Seantron Doing his Thang
My friends, behold! Influxis has posted all of the videos that were recorded (sorry for anyone that didn’t get recorded) here:
You can watch my presentation there, and follow along to my slides posted here:
Please enjoy, and hopefully that will keep you occupied until Multipass is released. Good things are coming.
Influxis, in association with 11th Principle, is proud to present Orchid; an Open Source Software Development Kit for Adobe’s Flash® Platform. Orchid is our internal framework used to build our next generation products and services. Written in Actionscript 3.0, Orchid consists of a core set of object-oriented frameworks that provide a light-weight runtime environment for applications running on Flash®. Designed from the ground up to be an easy to use framework, Orchid allows for the productive and efficient pairing of developers with designers.
Key Features
Influxis will be presenting a special showing of Orchid during Adobe’s Max Conference this year in Los Angeles. More details to emerge real soon so be sure and check back!
Last week I posted on twitter a link to this vid:
What the hell was that? The most boring music video ever with the music too loud and a bunch of black at the end (sorry, I made that after a long night of coding at the wee hours of 5AM)?
Yeah, pretty much.
Yes, that was Actionscript 3 driving that hardware accelerated 3d engine. Yes, that was a modified version of the AVM2 or Tamarin VM. Yes, that was 200 Frames Per Second, with a pretty decent amount of polys. Now for what it wasn’t: that was not the flash player rendering that. The awesome Irrlicht 3d engine was doing all of the heavy lifting on that.
Basically, Tamarin set up the Irrlicht 3d engine to run, which was a successful proof of concept that yes, AS3 could be the scripting language for a 3d engine which could rival Unity 3d. Awesome! It also allowed for you to use the Flash Projector to output an executable of your AS3 driven version of Irrlicht, and thus mimics the Adobe Integrated Runtime (a.k.a. AIR) model. That’s doubly awesome! Right?
So? Um, what’s the problem Brosef Stallin?
Have you happened to use Tamarin lately? If you haven’t. . . let me help you get started:
First link is a pdf explaining what the AVM2 does.
Then build it (note: this is the easiest part).
Then add your own Native Classes to it. Welcome to Manifest/Make file hell.
Or, just use the awesome project Red Tamarin to get yourself up and running. You should look at Zwetan’s blog as well for some tasty morsels of knowledge (a seriously smart dude).
Other sources of interest on this subject include: RedRocketServer, Campell Anderson’s Blog, and the Mod-Actionscript Project.
So, if you didn’t notice the pattern here, let me spell it out for you.
1. The AVM2 is in C++, and there is very very very little documentation on it. The Red Tamarin project does the best job at this point of getting you in to the AVMPLUS and Shell libraries (check the avmcore.cpp and avmcore.h to find some morsels of goodness, and then the src/shell/avmshell.h).
2. While it was cool that Adobe released the AVM2 to the public, they didn’t release the rest of the Flash Player to you. It’s like trying to learn how an automobile engine works with just the transmission (I don’t know I’m not a car guy). You don’t have any access to the display/GUI at all. It’s almost a dead end.
3. The only way to compile your .AS code with the avmplus.exe is via the command line open source Flex Compiler. Which is very scary to a lot of people. Yeah, I could write a python script or something for you, but it will still not be pretty. And it would be too much work for all but the most Obsessive Hackers out there.
4. Did I mention we had to modify the AVM2 for all of this? So that means this will not work in the Holy Grail. . . the Flash Player. Although, I could use the QT Framework and bust out a cross platform browser plug in that would run Irrlicht in the browser via your AS3 script. But that’s a plug in that people have to download! Gasp! And then the whole reason for using flash kinda goes out the window right? We give up the godlike(all together now) Flash Penetration Rate for a 3d engine that can output more then 20,000 polygons without having to jump through hoops of fire.
Now, I’m going to go interactive on you! Get ready yo. . . a question!
What do you guys think? Would you like Variant to be built out? Would you use it if I spent my precious (imagine my adorable family crying right now) time on this? Could we get someone from Adobe to weigh in on this? I know that I could build this out for the new version of AIR that is going to be released with a Native Code API. Do you guys even freakin’ care about high resolution/high framerate 3d in flash? Would you like a new IDE like Unity 3d but with the option to treat every 3d object like a MovieClip?
Please, feedback is welcome. Oh, and do you want the .exe example that is shown in the video to play with?
Good night and good luck.
P.S.
If you were interested in the AVM2 and would like to follow Red Tamarin please follow @zwetan
And if you are interested in Red Rocket Server, please follow @campbell
They deserve twitter love, they are awesome.
