Solving technology problems, one at a time
Flash Firebug is a great tool for debugging Actionscript 3 SWF files, similar to the way regular Firebug helps debug Javascript and CSS when using Firefox.
But the current version of Flash Firebug, 3.0.3, has a bug that causes it to display this error:
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No SWF files with AS3 detected on this page. You could try reloading the page.
Captivate 5 removed the need to answer this question: it only publishes in ActionScript 3 format, and correspondingly limits the compatibility of the published SWF file in certain situations as described below.
But if you are using Captivate v. 4 or earlier, you may still be wondering which to choose.
Continue readingA while back, I worked on a flash game that teaches medical professionals how to find objects in a cardiac cart. A cart with 6 drawers isshown at left. When a drawer is clicked, it slides in from the top of the screen so that all the objects inside can be seen. The object of the game is to drag whichever object has been selected at random to a target at bottom right.
The original design allowed plenty of room for the drawers to move down to their open position without obscuring the target area.
But as time went on and more requirements came to light, the dimensions of the game had to be shortened so that the drawer overlapped the hand target when it was in its “open” position.
Continue readingAnother item I need to keep looking up: how to get the attributes of an XML item. Here, per the ever-helpful Senocular, is the definitive note on the subject. E4X (XML used in ActionScript 3)
Continue readingIt’s very easy to wipe out your default Actionscript classpath from the Publish Settings “Flash” tab, so I’ve had to look it up several times. Here it is for your convenience: $(AppConfig)/ActionScript 3.0/Classes It’s a
Continue readingIf you get an error like this in an actionscript 3 Flash file: TypeError: Error #1034: Type Coercion failed: cannot convert flash.display::SimpleButton@61422481 to [symbolname]. at flash.display::Sprite/constructChildren() at flash.display::Sprite() at flash.display::MovieClip() at classname()[/path_to/as/classname.as:34] Check the symbol
Continue readingThis game is a framework to create a simulation of a crash cart in a hospital. A crash cart is a red metal tool cart with 6 drawers, filled with the items used by the Cardiac Arrest team to save people’s lives when they have a cardiac arrest. Speed is of the essence in an arrest, so the people on the team need to know exactly where each item is in the drawers. The goal of this game is to help train team members to find the items they need.
An item to be found is randomly chosen, and the player clicks on a drawer and looks through the items to find the one they are looking for. When it is found, they drag the item to the target (which will probably be animated and a whole lot cooler looking in the final game. If they get it right, they get positive feedback of some sort and another item is chosen. If not, the item pops back to its last position before the drag and they get another chance to find the correct item.
Continue readingA while back I wrote [LINK] about a treasure-hunt-style game we developed in-house for training purposes. The purpose of the game is to help healthcare professionals memorize the location of items stored within a cardiac arrest cart, to make things go smoothly when every second counts.
A cardiac arrest cart (or “crash cart”) is a red metal tool cabinet, filled with items like airway tubes, IV needles, masks and other supplies used in advanced cardiac life support. The goal of this game is to learn where all the items are by retrieving the requested item from the cart by opening drawers, then dragging the item to a target for checking.
VIEW DEMO of the Virtual Cardiac Arrest Cart
DOWNLOAD SOURCE files for the cart game.
There are some errors that come up time and time again when working with Jeroen Wijering’s Flash Video Player. Here’s how to troubleshoot them. I’ll keep adding to the list as time permits. Click the images to see a larger view.
I had a particularly sticky flash problem where a MovieClip worked perfectly when run on its own, but when loaded into a container clip using a loader, would give:
Error #1056: Cannot create property someProperty on loaded clip myLoadedClip
At first I thought it was some kind of timing problem or failure to declare the items in the clip, but it turned out, simply adding the word dynamic to the class definition fixed the problem. Dynamic classes can have properties added at runtime. The MovieClip class is already dynamic, but apparently, the dynamic property is removed in some other part of my code.