I'm writing a game to be run locally, on the user's computer. NOT over the internet.
I want to have a file that will hold the usernames and avatar indices (they're in an array).
I want to know if there's a way to write to files through Flash with AS3. I'm using CS4.
I'd also like to know if you can delete files through Flash, though that's just optional.
Thanks in advance for any help you can give.
If you want to make a game that runs locally on someone's computer, you should make it in Adobe AIR. AIR apps can read and write files, and do all sorts of useful things like show updates in the taskbar, etc. Whereas a simple SWF that you download and run locally can't do anything useful that it couldn't already do in the browser - it can't write or delete local files, for a start. (It can read local files, but only if you disable it from accessing the network.) Moreover, the standalone Flash player is not generally disseminated, so unless the user is a Flash developer they're just going to view your SWF in a browser anyway (unless you plan to publish projectors, which I also wouldn't recommend).
With all that said, however, even if you do your game as local flash content, you can still store information by using SharedObjects. They work the same way offline as online. You can't write the data out as a separate file, but you can store it between sessions easily enough.
if i understand what you are trying to do then why dont you use Adobe AIR? this is flash for the desktop
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I am working on an AS3 application. I need to store some data locally (on user's machine). I used Shared Object concept. Now in chrome, the default flash player (pepper flash) stores the shared object in a different folder. So if a user changes from the default flash player to externally installed flash player and vice versa (by disabling/enabling flash player from plugins) there will be loss of data. Let me simplify. External flash player stores shared object at 'A' and pepper flash at 'B'. If I switch the flash players, i will miss the data at 'A'/'B'. How can I solve this problem? Is there a way to retrieve the data? Please help me.
Because the Flash plugin itself controls where shared objects are stored and you cannot (as far as I am aware) change that location nor determine what that location is, there is nothing you can do about this one, unfortunately. You will have to deal with the lost data. It will happen eventually anyway, because I believe shared objects are cleared when you clear temporary browser data (or at least they should be, anyway).
On the bright side, the average user does not know you can switch between plugins nor do they know how. The vast majority of Chrome users, even those with a more technical background, will be using the terrible Pepper Flash plugin, so your scenario should be a rarity.
There is a way around it, however. You could set up a remote server and store the shared object there. That way it is not stored locally and you decide where it is actually stored. I personally can't think of a situation where this would be preferable to having a couple users lose their data, but it might fix things for you.
How to restrict the game locally?. I know the browser sitelock. But i do not know how much it is effective.
I played the games in http://www.gameark.com/. If you download the games from this website, you cannot play it locally. How to do this?
Thanks.
I'm using http://www.swfshield.com to do this without pain.
What they do is actually converting your swf into binary or some sort, and wrap it inside a loader (I'm not sure.. It's just my guess...). I use this swfshield to protect my swfs from being decompiled and being stolen.
It will not load locally if you do single domain lock. So, basically, it won't literally load in any domain other than the specified domain.
Additionally: I've tried at least five different decompilers to decompile the protected swf from swfshield.com, but none of them were able to get a single hint about the swf. :)
I need an offline caching system where my app can store about 0.5 MB of data. It is preferred that there is no interaction required by the user, but small amount of user interaction might be acceptable
Currently, Microsoft's Silverlight is being used to store data offline. It is a large download for the plugin, and not installed as standard on most machines.
I have been considering cookies - but they are far too volatile. I can imagine numerous reasons someone might clear their browser cache and lose all their data.
I am not sure about HTML 5 storage, and how volatile it is in practice.
I have been looking into flash, which is installed on over 97% of windows computers. It seems I can load data from a user selected file, and save data to a user selected file.
My questions...
How big is the microsoft silverlight plugin download (in MB) for windows? (I think about 8mb, but did not get clear answer from the internet)
How can users accidentally (or deliberately without realizing the consequence) clear their HTML 5 storage on common browsers?
Is there a way to get flash to store or load data from local files without user interaction?
Is there another alternative I have not considered?
Well you could use Flash shared Object storage, which will allow between 0 and unlimited space. Check this settings panel for details of your own settings to get a better idea of what I mean.
http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager03.html
Of course this does mean that the user will have to allow third party flash content to be stored locally, which is the default. Also the default storage space is 100KB, with the user being prompted to allow for a larger amount unless they have previously increased the default themselves. So that's a small draw back, but still workable.
