I am writing a game in ActionScript3 using Flixel as a base. I have been unable to find a good method for saving and loading files from the player's local hard drive. I know Flixel has a way to save game data to...I think...cookies that the player doesn't really have access to, and I want to avoid this.
I first learned programming in Java, and one thing I've seen a lot of is scanning (Scanner) and printing (PrintWriter) lines of strings to/from text files. Something like this for AS3 would be my ideal, but if there are other methods I'm open.
Does AS3 have anything in its basic library that can do this task well? Are there libraries I can download and include that do this well/better?
If your game is going to run on a webpage your options are limited. Due to security concerns Flash is limited to reading and writing files specifically selected by the user.
Should you be using Air to make a standalone game, you will have regular access to the filesystem and can write files much like with Java.
If not, you will be pretty much stuck with Flash cookie equivalent, SharedObject.
Related
With all the security issues with Flash lately I am looking at alternatives for if/when Flash is retired at my work. We use strictly IE 11 and IE11 seems to be very finicky about css3 animations. I see the new Flash has the ability to publish the file as embeddable actionscript files instead of a swf file. Is this a viable alternative to Flash or is this vulnerable to the same security issues Flash has? My assumption is the vulnerabilities exist in the Flash players but I want to be certain.
No. Apples and Oranges, really.
The Flash Player is a runtime environment of the Flash platform (AIR being another). It "plays" .swf files.
ActionScript is the scripting language that an apropriate compiler (mxmlc, for example) compiles into .swf files.
I see the new Flash has the ability to publish the file as embeddable ActionScript files instead of a swf file.
You can embed any file, but guess where you embed it into? Into the swf file.
Again, ActionScript is the programing/scripting language and an swf file is the compiled result.
Flash CC can also export to JavaScript/HTML/CSS. That means that instead of creating a .swf file, a bunch of JavaScript/HTML/CSS files are created.
As you can see in the link you provided, the feature sets are not equivalent.
Note: The 3D Rotation tool in the toolbar of the Flash Professional CC workspace is disabled when creating HTML5 Canvas documents because it is specific to SWF projects and not supported in the HTML5 specification (see Figure 3).
There's a whole bunch of other things not supported
Recommendation
If one comes to the conclusion that the Flash platform is not an appropriate publishing platform any more, why bother sticking to the Adobe Flash program?
It appears to be disadvantageous to cling to the program, just for the sake of keep on using it.
Why not use the CreateJS library on its own? Or any of the other dozens of great JS libraries? There's a lot to explore in the post-Flash era and it is very exiting. It's not a good idea to stay behind, still coding in dead languages, hoping that there's a translator to communicate with the Present. Try to order a pizza in Latin and you know what I mean.
If the goal is to target multiple different platforms, there are alternative tools to do this like defrac or Haxe that allow you to compile from one languages to many platforms.
The answer to the question if compiling ActionScript to JavaScript/HTML/CSS is a reasonable workflow for the future is no. It might be a good tool to port existing projects, but not to neglect the current developments in the JavaScript/HTML/CSS realm.
I seem to get almost weekly Java updates. All these technologies can have security issues, it's just that Adobe react quickly, and release a fix as soon as possible. That does come with a certain amount of publicity.
About using CreateJS on its own, you could do that, and come up with your own libraries to create hierarchy, synchronizing sound to visual events, asset management, etc. You could also do everything purely in code, if your imagination is good enough to do that. Or, you could just use Flash Pro, and get all of those things for free.
Forgive me if this is not the correct place to ask such a question.
Basically, I am looking for a way to allow someone to easily (at least, easier then diving into Flash) create a basic Flash animation (movieclip) with some placed image assets and text, all via a web interface.
I was thinking along the lines of using jQuery to allow drag and drop assets, of which you'd "record" the co-ordinates and relay that to Flash somehow to create the SWF file.
Or would it be better to create a tool in Flash (surely making operations easier) and then have some kind of "save" button to render out the SWF?
I'm totally open to suggestions.
Thank you
If you really need to produce a stand-alone SWF file (and not just a config file for you own "player"), I would probably do it like this;
1) Create your editor in whatever system you feel like (flash, jquery etc).
2) Build a config file in the client. This is used, together with all the resources the user added, to play back the animation.
3) Upload said assets and config file to your web server.
4) Use the flex compiler (on the server) to produce the resulting SWF, combining your player with generated AS3 which embeds the uploaded resources as needed, to make it available to the player.
5) Give the user a download link for the newly generated SWF file.
