Finally .. Flash in Blitz!!
Blitz3D Forums/Blitz3D Programming/Finally .. Flash in Blitz!!
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| Someone just sent me this link and I felt I needed to share it with you guys (just incase you didn't know!) .. http://www.accode.com/software.htm What an awesome product! Flash is great for building UIs and theres alot more possibilities than building your own UI system or any of the available libs. I look forward to seeing some of your Blitz games with awesome animated UIs!! |
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| Would be a lot more useful in Blitzmax IMO... cross platform and all that. Btw, it's actually legal to use macromedia's runtimes in your own projects if you have their disclaimer - heavy weapon from popcap does it this way. |
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| Woah! 1) Nice to se youre still around! 2) This is absolutely fantastic! 3) Thats awful advertising if the people here didnt know about it! OT: PP, could you sent me an email? |
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| ..cool...this is really good news... |
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| How come its not publicised anywhere? Could do with a demo to examine it closer. |
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| I can't believe anybody would even begin to think about buying something from someone who do not state their name and business address on their website. Nothing personal about http://www.dnsstuff.com/tools/whois.ch?ip=www.accode.com just simple common sense. |
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| WOW! Hmm worth investigating a litte further though me thinks! Peter - you are quite right, I guess I'll check the DB forums and see if people do buy stuff from these guys, and what their service is like. IPete2. |
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| I'm less concerned about the lack of name and address and more concerned about the total lack of any proof that it actually works. |
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| I'm less concerned about the lack of name and address and more concerned about the total lack of any proof that it actually works. Agreed! |
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| If you really need it, take a look at something like http://www.flashplayercontrol.com/dll/ A little tweeking of the Blitz3D or BlitzMax windows styles will let you use standard windows controls. |
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| Neat. Would be nice if there was a demo or something... No way to tell if it actually does anything. I don't know about using it as a GUI. That would mean getting Blitz to draw to a window on the SWF, which would mean that the program has full control over the animation... From the sounds of it, this seems to just do cutscene type things. May it be known (again) that I have demonstrated, on numerous occasions, the possibility of putting anything that Windows understands inside of your program, thus allowing for cutscenes in any video format that you want. Especially including embedded web browsers. |
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| You can use Flash inside B+ already (for user interactions) using the HtmlView gadget. Here is my example of it here (B+ only): http://www.zen28085.zen.co.uk/flashBlitzTest.zip |
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| Im sure accode wonbt mind me posting this email reply: "You can include *.swf movies into Blitz without any limitations. You can send ang get variables into/from movies, change object properties (position, size, etc), stop/play, goto frame, get current frame during runtime. There is no demo at this time." Sounds good to me. IPete2 |
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| NMuta just bought a copy of it yesterday (may have been the day before I'm not sure) so I'm sure we'll get some reports soon enough about how it fares :) Cygnus .. good to hear ya bud! |
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| What's exactly the 'big deal' about having flash inside B3D? ... really, I don't get it,... is there anything you can do with flash that blitz can not? ... |
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| Render scaleable vector objects & text, with anti-aliasing at speed? Play and stream video with full-control? Many people want to it for game menus etc. It also provides a convenient 2D animation format with very small file sizes. I'm sure with a great deal of coding you could come up with the drawing abilities and an editor to do something similar, but it would be a hell of a lot of work, and would still probably not come close. |
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| What's exactly the 'big deal' about having flash inside B3D? ... really, I don't get it,... is there anything you can do You're forgetting the fact that flash isn't just a format, its an application. It can create almost any kind of intro or interactive content imaginable.with flash that blitz can not? ... Can Blitz? I think not. Imagine Blitz3D without 3D model support. Its the same thing for 2D without flash. |
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| yeah Beaker and One Eyed Jack have it right on! I am thinking that Flash may be a good way to introduce a full screen, easy to implement menu system for our games, due to the fact that it is: (1) scaleable (2) design any interface you want, visually and with alphas (I hope this is what is reported by NMuta). (3) has some really cool animtation capabilities and effects which are so easy to implement its not true. (4) plus all the new cool stuff flash 8 pro has it will be awesome (if you own Flash that is). IPete2. |
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| Well with Flash 8 you could be far better off making your entire game in it. Depending on if it needs to be heavily optimised or not. Flash 8 has the caching stuff going on so it can be a hell of a lot faster. It's always going to be more compatible than Blitzmax or any other language. The question is really if it's suitable for a particular game or if the language can support an ambitious project. Probably the better choice for puzzle games though. |