I am not sure how you would access the shared object from within a silverlight app, as I have only used it via a Flash swf. I will do some digging around using javascript and get back to you on that.
Also there is another post that may help you:
Javascript bridge to Flash to store SO "cookies" within flash
It sounds like what you need is isolated storage.
I use it with all my silverlight apps and it couldn't be easier to use. With only a few calls you can store and retrieve data programatically.
Edit: I was thinking that your app is already programmed in Silverlight. What is your app programmed in? Is it simply HTML/CSS at the moment?
I have an interesting project wherein I need to allow users to capture video of themselves with a webcam at a kiosk, after which I email them a link to their video. The trick is the resulting video needs to be a 'slow motion' version of the captured video. So for example, if someone creates a 2 minute movie, the resulting movie will be 4 minutes.
I'd like to build this in Flex / AS3 if possible. I don't have issues capturing the video and storing it / generating and emailing a link, but slowing down the video is the real mind bender. I'm unsure how to approach 'batch post-processing' a set of videos using Adobe tools.
Has anyone had a project similar to this or have suggestions on routes to take in order to do this?
Thanks!
-Josh
This is absolutely feasible from the client side, contrary to what some may believe. :)
http://code.google.com/p/flvrecorder/
Just adjust the capture rate, which shouldn't be too difficult all the source is there.
Alternatively, you could write an AIR app that launches Adobe Media Encoder after writing a file and launch it with a preset that has FTP info etc. Or you can just use the socket class to connect and upload over FTP.
http://code.google.com/p/fl-ftp/
It is not feasible to do this client-side.
Capture the video and send it to the server.
Use a library like FFMpeg to do your coneversions
I'm writing a flash app using the open source tools. I would like to load a data file in to the app and capture a screenshot of the stage on the server. The only part that seems mysterious is running the app on the server. In fact, I don't even care if it's the same app running on the server and in the browser--if I can use the flash stage and drawing routines to produce an image server-side, I'm happy. If I have to delve in to flex, fine. Right now I'm having problems finding any starting point at all.
I gather Adobe has some commercial products that may fit the bill, but I'd like to stick with open source, apache, and linux. I know this is probably possible with haxe/neko, but I'd like to use more mainstream tools if possible. Am I asking too much?
EDIT/CLARIFICATION: Many thanks for the responses so far, but I think I've been a bit muddy in my description. I've already written the actual stage-grabbing stuff using the same PNGEncoder class as was suggested. The problem is in actually running the swf on the server side. I don't want to let the client take the screen shot itself, because this opens up the possibility of the client maliciously submitting a screenshot which does not correspond to what is on the stage, that is, I don't want users uploading porn. If I could run the the actionscript code on the server, then I could generate the screenshot from my data files and be sure that the screenshot matches the data, but I have no idea how to run the actionscript or swf on the server.
Swfs run on a client computer, not on the server. The only way it would run on the server would be if you set up a special environment on your server so that it ran a web browser, opened up the page and ran the swf. But even then it would have no correlation to what an external user was doing.
You'll need to run it client side. As far as your security concerns, the best way to get rid of those is to have the php writing the actual image only accept an encrypted form of the image file, which the flash can encrypt. That way they can't simply use the PHP file to upload whatever image they want unless they happened to encrypt it the exact same that your swf did. Next encrypt the swf itself (I recommend SWF Shield) so that a potential hacker cannot read the code to know how to encrypt the image.
We just completed a similar project where we rendered JPGs from SWFs that loaded dynamic data, we used IECapt
Did you try actionscript print commands?
Try and look at this:
http://www.phpclasses.org/browse/package/4312.html
I know this question is long dead, but I had a similar problem and ended up writing a script using applescript + ui scripting to grab the inside area of the preview window of the standalone flash player in OS X. You can grab it off github here.
How about swfdec-thumbnailer from the swfdec-gnome package? It's used to create thumbnails of SWF files but can accept arbitrarily large resolutions with the -s argument.
EDIT: swfdec-gnome has been deprecated in Ubuntu 10.10 in favour of Gnash. Here is a guide on taking screenshots with Gnash (note that certain features like gradients are not yet properly supported).