I don't think there is any swf compiler available for Flash (actionescript). You may create a swf that allows users to create an animation, save it as a home-made vector format, and then replay it. But I don't believe you can create and independant swf file with only the created animation in it.
Just think about a player in Flash, and a format that the player will read (xml, json, name it...). You can either generate the input with jQuery or Flash, and then feed it into your player to display it. You will eventually need two files.
Apparently this library allows you to compile SWFs at runtime. I haven't used it myself (yet) and don't know how stable or flexible it is, but it appears to be what you're looking for. I'd recommend giving it a spin and seeing if it's sufficient.
I'm not exactly sure how it saves the file, so you might run into security problems since it's a web application. Hopefully it should be OK though.
I have one swf file, it is JW Player plugin. It have one actionscript file in which is whole plugin code, and rest of files are jwplayer api files. So i need to open that file (where whole plugin code is) and edit few lines. But there is a problem, because when i try to decompile file with sothink swf decompiler (and few others) - to convert it to .FLA, decompiles simply crashes. It is because of some file from jwplayer api library. So, next thing i tried is to edit via HEX (because there is not much to be edited), but i couldn't find what i needed. So what i need is - is there any way or not? If yes, which program can be used for this?
I've had to do something similar in the past. In my scenario, the client had the SWF but no FLA. I needed to change a hardcoded url and sothink wasn't decompiling but I could view the AS in the sothink previewer. Luckily for me the flash wasn't very complex so I was able to copy the AS and graphics out and start a new project. I would imagine that JW Player is much more complex so this may not be an option for you, but thought I'd mention it anyway.
Depending on your needs, you may be able to get what you want by using the plugin API to extend the functionality or maybe even by customizing a skin.
Is it possible to hash flv videos so it is unplayable by itself and the format is unrecognizable by softwares, but i could actually de-hash them and play in my as3 script?
This is going to be realized on a CD so I can't use server scripts.
no, you can't. not with flv. you could however embed the video into an swf and encrypt the SWF. please note however, using a strong encryption for video data may lead to performance problems.
anyhow: you can load the binary data into a ByteArray, perform the decryption and then load the SWF from the ByteArray.
I'm assuming you mean that you'd like to do this "real time" in the app.
If so, there are two issues with that:
you will have to decrypt your custom video in software, so its going to run very slow. And depending on the end user's computer, unpredictably so.
As ALOToverflow previously mentioned, the key to your hashing algorithm will be in your .swf which can be simply be decompiled to reveal it.
Assuming you are using as3 with adobe AIR you could potentially ship your users "broken" flv's and then simply repair them before you attempt to play them back.
Depending on the resolution and length of the videos this might be a viable alternative.
(you'd utilize the FileStream Class for this.) http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FlashPlatform/reference/actionscript/3/flash/filesystem/FileStream.html
FLV's all start with a standard header, so you could start by just breaking the header, and repairing it later. (I'm talking about getting down and dirty with the binary code btw.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_Video
I created a similar project once.
this is what I did:
I encrypt the videos somehow, does not mater how, put them into one single big file.
A bulk data file. Then I run the swf, NOT from browser but rather run it from a JAVA application, which can decrypt the bulk video-file waaay faster, than the Adobe swf interpreter.
In the Java app, I pass the decrypted video to the swf as a parameter.
It is good to use Java, because all the clients can open it. Mac users, Windows users, anyone. It is possible to do it with C++, but that would limit your user-base.
Of course anyone with decent knowledge can reverse-engineer the encryption process, but it is harder to get the encryption from a Java compiled software, than from an AS3 swf.
Use Blowfish, Twofish or DES. Do not use RSA, it is slow.
You have to make the Java app extremely fast and simple, so also it is advised, not to use external cryptography libraries.
I have a Flash in AS3. I want to dynamically load code that performs some kind of calculations. Is it doable with AS3 (I've read that there is no eval)? Should I use an interpreter in AS3 that gets the data and does the calculations?
My first thought was to load an external swf that does all the calculations but I think having an engine that gets input from a socket is more elegant as a solution.
So, how is it possible to execute algorithms that come from a server in a swf file?
Well, there is an AS3 Eval Library by metalbot. You should probably take a look.
Also you may use browser JS engine to perform JavaScript eval with code downloaded from server. Look at ExternalInterface AS3 class for that.
If number of your code snippets is limited you could use special swfs (prepared beforehand) with those code snippets, downloaded from server. After loading an swf you can use it's codebase without any evals.