The next update to TVStation is finally here. This version fixes several bugs while introducing some new functionality.
Here is a break down of what version 0.5.2 includes:
Viewer:
TVStation Viewer
Display: The display would break when collapsing the bottom panel if player, schedule, and media information were all showing simultaneously.
Start Up: Black background would stick or experience very clunky start on the viewer.
Volume Scrubber: If you roll out of volume button slowly it does not make scrubber disappear.
Mute: Setting mute when an item was playing was overwritten when the next item played.
Source Files: Fixed the error messages of missing classes when working with the viewer source files.
Video Clearing: Fixed an issue where stream videos were not clearing out and kept playing even though another video was selected.
Admin:
TVStation Admin
Speex Codec: Fixed the speex codec bug.
Live ‘Casters List: When broadcasting live and creating a channel or switching channels, the live casters list would break.
Resizing Playlist: When making the admin interface very small the playlist was not accessible in the media interface.
Block Scheduling: Schedule would break when scheduling daily blocks
Both Admin and Viewer:
Chat History: Chat history was buggy and it would not scroll to the bottom when it started.
Embed Tags: Issues using embed tags have been resolved.
Launch Viewer Button: Using the “Launch Viewer” button on the admin was not working.
Loading Local Assets: When loading local assets it would break the app on the admin and viewer.
Help Files: Help files on admin would not load at all.
Chat Gap: Fixed the big gap at the bottom in the chat history when it gets too long.
Nothing Playing Image: ‘Nothing playing’ image was not loading when nothing was playing.
Chat URLs: URLs in chat were not working properly.
Viewer:
Performance: Performance has been improved on the viewer.
Advertising: The banner functionality was moved into the player instead of it being at top of video and you can now set a URL to make the banner clickable.
Admin:
TVStation Admin Chat
Re-label: Start broadcast button was relabeled to Start TVstation (too confusing when in live tab admin).
Start Broadcast: When an admin presses the start broadcast button in the Live tab, if there are no active broadcasters the stream will automatically go live.
New Field: The source path field has been added in the media edit field in the media list.
Save Icon: A clock icon has been added to notify admin users when settings are saving.
Optional Channel Login: When creating a new channel the login for that channel is now optional. If you wish not to have a login active for that channel simply clear out the email and password fields. However please note that a login is still required for the default channel0 channel.
Log Out: A logout button was added to the admin.
Both Admin and Viewer:
Word Filter: The word filter functionality was extended. For example if a word is set such as banana the system would catch it if a user was trying to input b.a.n.a.n.a or ba na na.
Emoticons: Added Smileys to chat.
New Chat Menu: Chat now has a new menu system to load or clear chat contents.
User Profiles: Expanded the user list features to include new profile mini system which can be changed when double clicking your name on the list.
Time Stamps: Chat now has user icon and time stamps.
Changing Labels: You can now change the labels without having to recompile via a provided XML file for both the admin and viewer.
API Compatibility: You can now set up API to connect to TVStation without having to authenticate via a new method in the main.asc file.
Search: A new search bar has been added to lists in the viewer and the main media list on the admin. Search videos by title or written content.
If you are on any of the old versions of TVStation2 beta then this update is strongly recommended. It is available for download now through the Influxis Wizard.
Influxis Wizard: TVStation Download
Demo the TVStation Viewer here.
Demo the TV Station Admin here.
As always, your feedback is very important to us so if you have any questions, comments, or feature requests, please feel free to contact Influxis support at support@influxis.com.
One of our initiatives at Influxis is to engage the Flash community and help support those who have helped advance the platform in so many cool ways. We want to continue stoking the fires of Flash fervor and contribute to the growth and education of the community.
So in addition to sponsoring several past and upcoming Flash conferences around the world , an online global web conference called <head>, the recently announced Adobe Influxis Flash Latin Tour, and co-creating our own Flash conference and craft beer festival known as Flash on Tap, we are sponsoring several other upcoming exciting Flash events in 2009 (in order by date):
Flash on the Beach, Brighton ‘09
We love Flash on the Beach and it gets better every year! Again, this year, Influxis is sponsoring the Inspire Sessions.
Flash on the Beach conference is the place to go for design, technical and inspiration if you are a web developer. Nearly 50 of the world’s most talented designers, developers, creatives, film makers and artists presenting on 3 tracks over 3 full days. Flash on the Beach brings together the most creative, technical, inspirational, awe-inspiring, educational and entertaining industry leading speakers in the rich media industry.
Flash on the Beach will take place September 20th – 23rd, 2009.
