I am porting as3iso to use with my abstract display list but I fail to see the reason why the author decided to use a secondary display list (the node hierarchy). I cannot think of the necessity of this apart from being able to get the children array of a display object. Is it really that big a performance hit to do for(i in 0...numChildren) getChildAt vs getting the children array? This can also be mitigated by maintaining a children array while overriding.
The only other reason is that some properties of flash.display.DisplayObject are final and wanting to have x and y correlate to isoX/isoY, but worldX/worldY is a reasonable API for this.
I have no problem with the secondary display list but I fail to see the point and am leaning toward having my iso display objects extend from my DisplayObject.
Also, I had presumed that marking objects visible=false that are not on the screen or outside of a scrollRect is not necessary with Flash and in rendering in general as this is/should be handled at the renderer level? Is this the case with the flash software renderer?
For the last question, it's useful to set visible=false because that way the renderer can quickly skip this object without having to calculate whether it is within the screen rectangle or not.
This way the library doesn't rely on the rendering system. You can use the traditional flash display list, Stage3D or a custom solution.
Related
I'm writing a graphic console that highlights different entries and stores things when you input them (in AS3) but I've found that once there are thousands of entries, the program starts lagging and scrolling is slow. If I want scrolling to be animated with acceleration it gets even slower.
How do I move the giant block of objects that are my stored entries up and down?
Do I have to progressively load messages around where the user is looking? How does the scrollbar handle this, then?
you should create a custom container instead TextField, it would be easier to build an accelerated scrolling too,
each log entry would be an extended DisplayObject that holds anything you want just like inflating layouts in android.
the most important part should be reducing Memory usage:
you may only store plain text of log enteries in something like a global array and when scroll position is close enough, generate this layouts, then adding them in container to show, and vice versa for removing far behind chats.
however this proccess stills using much memory during runtime.
so, just according the concept of android's DiskLruCache, it is possible to storing some part of our invisible data which would be too far from our scroll position to disk instead memory, using SharedObject's.
How do I move the giant block of objects that are my stored entries up
and down?
You don't. As you have noticed, when the number Display Objectson the DisplayList greatly increases, the memory overhead increases and the housekeeping details of managing the Display Objectseventually causes performance to suffer. You don't mention any details of how you are implementing what you have so far so my comments will be general.
The way this is handled by various platform list components in Flex, iOS and I assume, Flash, is to only display the minimum number of objects needed, and as the user scrolls, objects are shuffled in and out of the render list. A further optimization is to use a "pool" of "template" objects which are reused so you don't pay a initialization time penalty. There is probably an actual name for this ("...buffering...") technique but I don't know what it is (hopefully some kind person will provide it and a link to a fuller description for how it works).
And as for how it works – you can DIY it, figuring out, as the user scrolls, which objects are moving off-screen and can be recycled, which are going to move on-screen, etc. Of course this all assumes that you have your objects stored in a data structure like and Array, ArrayList or ArrayCollection. As an alternative to coding all this from scratch, you might see if the DataGrid or List components will meet your needs – they manage all of this for you.
Flash Tutorial: The DataGrid Component (youTube video)
Customize the List component
Lots of other examples and resources out there.
(again, I work in Flex where the DataGrid and other list-based components can customized extensively using "skins" and custom item renderers for visual style – not sure if it is the same in Flash)
I am currently using the fl.controls.DataGrid in my as3 application. In addition to very frustrating bugs, it seems to have very bad performances especially when your data size increases.
Is there a simple way to make an efficient datagrid with as3?
The best success I have had is with setting as few of the properties as possible, tying the data to a simple AS object class that contains only the data properties and writing it directly to an ArrayCollection. If your class includes a 'label' property you can pretty much get away without setting anything but the dataprovider (which I emphasize should always be an arraycollection; I forego the creating an array then 'wrapping' it in an arrayCollection) but having a tightly bound model for the data seems to improve the useability. I have heard that using xml data offers a slight improvement, but I prefer pure AS classes, which outperform mxml by a mile.
It always has been that all my AS3 woes stem from the display end of things. Pure AS3 would be a God-send if they could come up with a replacement for mxml.
P.S. avoid item editors! they work great if you only have 50 records, but the grids are designed to DISPLAY data ((a pure text grid of 250k records should scroll fine....) Always edit the data, not the grid. Pull the data into a form to edit. The data binding will take care of updating the grid.
