BrianGriggs.com

Here are some simple graphic design tricks I learned from my friend in New York:

1. Make sure that your Formatting Palette is available. If you can’t see it, click on View->Formatting Palette
2. Click on the Insert Table button. (The blue grid.)
3. Select the 2X3 table
   
4. For your banner/newspaper name, highlight the top three cells
   
5. Hold down Control and then click on the highlighted cells (it’s like a right-click on a PC)
   
6. Choose Merge Cells
7. Type in your headline.
8. In the bottom-left cell, start typing your first article.
9. You can copy and paste pictures into your articles. (Remember the Control + Shift + Apple + 4 screenshot trick.)
10. To change a picture’s wrapping (how the words flow around it) click on Wrapping->Square
11. Once your article is completely typed, you can turn off the lines of your table/cells. Highlight your table. From the top menu, click on Table->Table Properties
12. Click on the Borders and Shading button. Select “None”.

(and for Future Professionals, but we’ve been working on this)

The first type of code that I like to introduce is “stop();”. Put this in the ActionScript for the first frame. Test the movie. Instead of moving on through the frames, it stops in frame 1. How exciting.

Let’s animate a figure.

This is circleman. He is a very complex character with artwork that took me hours to draw.

To be able to easily reuse circleman, instead of drawing him on the stage, I made him a separate movie clip in the Flash file’s library. That way I don’t have to spend hours re-drawing him.

Right now he’s kindof boring in his new layer on frame 1, especially since the “stop();” command doesn’t move the animation anywhere. But for this movie, all of the fun will happen in one frame.

Make sure that circleman is selected, click on his ActionScript button, and type in the code that you see in the picture:

The onClipEvent(load) is a one time thing when that movie clip shows up in the frame the first time around. You’re setting up the initial values of the speed.

The onClipEvent(enterFrame) is every time the frame loops. With the LEFT function, it’s making your xspeed value a negative one. Outside of the Key.isDown(Key.LEFT) function the _x and _y is being added to whatever your xspeed and yspeed values are. It will do this each time the frame loops (many times per second). This creates the constant motion. If you don’t like the constant motion, you could put the _x += xspeed; part inside the Key.isDown function to add the xspeed only when the key is down.

Remember: Brackets start and stop a function. Every time there’s an open bracket it has to close the function somewhere with a close bracket.

Back to the Key.isDown, the way we’ve got it set up, circleman moves left until he is stuck in the netherworld called “Offscreen” with no hope of return. Add some UP, DOWN, and RIGHT Key.isDown functions.

Boundaries
Here’s where stuff gets crazy.

Create a movie called “bounds”.

This will be your environment/world/level.
Put the movie bounds on the stage. Name its instance “wall”.

In circleman’s ActionScript, add a hitTest after your Key.isDown code but before your _y+=yspeed; stuff.

If the character hits the bounds, it stops and then moves to new x,y coordinates.

This ActionScript dictionary is officially your best friend.

is in wonderful text file format here:onclipevent.txt

You’ve got your platform games going, but what if you don’t want to have a game that looks like a cartoon? Creating your own artwork takes time! The people at Lyzrd Stomp have created a great tutorial to make artwork that looks like the above picture.

Adobe, distributors of Flash, have some great tutorials on character animation and game design. 

•  If you want to see how to make great cartoon graphics, check out the tutorial here.
• If you want to see a game where the ground moves underneath your character, click here.  

For Future Professionals today we’ll look at creating movie clips as instances and adding ActionScript code to the instances to make the characters move around. A great tutorial is at Newgrounds. Once you’re there, click on ‘Play the Game.

Librarians - Have you ever had a file that you could not convert? Someone sends you a .wps or .cwk in an Office dominated world. Students can’t access an important essay and they’re freaking out. A teacher wants to show a .wmv but didn’t realize we don’t have Windows Media Player current on our Macs.

The site Zamzar.com is a librarian’s dream. Any file can be switched and converted for easy access. You can choose to upload a file or send a URL. Zamzar converts it and then links to the new file on their server where you can download it.

The best thing? There’s no program to download and no files, just links, get sent to your inbox.

Continuing on with what we talked about the past couple of meetings with Flash, here is a platform game where the person turns around and a villain that is beatable.Provided by Magnetos from gotoAndPlay.it: Platform - saltas

1.  Figure out your own artwork and boundary box (how big is too big of a character?)
2. Find where the enemy vs. hero collision is.
3. Notice that hero_walk is different from sidewalk. Figure out which one you need to edit.

Check out the tutorial at gotoandplay.it about platform game creation by tonypa. The source file for Flash can be downloaded here - platform.fla

1. Try adding platforms in different areas. Different frames of your project can be different levels.
2. Change the square to a different character.
3. Add an obstacle/villain that moves on its own.

Here’s an excerpt from the Wikipedia article about book 3 in Christopher Paolini’s Inheritance series:

From a press release made on 30th October 2007 on alagaesia.com, it is stated that the publication date of the as yet untitled third book will be September 23, 2008. A fourth book has been announced. Some of the previously mentioned known details may appear in the fourth book instead of the third, since the two volumes used to be one and the same. Paolini has also stated that the book will end with the death of another major character, but gave no hints as to who it might be.[8]
[edit]Excerpt

An excerpt from Book 3, “Light and Shadow”, was included in the Eldest deluxe edition and later released on the Fricaya network.[9] The chapter follows Roran, Eragon and Saphira as they approach Helgrind. Saphira finds the mountain’s impregnability to be an illusion created by Galbatorix, and enters it to find a large cavern. The chapter closes with Saphira being attacked by a Lethrblaka (a parent of the Ra’zac), which knocks Eragon unconscious.and arya dies in this book if any of you have quistions about it email me at jaqkquin@yahoo.com

Find the bad edit.