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FLASHPITT
Influxis is proud to be a sponsor of Flashpitt for the second year in a row. Flashpitt is a conference for interactive designers and developers. Flashpitt 2008 was Pittsburgh’s first major Flash-centric conference and they’re back for a second year, officially making it an annual event!
Flashpitt 2009 takes place on October 15th & 16th, 2009 in Pittsburgh, PA.
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Flash Camp Egypt, Cairo ‘09
Influxis is providing some awesome swag items to be raffled off at Flash Camp Egypt.
The Imagine Adobe User Group in Egypt is organizing the Flash Camp Egypt event, that will be hosted by AUC (American University in Cairo). The event will take place on the October 17th, 2009.
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Flash Camp Philadelphia
Influxis is proud to be a sponsor of Flash Camp Philly.
Flash Camp Philadelphia is a full-day event featuring top industry experts on the Adobe Flash Platform from both inside and outside Adobe, with a special focus on presenters from the Philadelphia area.
Flash Camp Philadelphia takes place on Saturday, November 7th, 2009 in Philadelphia, PA.
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Influxis Adobe Latin Flash Tour
We’re excited to be a part of The Latin Flash Tour (see Lee Brimelow announcement: The Flash Blog)
The Latin Flash Tour will take place from November 7th – 18th, 2009 in the following cities:
If you haven’t heard FOTB is going to be the best conference ever. Have you seen the lineup??
http://flashonthebeach.com/
WOW…
And of course: SOLD OUT!: http://flashonthebeach.com/tickets/
I’ve heard rumors of passes floating around on ebay…
Congrats to those who are attending! Excellent times ahead!!
-Richard
The Latin Flash Tour is on!!!
Lee Brimelow announced on his website The Flash Blog that the Latin Flash Tour is a definite go, and Influxis is helping to sponsor the event.
You can read more on his blog: http://theflashblog.com/?p=1370
Lee says the actual schedule is close to being finalized and speakers will be announced later. Make sure to check Lee’s site often to see any updates. For now the schedule is the following:
Just wanted to give everyone a heads up that Multipass will be launched at my new Presentation: Become a FMS Samurai with Multipass at FITC’s Unconference. It’s going to be 30 minutes of FMS sweetness.
It’s truly an honor to be presenting with such an amazing line up that includes:
Seb Lee-Delisle
Joa Ebert
Andre Michelle
Ralph Hauwert
Chuck Freedman
Grant Skinner
Colin Moock
Phillip Kerman
Ryan Stewart
and many more!
May the force be with you.
We are excited to have Adobe MAX in our backyard this year, right here in Los Angeles. So we’re asking around and looking at speakers, and realized ‘where are all our European friends?’
So we started asking around – are you guys coming this year? Many of them could not attend for travel costs, tight economies and what not. So we think, ‘these guys definitely need to be here among the Flash family’. Enter MAX Euro Invasion (#MaxEuroInvasion on Twitter). Not all could come, but several were able to accept our invitation.
Quote from Richard Blakely, Influxis co-founder and CEO:
“Influxis is bringing you what we call for lack of simpler terms #MaxEuroInvasion. This is a group of a few of our Euro friends (really family: Joa Ebert, Andre Michelle, Ralph Hauwert, Seb Lee Delisle, and Mario Klingemann) who we have invited to LA to hang out with us and our larger group of friends (again family) and enjoy the Adobe MAX conference. TRULY, a Flash conference is not the same without these guys, believe me…
So in short there are no apparent plans for these guys to speak yet, although the possibility will certainly exist, or you can just meet one of them. This is a cool thing for everyone and we are honored and humbled to have them as our guests. Looking forward to chilling out again guys, see you in LA at MAX!!”
UPDATE (9/8/09): Joa Ebert, Andre Michelle, Ralph Hauwert, and Seb Lee Delisle will be speaking at the FITC Unconference. Thanks to the gang at FITC!
So who are these guys?
Seb has been working in digital media for over 15 years and is now Technical Director at Brighton-based Flash specialists Plug-in Media. He combines his eye for design and animation with his understanding of math and physics to give his work that extra flare and sparkle. Over the last 5 years he has specialized in Flash games, working with clients such as BBC, Sony, Philips, Unilever, and Barclays.
Seb’s work with Plug-in Media has pushed the boundaries of 3D and physics simulations in Flash, and he is now on the Papervision3D development team.
He is a regular face on the international Flash conference scene, and has presented at Flash on the Beach, FITC, and FlashForward. He is known for his ability to communicate seemingly complex subject-matter in a friendly and accessible way. He is the manager of FlashBrighton, a Flash platform user group.
