Posts Tagged ‘Gotchi-sim’

New Discoveries about Flash Lite

Friday, April 24th, 2009

I’ve been having some problems getting the sound to play properly on a Nokia 6300 phone whereas it’s been playing fine on Windows Mobile. I’ve found out that the Nokia 6300 is a Series 40 Nokia phone and it has Flash Lite 2.0 installed on it instead of Flash Lite 2.1. What I’ve read indicates that it should still work though – and it’s not… so I’m going to dowm more investigating.

I currently have a post on the Adobe forum about it.

I just found out about a beta Flash Packager for Nokia phones. I’ve just uploaded my application to it and will see if it works soon! So exciting!

ok – just discovered that the Flash Packager won’t work on my Nokia 600. It only works on Series 40 Nokia’s that are Fifth edition with feature pack 1 or newer. The phone I’m working with is 3rd edition with feature pack 2. I think I’m just going to have to get another Nokia phone!

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Two helpful resources on Flash, objects & arrays

Saturday, April 11th, 2009

For the Gotchi-Sim project, I am planning to store data from an XML file into an array of objects.

I think these two sites will be helpful to me when trying to program that:

Complex data types: Arrays and Objects
http://flash-creations.com/notes/actionscript_complexdata.php

briening.com: Flash Data Structures: Array vs Object
http://briening.com/flash/flash-array-vs-object

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a break through with using XML in flash!

Saturday, April 11th, 2009

I’ve been struggling with XML in Flash for days… I found two pieces of information that really helped me a lot… so I thought I’d share them here.

1. The difference between an element node and a text node!

I found out today that some nodes were classed as element nodes and some are classed as text nodes. What I didn’t know was that the text is a node.

For example in this small XML document:

<conversation>
<INTERACTION>
<NPC_says>
What would you like to order?
</NPC_says>
<player_says>
I would like pizza.
</player_says>
</INTERACTION>
</conversation>

The node conversation, interaction, NPC_says and player_says are all element nodes.

I had thought that NPC_says & player_says would be text nodes… but that is not correct, they are both element nodes. The text inside these tags are text nodes. That is, What would you like to order? is a text node as is I would like pizza.

To reference the text what would you like to order? text, you would reference it as follows:

myXML.firstChild.firstChild.firstChild.firstChild

Previously, I thought it would be referenced by:

myXML.firstChild.firstChild.firstChild.nodeValue

Check out this site for more info: XML basics at www.kirupa.com
http://www.kirupa.com/web/xml/XMLbasics4.htm

2. There is an ignoreWhite property

If you don’t tell your xml documen to ignore white space it can pick up blank spaces and think they are nodes in the XML document.

ignoreWhite property
http://www.actionscript.org/resources/articles/9/1/XML-101/Page1.html

I now think I’m ready to take on the XML scripting of the Gotchi-Sim project for real! Yay!

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progress on the Gotchi-Sim project

Saturday, April 4th, 2009

For the last couple of weeks I’ve been working on a Flash Lite game for a mobile phone. At the moment I’m calling it Gotchi-Sim – basically because it’s a cross between a Tamagotchi and The Sims.

The game aims to help people learning English as a Second Language.

Progress to date. So far I’ve:

  • done some research into what makes a good learning game (found some great reports on this!)
  • developed the outline for the game
  • developed the functional specs for the game and the limitations that will exist for the prototype I am designing.
  • installed the Flash Lite player on my smartphone and explored some of the functionality of Flash Lite.
  • installed a Flash Lite update for Flash 8 on my desktop computer
  • downloaded the Flash Lite content development kit

Useful web resources I’ve been using today include:

  • the text-to-speech library for Flash Lite. http://code.google.com/p/flyer/downloads/list
    although, I think this will only work on phones that have symbian OS – and my phone does not. Symbian OS is mostly on Nokia phones so I think this one won’t work for me. It needs Python installed which only works under Symbian.

 

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