Wasn't sure if this question belongs here, but I'll try. So I'm about to move my project from Director | Shockwave Player (if you ever heard of these) to Flash Player for numerous reasons and while I'm thinking how to better start off I got a question which really made me wonder. To the point.
Currently in Director each game window in the user interface (like small alerts or large windows with lot of elements in them) is drawn upon need - meaning that the actual window's graphical image is being put together from configuration (all sorts of properties like width, height and all elements and their properties) from numerous pieces of graphics (e.g. window background is made from 9 small pieces like the 4 corners, 4 middle pieces between corners for dynamic width and height and 1 central piece to fill the window) and then added to stage. This approach makes it easy to edit each graphical element without having to redraw the actual windows and everything in them if we would like to change the color scheme or improve something in a element. It also saves the resources as windows are being drawn only when requested.
Now I got to figure out if it's worth writing such code in Flash too as opposite to just creating all the windows and placing them in the library and adding to stage when they are requested. What do you think? Is it worth writing such implementation?
IMO, it depends on 1) How comfortable you are with Flash's drawing API / graphics class, and 2) How flexible each window/dialog needs to be.
If it's easier to just throw them together as static objects -- and if they don't necessarily need the flexibility to change dimensions/style much (can you count on one hand how many times they've needed to change since it was originally done in Director many years ago?), it's obviously easier to do this than going through the time/energy to recreate them dynamically, especially if you're not very comfortable with Flash's drawing API.
That said, a lot can be accomplished dynamically with Flash's drawing API, so if you have the time/interest I'd certainly suggest digging in and doing it the "right" way if you want to familiarize yourself with the drawing API.
My method for doing this sort of thing usually goes like this:
Create a separate class that extends Sprite/MovieClip; something like 'Dialog.as'.
Create public init(), show(), and hide() methods, and a private build() method.
init() is called just once upon initialization of your app, and takes some global parameters to hold on to internally (padding, colors, etc).
show() takes an argument of either text (a String), or even a Sprite/MovieClip -- whatever it is you want to show in this dialog. When called (when you want to spawn a window), it uses this -- plus whatever init parameters were originally passed in during init() -- to draw itself, and then unhides itself (tween the .alpha property, or simply set the .visible property).
When you want to close the dialog, make sure to invoke the hide() method, which first hides itself, and then cleans up whatever was created (removing listeners, etc) so that the next time it is called upon it can draw itself fresh.
It might also make sense to pass into this object a reference to the Stage (in the original init() call), so that it can center and size itself accordingly on the stage, and also addChild itself to the top of the display list so that it's always above everything else.
I hope this helps.
If is 2D you can check this:
http://pushbuttonengine.com/
if is 3D you can start here:
http://alternativaplatform.com/en/alternativa3d/
I can suggest you also Unity3D but this is outside of flash
Hope it helps
I'm creating a space game in actionscript/flex 3 (flash). The world is infinitely big, because there are no maps. For this to work I need to dynamically (programatically) render the background, which has to look like open space.
To make the world feel real and to make certain places look different than others, I must be able to add filters such as colour differences and maybe even a misty kind of transformation - these would then be randomly added and changed.
The player is able to "scroll" the "map" by flying to the sides of the screen, so that a certain part of the world is only visible at once but the player is able to go anywhere. The scrolling works by moving all objects except for the player in the opposite direction, making it look like it was the player that moved into that direction. The background also needs to be moved, but has to be different on the new discovered terrain (dynamically created).
Now my question is how I would do something like this, what kind of things do I need to use and how do I implement them? Performance also needs to be taken into account, as many more objects will be in the game.
You should only have views for objects that are within the visible area. You might want to use a quad tree for that.
The background should maybe be composed of a set of tiles, that you can repeat more or less randomly (do you really need a background, actually? wouldn't having some particles be enough?). Use the same technique here you use for the objects.
So in the end, you wind up having a model for objects and tiles or particles (that you would generate in the beginning). This way, you will only add a few floats (you can achieve additional performance, if you do not calculate positions of objects, that are FAR away. The quad tree should help you with that, but I think this shouldn't be necessary) If an object having a view leaves the stage, free the view, and use the quad tree to check, if new objects appear.
