top of 60. It works fine going up and down but whenever I add "stage.frameRate = FR;" to an ENTER_FRAME function and play it, it freezes the control over the window. Animation still plays but I can't turn it off unless via Ctrl-Alt-Del.
1.Why is this happening?
2.Is it possible to change frameRate every frame?
3.If yes, how?
Um, I am not sure playing with the frame rate on the fly is a good thing to be doing. What are you trying to do? Perhaps there is a better way...
This is a total guess, but perhaps when you set the frame rate to the stage it initialises 'something' in the background. Then since you have it happening every frame, it'll try to initialises on every frame, causing it to be locked up.
Updating answer to include an example of using a Timer object:
import flash.utils.Timer;
import flash.events.TimerEvent;
// the timer takes in milliseconds, so for 30 frames/second, you would have a frame tick at every 1000 / 30, or 33.333ms
var tickSpeed:int = 1000 / 30;
var frameTick:Timer = new Timer(tickSpeed, 0);
function enterFrameListener(inputEvent:Timer):void {
// this method will run on every timer tick
}
frameTick.addEventListener(TimerEvent.TIMER, enterFrameListener);
// can change the tick speed of the timer like so (setting it to 1000 means 1 frame tick every second)
frameTick.delay = 1000;
// according to the api doc however, a tickspeed of less then 20ms is not recommended
// 20ms would be equal to 60 fps
By offloading it to a timer, you shouldn't need to mess around with the overall framerate with another advantage of other objects can be affected by different timers at the same time. Timer class also has a few helpful methods in itself as well: http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FlashPlatform/reference/actionscript/3/flash/utils/Timer.html
I think your app is freezing because you are trying to set the frame rate on every frame, i would suggest you should check your frame rate in your ENTER_FRAME section. if your frame rate goes up/down from you desired frame rate, then you should set your frame rate to FR.
Try this can help you.
Related
So is it posibble to create outside source from swf file so i can control frame pause lenght(xml file or AS pacage), and edit it with notepad. I have this code for each of my frames in swf file it goes like this:
Code on my first frame goes like this:
//PAUSE
function playit(e:TimerEvent):void {
play();
}
var Tim:Timer = new Timer(100, 1);
Tim.addEventListener(TimerEvent.TIMER, playit);
stop();
Tim.delay = 100; //Adjust Accordingly - 1000 Equals 1 Second
Tim.start();
And on the rest of the frames (10 more frames) goes like this:
//PAUSE
stop();
Tim.delay = 10000; //Adjust Accordingly - 1000 Equals 1 Second
Tim.start();
Sorry to say it, but your code is a bit messy. If you are actually trying to set how much frames should be played per second (as I can see the timer), you should check frameRate property. You can read specific number from a source file and then set it with ActionScript.
You won't need all those play/stop/timer things..
Hope that's the idea, otherwise I'm speechless..
p.s.
If you still need some other kind of solution - use nextFrame/prevFrame with that timer, don't play/stop it all the time..
The solution is simple but require a bit of math. Instead of letting the movie play you need to use your own custom system based on gotoAndStop(). You calculate the right timing and then call gotoAndStop() at the right moment with a variable of int type increasing on each call.
There are 2 different FPS:
background FPS for sprite update
goes as fast as CPU allows
more or less constant 60 FPS (cheap sprite update)
display FPS (visible with Fraps)
goes up to 60 when sprites move wild around
drops to 0 when no sprite moves
I want to make the display FPS stay at 60 FPS. If Adobe made it impossible to change that I need to know or ...
How do I make the display FPS stay at 60 ?
To clear misunderstandings: Fraps hooks the WinApi function SwapBuffers. So every time a game window displays a new rendered scene by swapping buffers, Fraps has the chance to copy buffer content and put some FPS counter on it. Flash is optimized to save GPU time. When nothing changes nothing is drawn to the other buffer and no buffer swapping is performed. Actually this is a good thing. But I still want to know if I can disable this optimization. I'm not trying to disable vsync but to equal the GPU FPS with the CPU FPS.
This is how I update:
public class Main extends MovieClip
{
public function Main()
{
addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, onEnterFrame);
}
private function onEnterFrame(event: Event): void
{
//updateSprites();
}
}
Example:
import flash.display.MovieClip;
import flash.events.Event;
[SWF(frameRate="60",backgroundColor="0xffffff",width="960",height="540")]
public class SimpleSprite extends MovieClip
{
public function SimpleSprite()
{
for (var i: int = 0; i < 32; i++)
{
var angle: Number = 2 * Math.PI * Math.random();
var color: uint = 0x1000000 * Math.random();
var length: Number = 1024;
graphics.lineStyle(2, color);
graphics.moveTo(-Math.sin(angle) * length, -Math.cos(angle) * length);
graphics.lineTo(Math.sin(angle) * length, Math.cos(angle) * length);
}
x = stage.stageWidth / 2;
y = stage.stageHeight / 2;
stage.addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, onEnterFrame);
}
private function onEnterFrame(event: Event): void
{
rotation += 0.002;
}
}
I found an unsatisfying way to accomplish what I asked for:
Add a sprite to the stage that is invisible by alpha and let it move on the screen. If it leaves the screen the frame rate will drop again.
