DieAnstalt

According to the Android version on our mobile phone we need Adobe Air for that Android version.
My Milestone still has Android version 2.1 – Eclaire, and waits for the update to 2.2 – Froyo, which has been announced for Germany till the end of this year. Let’s hope!
You can check the version number on the cell Phone here: Settings -> Phone Info -> Firmware -> Version.
To get the Air SDK for Android is a bit complicated; we need to register for the Adobe prerelease program. You can reach the URL to register on Adobe Labs

After the registration you get to the logging page for the prerelease program. Under download you can find the Android extensions for Flash CS5 and the Android builds we need

I choose Build 06/04/10 and the Runtime for Eclaire which fits my version 2.1, all the newer ones have only Froyo for download.
Also download the Air 2.5 SDK for Window, we need this later for the FlashBuilder environment preparation.

Download or copy Runtime_Device_Eclair_20100603.apk in the /android-sdk-windows /tools folder and install it with ADB on the cell phone.
This should install AIR on the cell phone and register with a SUCCESS. You should see AIR now on the phone: Settings/ Applications/ Manage Applications :

Congratulation, you have installed AIR successfully on your cell phone. Next time wewill prepare the FlashBuilder environment to write our first application!

In this blog post I want to document my experience and learning’s while doing my first Android Air Application. I kept every single Step in great detail for those who don’t have experience in some of the Steps.

Preparing the Android SDK:

Connect the cell phone through the USB to the Android SDK:

In my case the device is detected and it shows its ID. If not there can be some things wrong, like:

- The USB driver for the mobile phone is not installed correctly. Download (in my case), directly from Motorola Motorola Milestone: Motorola Mobiltelefon USB-Treiber (für Windows®)

- Turn on the cell phone debug mode under Settings / Applications / Development:

These screenshots can be created with the Dalvik debug monitor, to find and start at /tools ddms.bat

In the next blog post I will describe the preparation for the Air Development with Flash Builder!

Sorry, this entry is only available in Deutsch.

It’s a while since I started to buy books about Design Pattern, but mostly some other interesting book needs to be read first, especially since I organize the Actionscripthero books from Apress and Friends of Ed.

Lets start with the title slogan and cover a few pre-important knowledge terms:

Encapsulation: Stay private and use getter and setter.

Polymorphism: Keep flexible with objects, or the ability of object variables to gather objects from different Classes.

At this point we need to remember the 2 rules of good software design:

And here we are implementing this rules with the help of Interfaces and abstract classes:

Interfaces:

All clear? Lets program to an interface
:

Abstract Classes: (don’t exist in AS, like they do in Java, but we do some ourself and do as if):

Composition:

Delegate:

Granularity:

Why I used this short form to explain? There are already many books and articles covering this theme. I wanted a quick reference for me to remember the basics while learning more about design pattern.

From April 14-16 Flash Forum Conference- FFK celebrated its 10th anniversary in Cologne. Actionscripthero’s Beatrix and Fernando have been present! We reported in advance in our Online Secret Meeting with the 2 organizer Sascha Wolter and Marc Thiele.

Workshops took place on April 13 and 17 respectively, Hero Fernando joined the Papervision 3D Workshop with Seb Lee-Delisle.

Sascha started the Conference 10 years ago and Marc joined a year later. The organisation is a 2 man business, and the familiar atmosphere one can feel all over. Everything is concentrated in the main open place in front of the great Conference room in Cologne Mediacenter.

This is the place for communication with everyone. Exchange, contact, friendship, discussions and business. Especially in the Powerflasher lounge technical discussions occurred on the highest level.

In context with our call: Meet the Heroes, we had 8 book give-away’ss for our members from Apress and FriendsOfEd. We will try to have concrete meeting points in the future, like a red sofa travelling with us around the world. We work hard on it!
Meanwhile a great THANK YOU to Kai, Dominic, Michel, Jörg, Saban, Frank, Simon, Jesse, Joshua, Ralph, Mario, André, Joa, Oliver, Michael, Chris, Cornelia, Carlo, Lena from Weave and all the others!

Speakers we have not been able to attend, but all the discussions and interviews gave so much input for us. Step by step we will add the videos in the next days and weeks.

One highlight was the audiotool Party with André Michelle as DJ in the evening.

Free beer and we have never seen a party with people talking and discussing and connecting that much.

The End:

The cloud above Europe:
But the end was not the end on Friday. Many of the speakers, sponsors or attendees have not been able to get home for a few days. Not back to England, Norway or United States. Marc Thiele invited some to his house, I tried to care with moral support for some. Some started a Odyssey, others waited with patience and enjoyed the additional days in Germany. However, today the nightmare is gone, everyone save at home, and I am sure the the 10th FFK anniversary remains in mind to everyone even more because of the cloud!