Joa Ebert is a core developer and Software Architect of the award winning Hobnox AudioTool. He is known for a lot of projects including WiiFlash, popforge, AS3V, ActionScript Wiki, PBDT and many more.
His talks have strong technical aspects where theory and computer science meet ActionScript.
Joa did also the speed coding at FOTB in 2008.
Ralph Hauwert is a dutch Flash / Flex expert focused on creating compelling expressive content for the Web.
Ralph is a freelance consultant and developer on rich internet applications and websites, focusing on Flex, AIR and Flash.
Currently his work resides in the field of creating new and innovative experiences online, combining technologies like Papervision3D, AS3, AIR, Cairngorm, to create stunning and well architected applications.
Ralph focuses on innovation and cultivating Flash and Flex competence. He has 9 years of Flash Platform coding experience, has presented at several events like Adobe Live, Spark Europe and the Dutch launch events for Flash 8 and Flash Communication Server.
Ralph is working on Papervision3D as one of the core team members, together with project founder Carlos Ulloa and John Grden. He maintains a weblog at UnitZeroOne which is also his outlet for highend Flash solutions.
Mario Klingemann A.K.A. Quasimondo is what you get when you cross the analytic mind of a coder with the creative fervor of an artist and add a little bit of mad scientist mentality to the mix.
In his aim to surprise himself and his audience he constantly tries to explore uncharted territories in order to discover unseen beauty and unthought ideas.
A key factor in his work is the drive to overcome limitations by creatively repurposing and recombining objects and by this revealing their hidden qualities.
His creations have been exhibited in international art shows and won acclaim among critics as exemplary pieces of net art.
He also shares his explorations and discoveries on design and technology conferences and is lead computational artisan at Aviary.com.
Starting about 10 years ago in Flash4 as an autodidact, Andre Michelle repeatedly pushed the limits of Flash possibilities. He recently gave up his freelancer status to work at Hobnox.com (cologne, germany) as chief developer of an online music application in Flash.
UPDATE: Ted Patrick from Adobe (@adobeted) was also excited about them coming and was able to have Adobe sponsor our friends with free MAX passes as well. Many thanks to Ted and Adobe!
We here at Influxis understand that Flash Media Server isn’t the easiest thing to pick up, so what have we done to show you we truly have your back?
Random Flash peeps behold!
MultiPass
The Flash Media Server Framework for Rapid Prototyping and Flash Multiplayer Game Development.
Sounds pretty sweet, eh? What’s that, you want to see an example? Sure thing, check it:
public class SimpleChatExample extends Sprite { private var multipass:MyMultipass; private var lock:Boolean = false; public function SimpleChatExample() { enterButton.label = "enter"; enterButton.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, enterChat); } private function enterChat(e:MouseEvent):void { if(username.text != ""){ multipass = new MyMultipass(); multipass.addEventListener(MyMultipass.READY, initChat); stage.addEventListener(KeyboardEvent.KEY_DOWN, sendChat); } } private function initChat(e:Event):void { addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, statusUpdate); //Here is where the Magic Starts! //Set your UserName! multipass.api.userName = username.text; //Attach Your Chat Room multipass.api.attachChatController(); //Listen For Other Client's Updates multipass.api.addEventListener(MultiPass.CHATUPDATE, updateChat); //Connect your RTMP! multipass.api.connectFMS("rtmp://yourRtmpAddress.com/MultiPass/"); } private function sendChat(e:KeyboardEvent):void { if(e.keyCode == Keyboard.ENTER) { output.appendText(username.text + " : " + input.text + "\n"); multipass.api.chatController.sendTextChat(input.text); input.text = ""; } } private function updateChat(e:Event):void { output.appendText(multipass.api.chatController.message + "\n"); } private function statusUpdate(e:Event):void { fmsStatus.text = multipass.api.status; } } }
That is all the code it takes to make a fully operational Simple Chat Room system.
Basically, what MultiPass is doing is it’s going to be the FMS Controller for you. It’s completely separate from the View. Also with MultiPass the horror of having to code Actionscript 1 serverside is taken care of for you.
That’s not all! MultiPass also will connect all of the various bits and pieces of FMS Prototype for you, so no more issues with calling your play function before bwDone() or anything like that.
Think of it like this: if you want to add a Room List to that simple Chat Room you would do something like
multipass.api.attachRoomList(); multipass.api.addEventListener(MultiPass.ROOMUPDATE, updateMyRoom);
Easy right? Next week I’m going to have my first Multiplayer game example “How to make a Multiplayer Racing Game”.
If you have any questions or ideas feel free to follow me on twitter:
www.twitter.com/seantron