If you add an ENTERFRAME event listener, it will fire with each frame (up to requested FPS rate), regardless if there's any redrawing going on or not. If it drops below that, then it just means it didn't manage to render frames that fast. A wild guess? I'd say it's code performance. :-)
Also, Timer documentation states that you shouldn't use it for intervals shorter than 20ms, and setting it lower than 16.6ms will mess with flash inner workings.
Timer Documentation
I would suggest refactoring your app to use ENTERFRAME events instead of Timer events, and using actual elapsed time between frames to calculate animation positions.
Try using Adobe Scout. I it will show you when flash frames are running and when the display is updated. You can get a lot more detail on how your application is working. Why do you want Flash to update the physical display when nothing has changed? It won't accomplish anything. If you really want to force this, modify some bits on the display and set them back again. Scout will show exactly which bits are updated in each frame.
Do not use timers. It's not meant to do what you're trying to get it to.
Set your SWF framerate to 60 during compilation, either on the SWF header meta tags or your compiler settings.
Use an ENTER_FRAME event to run your code (e.g. updateSprites()).
You may skip some frames depending on how complex the animation is. That is inevitable. Trying to "force" the framerate won't work and will only make things worse. If you need something to run 60 times a second you can check getTimer() inside your ENTER_FRAME event and make sure something is being done that number of times. But it'll still be rendered at a lower framerate.
I am new to working in ActionScript and I'm experimenting with using the Timeline to trigger certain events in my game. In particular, I'm using the timeline to trigger the fire event for a gun so that when the fire animation gets to a certain frame, a bullet is spawned. In the gun class (Enter_Frame) I check that the mouse is being held down and the time between the last shot and the current time is longer than the cool down, if everything checks out I play the animation.
if (time - lastShot > cooldown)
{
canShoot = true;
lastShot = time;
}
if (mouseHold && canShoot)
{
play();
}
This creates a problem when the frame rate is brought below the point where the full animation cannot be played before the cool down is up again. In this instance the bullets fire slower with lower frame rates.
In addition, higher frame rates make the gun more responsive to mouse input because the fire frame comes sooner than in lower frame rates.
The goal is obviously to make the game completely frame rate independent. I would like to have the ability to slow down or speed up the frame rate of the animation depending on the cool down of the gun.
What is the best way to make this animation play in a specific time period without skipping over the actions that I have put into the timeline?
It sounds like you're on the right track, but approaching this the wrong way. Check out the Timer class, it's framerate independent, and will greatly aid you.
var my_timer = new Timer(1000,0); //in milliseconds
my_timer.addEventListener(TimerEvent.TIMER, catchTimer);
my_timer.start();
function catchTimer(e:TimerEvent)
{
trace("event fired");
}
You should look into time based animation instead of frame based if you want your animations to be precise and not depend on the framerate, this way your animations will always be the same and will compensate the slower frame rates of slower computers. Here is an article that explains it very well: http://www.flashgamesclassroom.com/classroom/actionscript/frame-based-vs-time-based-animation/
Is it possible to do completely smooth scrolling in Flash (ActionScript 3)? In the following test I am creating a bitmap consisting of random noise, then moving it to the left periodically. I have no heavy tasks running in the background. What I am looking for is smoothness that would be on par with my Amiga 500 from 1987 :-)
package {
import flash.display.*;
import flash.events.TimerEvent;
import flash.utils.Timer;
public class Game extends Sprite {
var noiseBitmap;
public function Game() {
var noiseBitmapData = new BitmapData(stage.stageWidth * 3, stage.stageHeight);
noiseBitmapData.noise(0, 0, 255, 7, true);
noiseBitmap = new Bitmap(noiseBitmapData);
addChild(noiseBitmap);
var t = new Timer(1000/30, 999999);
t.addEventListener("timer", function (e:TimerEvent) {
noiseBitmap.x--;
});
t.start();
}
}
}
The "rendering code" takes <1 millisecond to run on my computer (2.4 GHz Mac), but still the movement will occasionally get stuck for a frame or two, making the movement appear jerky.
FPS is set to 30 in Flash. I have tried running it both using "test movie" and in the browser (Chrome). Target is Flash Player 11.2. I have also tried calling e.updateAfterEvent() to force a redraw. I have Also played around setting the delay and FPS to slightly different values, but no improvement.
This is different from not smooth scrolling in AS3 because I am already using a BitmapData. Also I have tried using the ENTER_FRAME event instead of a timer as suggested in a reply to that question, but it did not help.
When using a timer, you will not be exactly synced with the frame rate. As you mention, the frame rate fluctuates a little making your timer sometimes fire twice during one frame or skipping a frame. To be sure to be more in sync with the frame rate, you should listen to the Event.ENTER_FRAME event.
An example:
this.addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, updateFrame);
⋮
function updateFrame(e:Event):void {
noiseBitmap.x--;
}
I suggest you try out Greensock's TweenLite. It is a highly optimized engine to do all sorts of tweening through code and is available for AS2 and AS3. You can find it here.
Walkietokyo's solution is still frame based and would not eliminate the issues you run into. Instead use time-based animation (which TweenLite actually implements). For more info refer to this article.
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
}