Some private pics from the conference you can find here:http://www.flickr.com/groups/ffk_conference/

Day 2:

Thanks Seb, after pancake dinner we had the interview with you and as soon the video is uploaded I will add the link

Before leaving Amsterdam I visited the Cinema4D presentation, but that was nothing new, except the fact that Cinema4D can export to collada now.

Conclusion:
Amazing for the flash community or cool for the user? Can both be combined? What is an amazing demo, and what makes the money!
I remember my slogan as a fashion designer: A design is good for the masses when I get toothache watching it. No matter if fashion or flash, its always the same:
The amazing for the reputation.
The popular for the pocket.

Good bye FITC – maybe we see next year again!
I got a lot of inspiration from the conference!
Many thanks to all the speakers and to the organization!
A hug to all my new friends from all over the world!

My first time FITC Amsterdam was a great creative-technical input event with a few Close Encounters of the Special Kind.
The fact to be there also as a ActionScriptHero made the conference even more to a special event, and it was difficult to decide between speeches and speeches and speeches and interviews.

Day 1:

Day 2:

A model with single geometric Elements makes it possible to change this single Elements.

I cant explain how this works while creating a 3D model, but i have seen the strangest adds while exporting to Collada. Swift 3D for example adds extra nod elements for each geometric element, when exporting from Cimena 3D. In the example i have cleaned the structure manually and in this case deleted the extra elements for each geometrical Element. The pic shows the „unclean“ file with head existing twice inside each other:

< node id="head1"> and < node id="head">
also < body> tag is not necessary:

And this is the clean version for head:

Again i recommend to become familiar with the Collada xml structure!
If you dont delete unnecessary elements, also Papervision defines those as DisplaObjects3D, and the fun starts to find out which is the right element to use with setChildMaterialByName:

Papervision traces alle 5×2 geometric elements and the body element:

INFO: DisplayObject3D: COLLADA_Scene
INFO: DisplayObject3D: body
INFO: DisplayObject3D: head1
INFO: DisplayObject3D: head
INFO: DisplayObject3D: hand
INFO: DisplayObject3D: hand1
INFO: DisplayObject3D: ub
INFO: DisplayObject3D: ub1
INFO: DisplayObject3D: lb1
INFO: DisplayObject3D: lb
INFO: DisplayObject3D: shoe
INFO: DisplayObject3D: shoe1

After deleting the unneseccary nots 5 geometric elements remain:

INFO: DisplayObject3D: COLLADA_Scene
INFO: DisplayObject3D: head
INFO: DisplayObject3D: hand
INFO: DisplayObject3D: ub
INFO: DisplayObject3D: lb
INFO: DisplayObject3D: shoe

This way one can work proper, and in the sample

- without texture and Phong Shader – every element is colored different, so you can see the different geometric elements.
Button change between 2 different head textures.

var bitmap:Bitmap = new _imageAsset() as Bitmap;
bitmapMaterial_cloth = new BitmapMaterial(bitmap.bitmapData, true);

var bitmap_bump:Bitmap = new _imageAsset_bump() as Bitmap;
bitmapMaterial_bump = new BitmapMaterial(bitmap_bump.bitmapData, true);

private function bumpDae(event : MouseEvent) : void {
         dae.setChildMaterialByName("head", bitmapMaterial_bump);
}

private function clothDae(event : MouseEvent) : void {
        dae.setChildMaterialByName("head", bitmapMaterial_cloth);
}

There is a nice Air Tool to optimise Daes from Mark I. Ross.

In this example i want to show how to add material on models manually.
When creating a 3D modell in any 3D program, one can add bitmap materials to the surfaces, in a Collada.dae this is defined in library_images

< library_images>

I prefer to leave this empty and to add my material on my model manually – and this works fine using Dae.as and the method setChildMaterialByName(), which requires 2 parameter.

dae.setChildMaterialByName("Cylinder", bitmapMaterial_bump);

< library_visual_scenes>
	< visual_scene id="VisualSceneNode" name="Scene">
		< node id="Cylinder" name="Cylinder" type="NODE">

INFO: DisplayObject3D: COLLADA_Scene
INFO: DisplayObject3D: Cylinder 

Today we finaly found the name for our online flash browser game. I want to thank my friend Brian from USA – Carolina for helping us getting the right name.

Crystalclash.de und Crystalclash.com are ours!

Actually we are preparing project organisation stuff, but as soon as we have news i gonna post it here.