Mars

Posted on by

I just learned about Adobes “Mars” project via John Dowdell:

Mars is the code name for a project developing an XML-based representation of PDF documents.

Interesting.

Reading the Mars FAQ on Adobe Labs, i found this little gem:

Can an end-user create a Mars document?

Anyone over the age of 18, or minors with parental permission, can create a Mars document.

Uh?

1337! FC64 demo updated.

Posted on by

In celebration of todays release of the Flash Player 9 for Linux beta, i finally updated the demo of FC64, our C64 emulator for Flash Player 9.

Some time ago i implemented support for sprites and the lo-res bitmap mode, so quite some more games work on FC64 now, including Elite (see screenshot below – i added it to the demo), Fort Apocalypse, Frogger, Donkey Kong, and a whole bunch of others.

Also, Voidrunner renders properly now, including the sprites in its intro.

Check it out:
http://codeazur.com.br/stuff/fc64_final/

FC64 wins Flashforward Film Festival

Posted on by

Darron already blogged it: FC64 won Flashforward Film Festival in the Technical Merit category. Ohhh yeah!

I promised i show you the FC64 trailer that was shown at the ceremony, so here it is:

http://codeazur.com.br/stuff/fc64_final/flashforward/

(takes a while to load, i didn’t bother writing a preloader)

The fun part of it is that the trailer is written in 6502 assembly and executed by FC64. Even more fun: FC64 loads the assembly sourcecode at runtime, compiles and executes it. The scrolling arrows are actually lots of custom 8×8 pixel characters, animated by the C64 graphic chips smooth scrolling feature. I used raster interrupts to switch scrolling off in the middle part where the text appears (we don’t want that to scroll).

Ok, i also cheated a bit. Credits go to Andre Michelle: i ripped the Super Mario mod off his fantastic mod player. SID emulation in FC64 is being experimented with at the moment by Martin Wood and Ralph Hauwert, but we don’t have anything stable to show yet. Be patient :)

ZIP it up!

Posted on by

Did you ever write an image gallery or a game in Flash? Did it bother you to write rather complicated load queues to load lots of small files such as image thumbnails or game assets like tiles? Are you working with big text files and need a reliable way to compress/uncompress them to save valuable bandwidth?

I’m proud to announce FZip, a cute little Actionscript 3 class i’ve been working on together with Max Herkender that enables you to load standard ZIP archives and extract contained files while the archive is still loading.

FZip is released under OSI approved zlib/libpng license.

Sample usage:

public function YourApp() {
   var request:URLRequest = new URLRequest("your.zip");
   var zip:FZip = new FZip();
   zip.addEventListener(FZipEvent.FILE_LOADED, fileCompleteHandler);
   zip.load(request);
}

private function fileCompleteHandler(evt:FZipEvent):void {
   var file:FZipFile = evt.file;
   trace("File loaded: " + file.filename)
   trace("  " + file.sizeCompressed);
   trace("  " + file.sizeUncompressed);
}

Check it out: FZip at côdeazur brasil lab

Bratwurst

Posted on by

Adobe Flex 2 Language Reference, class Class:

For example, if you are using an MXML compiler to generate SWF files, you would create an embedded class as follows:

[Embed(source="bratwurst.jpg")]
public var imgClass:Class;

Real Coders do Assembly

Posted on by

So our Flash Commodore 64 emulator project, FC64, got nominated for the Flashforward Film Festival recently (read my previous post). The 60 finalists are given the opportunity to submit a 45 second trailer showcasing the work, that will be shown live in front of 1000 people at the ceremony.

I won’t spoil it so i won’t show the trailer here (you gotta wait until after the Flash Film Festival ceremony or better yet attend it to see it). What i can do though is – in the spirit of open source – show you the source code:

http://codeazur.com.br/stuff/fc64trailersource.asm

The trailer is written in 6502 assembly and runs in FC64 – a real ‘Demo’. It actually should run as is in the original C64 hardware, and in any other C64 emulator. If i ever find the time, i’m going to prepare a binary image to load it into other emulators.

By the way, FC64 features an assembler (the souce code above is loaded and compiled at runtime into the emulator), as well as a disassembler and debugger. This is currently not reflected in the emulator UI and undocumented. Plans are to make the UI a full featured IDE for developing stuff for the C64.

I had hell of a fun coding the trailer demo, and it put me right back in the mid 80es when i used to waste night after night coding on my beloved bread box. Ahhh, memories.. :)

Back to AS3 development now, listening to Depeche Modes ‘See You’. Ha :)