If you use a lot of objects/particles, consider using an object pool. If objects only move, and are not rotated/scaled, consider using DisplayObject::cacheAsBitmap.
Currently I'm writing an app. If I want to avoid Singletons, do I have to simply pass references of everything around?
For example,
I have a "main" class.
Class: Main
+---- Screen
+---- Camera
+---- Terrain
+---- Vehicle
+---- PhysicsWorld
It contains my Camera, Terrain, and Vehicle,etc classes. Now, I have issues when I'm creating say, the Terrain object. Terrain wants to access Main classes Screen object so it can add its Terrain Graphics to the screen. It also wants to know about the Camera object for when it is drawing so it knows what scale to draw it. It also wants to know about my PhysicsWorld object so it can add itself to the physics engine.
Do I have to always lug these objects back and forth between constructors? I mean, when I create a Terrain object, do I simply have to pass around my screen object, my physicsWorld, camera, etc?
Another random scenario I have, is now.. inside my Vehicle class I need to call a Restart() method on my Main class. Does this mean I have to pass an instance of main to Vehicle? Really??
It feels cumbersome to constantly have to pass 4-5 things to my classes, especially in my scenario now where almost every in-game object I have needs a screen, physics, camera info, etc.
Any suggestions?
It feels cumbersome to constantly have
to pass 4-5 things to my classes,
especially in my scenario now where
almost every in-game object I have
needs a screen, physics, camera info,
etc.
Then the correct question to ask is "why do I need all 5 objects in all my classes?"
Why on Earth does every in-gmae object need any of the mentioned things? An in-game object needs a position and whatever it needs to process its behavior. Then a separate renderer can, you know, render, the object. Which means that only the renderer needs the camera info and screen.
The physics could go either way. You could have a separate physics entity which updates the game object, or you could pass that physics object to every game object. But even if you do pass that around, we're down to one out of the three objects listed. :)
That's why globals and singletons are often best avoided. They disguise your dependencies so you end up with far more dependencies between your objects than you actually need. And then it becomes almost impossible to remove the globals.
However, if you do stick with globals, do yourself a favor, and at least avoid singletons. You don't need the additional constraints enforced by a singleton.
Terrain wants to access Main classes
Screen object so it can add its
Terrain Graphics to the screen. It
also wants to know about the Camera
object for when it is drawing so it
knows what scale to draw it. It also
wants to know about my PhysicsWorld
object so it can add itself to the
physics engine.
The terrain object needs to know one thing: What is the terrain like. Someone else can take responsibility for rendering it. That someone will need to know about the camera, screen and terrain graphics, sure, which suggests that the same object might plausibly be able to do other tasks involving these objects (such as other rendering tasks).
Why should the terrain care about what scale it's drawn in? It needs to know the scale ingame, but not the scale in camera-space. And why can't someone else add the terrain to the physics engine? The main function might be able to do that, even. Create terrain, create physics engine, register terrain with physics engine, start game.
I don't know ActionScript, but assuming variables are passed by reference, the least you could do is construct a 'Environment' class holding Camera, Screen, Terrain, PhysicsWorld which you pass to the instances.
I have the exact same problem (also in actionscript 3, coincidentally).
I have been working on an RTS for flash and had found myself needing to pass around large numbers of references to each new class (e.g., gameGrid, currentSelection, visibleUnits, etc.).
I eventually realised that what I really should be doing is to have every class maintain it's own properties, and instead pass around references to these classes, (well objects).
But anyway, now what I'm doing is having static variables containing references to commonly used objects such as the main stage, interface, engine and display area inside a class called RTSGlobals. I'm also putting constants such as the screen size in there.
I know this doesn't really answer your question, but I figure sometimes it is worth ignoring a bit of OOP good practice in favour of an efficient solution.
If someone has a does have a good practice solution though, please tell :)
I suggest you take a look at XNA's samples projects (google it). They're well designed and might give you some hints.
Also, since you're using AS3, you could use the event system to dispatch message to other entities. For example, instead of passing your Main to your Vehicle class, make your Main (or whatever else interested) a listener of your Vehicle class. Then, let's say the car crash and you want to restart the game, dispatch an event, for example CAR_CRASHED. The listeners of your car should do something based on this message. If you want to understand the event system, type EventDispatcher, highlight it and hit F1 in your Flash IDE.