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| Flash 8 has the caching stuff going on so it can be a hell of a lot faster. True, it is going to be faster than previous versions. Flash is very much slower than Blitz (in all its forms). It's always going to be more compatible than Blitzmax or any other language. Not sure about that; Flash does have its own cross-platform problems, but you only really notice them at the extreme ends of a project. Also, I would question whether its the right language for making complex games in. Its very flexible, but I would prefer BlitzMax, and probably even Blitz3D. |
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| With casual games it is often desirable to have a web version sampler. This makes it a non-issue. There's also some great new server stuff. In fact I am thinking of possibly using it at some point, been having a good look at actionscript. |
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| For me, Flash in Blitz would mean great interfaces. Having used Flash for a few web projects, I find it much easier to build interactive menus/buttons etc. in it than I do to compose them in Blitz. One of the biggest things is not having to mess about with a 3d hud system just to make nice transparencies ... and, although there already are XML extensions for Blitz, it may be very interesting to see to what degree the featureset is implemented in terms of Flash connectivity and remoting etc. |
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| Im with prof Beaker and Psychic - Flash 8 is a great product, but I want to continue with the powerful part of Blitz, B3d and Max and use Flash where it would be best implemented. But first we need to know if all this speculation is true or not. So I guess I'll have to put my money where my questions are and just have to go and see. Back in a Flash 8. IPete2. |
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| Now Blitz in Flash would be awesome - web game delivery without the need for ActiveX. |
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| Okay, I have purchased the plugin (it was only a few quid <£6:00 ) so worth a go I thought. Here's what I have seen so far. (1) Flash video - playback is superb. (2) Flash buttons seem to work fine (3) Alpha channel / transparent backgrounds? No sorry doesnt seem to work like Flash in Director I'm afraid, White comes out white, not transparent. (4) Text boxes in Flash can pass text to Blitz (5) Variables appear to be able to be passed between the two. (6) Some fonts are not displaying correctly - this may be me (7) Some animations seem not to have transferred - again this may have something to do with the text not displaying properly, I'll report back on this later (probably Thursday sometime pm). Otherwise, using Flash as a menu system at the front or end of a game seems more than 'workable'. Given the visual nature and speed of development that Flash offers, this may be a very good thing indeed for Blitz. It should be featured in the next Blitz Newsletter. More to follow tomorrow. Support email seems fairly responsive too, especially given the time zone differences. IPete2. |
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| Good news that it works. :) Maybe you should post a demo of some kind. What version of Flash does it support? |
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| I'm using Flash 8 pro (the video is fantatsic I must say) I think this [lugin can use any version because all it seems to do is integrate the swf inside the Blitz window. It would be a fantastic boon to enable the alpha side of Flash if possible. Can you imagine a fancy animated gui edging your latest blockbuster game? How cool would that be? As it is we will have to make do with boxes around everything for the moment. I haven't been able to test it with full screen mode, yet, everything I have done required a cursor - I'll try it later in full screen ode with a sprite cursor to see how that fares. IPete2. |
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| OK - quick update, I was doing something wrong yesterday with the text movie clip I had made, now I'm happy to report that I have that all working properly. There is a speed hit, Flash is slower in B3d but I think that is only to be expected, I have the little menu Im playing with running at 120fps in Flash, its about half that inside B3d unless you use Flip False - at which point zoooom! :) IPete2. |
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| IPete2 ======= may you can try the plugin with a Swish-generated swf? would be nice to see, if i could make my interfaces with swish - since i'm too dumb for 'real' flash (well not too dumb - too less sparetime...) would be nice, thx |
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| IPete2, did you manage to use Flash video as a texture within Blitz3D? It would be great if that work..of course, check memory resource management when you put video in to loop...I'm really interested to hear from you whats the results... |
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| @Marcus, I'll gladly check some swish content, have you got any? I haven't got Swish sorry! @Naughty Alien, ooooh yes that would get around the memory leaks, but I fear you may only be able to use the .swf as a 2D object rather like a GUI item not a true 3D item. It may work as a flat item - but not in a 3D environment I don't think. Hey I'll ask the chaps at Accode, they will probably know. IPete2. |
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| ..cooll..if that work I'll get it too...I'm looking forward to hear from you whats going on with it.. |
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| Hmm okay well it's not all bad news... I can run a looping video inside the swf with NO MEMORY problems at all. Total available video memory stays constant, which is the good news... However, I cant find a way to texture the Flash content at all, so no looping video on a texture yet I'm afraid! It is strange, it is as though the Flash content is separate from the Blitz content but they appear to be in the same screen memory (but they are not). I think this is not like drawmovie for some reason, this is not a simple overlay I fear. I have emailed accode, and I await their answer. Other good news is that you can position the Flash video from inside the Blitz loop live, so that's a bit odd too! Also it works fine in windowed mode, but is flickery in full screen mode. I'm confused here - sorry it is not the answer you all wanted. I'll keep on at it. IPete2. |
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| ..huhh..man...thats pretty weird...anyway, I hope respond from accode..thanks man anyway.. |
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| k - made something. u'll find it under www.malice.at/test.swf there are 3 options: 1 - Swish-generated form (red ball) 2 - Fs Command send with argument 3 - 3 PNG Images - compiled into the swf, to test alpha support :) let me know the result or mayba you could send me a exe to webmaster@... ? would be nice. bye |
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| I have received a reply from Accode, they say that Flash Alpha channels and making a Flash swf as a texture in B3d are not supported at this time. However they assure me of their continuing development of the plugin, all updates will be free! Very nice chaps - thanks. @Marcus - I'll give it a whirl asap and report back edit - I have sent a test zip to accode for permission to distribute, I should hear later. IPete2. |
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| Since it appears that this is legit I have a few questions for those who have it working. How does the interaction between flash and blitz work - For example how do you know when a button has been clicked or an animation ended? Also does it support actionscript of any sort? Do you need to have the flash player installed? Obviously this would introduce extra system requirements. Would be interesting to know if it works with flash 8 as well. |
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| Binary, You must remember that the Flash content is overlaid, Blitz does not show Flash, the swf player does. So anything you can do in Flash can be created in Flash (or apparently Swish) and then overlaid on a B3d Screen (no transparency yet so you get a rectangle). So Blitz does not support ActionScript, but whatever you want to do in Flash - do as normal. Blitz will display it and allow values to be passed into B3d from Flash. Interaction is done through passing variables out of Flash into Blitz, and maybe in reverse I haven't looked into that yet. I am not allowed to tell disclose the .bb source code because the plugin is a dll and has to be distributed with your game/app. Yes as the player does the usual work, I have Flash 8 Pro installed and the Flash 8 player and all seems ok. ALSO REMEMBER - I have only been happy and successful in doing stuff so far in Windowed mode (Flash video looks brill!), you get a strange flickering when in fullscreen mode. IPete2. |
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| I realise Blitz doesn't support actionscript - I only meant the flash player. So from what you;re saying you would have a small loop that repeats until a variable you check is set to a certain value and then you perform the action. A kind of event based system. That could work ok. The lack of full screen ability is disappointing though. If (when?) it works that would have been a major selling point since my next game would be able to make good use of it. Once there are some public demos I'll have a play but I'm not in any hurry, in fact it's not even neccessary, it would just be nice to have. Thanks for the response. |
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| ok, Here is a zipped file with the stuff from Marcus working. The b3d cone is rotating underneath the Flash overlay, but you will see Flash is running inside the B3d window. http://www.smartscreenuk.com/blitzflash.zip My guess is you WILL have to have the Flash player installed for this to work. IPete2. |
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| thx for the package. so there is no way present to add transparancy to the flash-background.... hope they'll get this fixed.... further more: is it possible to position the 'flash-layer' in the blitz-window? what are they saying about the fulscreen issue? |
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| Macus, (no transparency yet so you get a rectangle). No, not yet.. Yes you can position it where you want. Their commenrs are mainly updates will be free for life! They indicate this is only the first stage of the development cycle in this plugin. IPete2. |
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| Is this from aacoder as a userlib? |
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| Syco: One Eyed Jack (Posted 5 months ago) Btw, it's actually legal to use macromedia's runtimes in your own projects if you have their disclaimer - heavy weapon from popcap does it this way. ? |
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| Is there any way to save a text file (or some other kind of file) from flash? If there is, then I could save the values of my variables and read the file with blitz. I think that would be much easier and user-friendly. |
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| Well Flash has a number of ways of 'exporting' data from within it to the external word, whether by SharedObject, XML or LoadVariables. You should chek out each of these under the help files (which I know are really rubbish) or track down a decent tutorial on one of the many web sites out there. The SharedObject works well - its like an advanced cookie, you send data.data out and read it back in using a similar method - off the top of my head I can't remember but if you have real difficulty finding out about it e-mail me and I'll try and dig out some code which may help. IPete2. (my email is in my profile). |
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| Glad this topic surfaced. I've an idea for a program that would benefit so much from embedded .swf anims it's unbelievable! Regards teh Macromedia disclaimer that makes distribution legal, what exactly is that? Is there alink to the text that needs to be included in the software or something? And has anyone got anything new to demo since 5 months ago? I grabbed IPete2's demo which works well. It'd be nice to see smoother playback though. I'm guessing that was a limit of the .swf file, and not the .dll. |
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| Hi, i can't seem to get this any more. Does anyone have a copy I can buy off them? |
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| May not be anything toworry about but I clicked on the link and my "commercial" web filter rates this site as Malware. I will investigate further. |
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