Category Archives: AS3

Branch Metrics ANE

Promoting your application, and making it easy to be accessible to everyone is one of the key of its success. Custom url schemes, are one of the best way to do it! On a previous blog post, I explained how you could use them with AIR.

I also presented a service, rdrct.it, which allows thanks to a unique link to direct you on the mobile store corresponding to your mobile operating system and even launch the app if it’s already installed!

Branch Metrics goes way further (and for free). You have all the options of rdrct.it and you can give parameters to links. In other words, for instance, you can invite your friend to a game you’re playing (via a link generated inside the app) and for example giving him some of your items so he won’t start from scratch! This open the door to many opportunities.

Give a try to the Branch Metrics ANE, it has been crafted with love by your humble servant!

Google+ ANE, our first commercial product

We’re glad to introduce our first commercial product: an ANE for Google+!

We’re big fan of Milkman Games’ ANEs, especially the GoViral one. It enables to share a post on Facebook, Twitter, mail… everywhere? Not really. It’s missing Google+! Thanks to our ANE, you will be able to target the Google+ platform for iOS and Android.

Continue reading Google+ ANE, our first commercial product

Geophysic, making AIR shine thanks to Feathers

Update: The project has been FWA mobile of the day! Note that this blog post was written 3 months before its publication.

This new project was kind of special for me, I made an iPad application, Geophysic® with one of the best French agency Soleil Noir for the famous luxary watches Jaeger-LeCoultre. No less!
When I was a student, Soleil Noir was the best French agency and we all dreamed to work there! So you could imagine how fun it was to work with them! As a luxury brand, Jaeger-LeCoultre, has a very high expectation of the final product. Combined with Soleil Noir’s graphic designers, it results in a top quality iPad application.

Continue reading Geophysic, making AIR shine thanks to Feathers

Scaleform, for the love of Flash

RE-Edit : Scaleform mobile SDK 4.4 is out!

Edit, official answer from Autodesk: “Initial Indie friendly efforts have focused on MayaLT, as the most widely used Autodesk game tool. Autodesk is considering a similar option for their Game Middleware tools (such as Scaleform, Navigation and HIK) which will make them more affordable and accessible to Indies. An Indie friendly pricing model, hopefully coming soon, would allow them to offer the latest version of Scaleform to Indies and not bother maintaining a separate (and older) consumer Scaleform Mobile download. That should solve the problem for Indie devs that want the latest Metal, XCode and 64 bit support.”

We’re in 2015 and Flash is still there. It might be a dying technology but it couldn’t die right now because there isn’t any other tool which is able to replace it. The strength of Flash is obviously its vector animations. However since several years many of the flash developers don’t use the Flash Pro software in their daily job. Now we’re mostly using Starling and sometimes we grab animations from a fla and turn them into a SpriteSheets, or using DragonBones or mostly a SWC file to turn it into textures at runtime. Also there is the fact that we’re not able to reload SWF file using AS3 code on iOS.
Those facts highlight that something is broken in our production line: graphic/animation designers are increasingly dependent on developers. We are not able to take their SWF to make it running on our mobile device, so we must recreate everything ourselves via code and optimized framework (Starling). And hell, I hate doing animations jobs.

I think AAA studios were laughing when Flash was announced dead, because they use it daily. Mass Effect, Tomb Raider, The Witcher, Crysis… all of them use SWF file for their UI stuff. Have you thought a moment that even EA was using SpriteSheets with several resolutions for its menu!? Obviously not, with SWF file they are able to target all resolutions needed with just scaling/stretching their SWF without any loss, from a crappy 640 x 480 resolution to a 4k. However they are not doing it via AIR (it even doesn’t exist on console), but via Scaleform. Let’s have a look on this amazing tool!
Continue reading Scaleform, for the love of Flash

Update an application on several PCs with one click

Hey there, happy holidays!

This last month I worked for Fontevraud, the largest abbey in Europe! I updated their iBar program. Inside the main chapel, they have several touch screens displaying Fontevraud’s informations about Eleanor of Aquitaine, a Quiz, a Pacman retracing the story of a prisoner (the abbey was a prison after the French Revolution)…

The iBar program (PC only) works exactly like an iPad, a main screen launching applications. That was the first time that I worked for a museum, and so there were new kinds of problematics: how to know if a touch screen crashed and notify someone? How to get the errors for fixing them later? How to update the application on each touchscreen without human intervention on each machine?
Continue reading Update an application on several PCs with one click

Mission Eau : being Agile with Flash Pro

missioneauintrologo
Stores/Web:
kezakeau.fr
google play
apple store

Intro : This is a serious game designed to teach players a bit about how water treatment and supply works; specifically how its organized in the Île-de-France region – around paris. The game map is loosely based on that region and divided by areas which corresponds to the master water supply facilities that share connections around the region. The map shows you which levels are accessible to play or re-play, you can zoom it or out with many graphical details. The three areas need to be completed and in order to complete one, you need to connect all buildings together by playing the game levels, and also buy the missing buildings using the coins you collect.

This is not a management game however, you do not have to save money or buy things in advance, it is balanced so you can easily get to the end without worrying too much. The action of buying or clicking buildings on the map will tell you more about what these buildings do and how they relate to others… Their in-game worth also gives players a hint on how important they are.

The challenge here was to keep the package size as low as possible yet keep the graphics at maximum quality.

missioneaumap

Continue reading Mission Eau : being Agile with Flash Pro

Sophie the Girafe 2

I’m glad to present you a new app with the famous girafe: The Safari of Sophie la Girafe!

screen568x568A fun and educational puzzle game for children between 2 and 6 years old! This adventure contains 18 original puzzles for you to enjoy with your child!
Travel to the great plains of Africa with the famous Sophie la Girafe! Introduce your child to lions and giraffes! Soar alongside eagles and pink flamingos and fly over herds of zebra and groups of crocodiles as you explore the mythical world of Sophie la Girafe.

All the scenery and environments have been especially designed with your child in mind. Your child will find it easy to move the puzzle pieces around by dragging them on-screen. The howls and roars of the savannah have been used to bring each animal to life.
Your child will be captivated by the clear, interactive interface, especially designed for younger children.

Thomas, in a previous blog post, related our issues using Adobe AIR GPU mode for a large project & how we switched to Starling. The Safari of Sophie la Girafe, is made with the GPU mode. As usual I made it with the Citrus Engine. Due to the complexity of some animations and finally because of bones/layer number I used DragonBones for running lots of them at full speed. The app works great but you may encounter some performance issue on iPhone4 due to this Adobe’s bug.

Is it my latest project with the GPU mode? Not certain, however for future apps I will focus on performances (even if on all my GPU apps there were pretty acceptables) rather than loading time. Obviously it depends primarily of the app content 😉

Silly Family available on the Mac App Store

Hey, I’m glad to share with you that Silly Family is now available on the Mac App Store! Don’t hear anything about Silly Family? Have a look there.

Thanks to Adobe AIR technology, with exactly the same code base we released the game on iOS, Mac, Android & Amazon. We could also release it to PC, but not sure where to sell it… I hope AIR would work on Windows 8 modern UI mode and so sell it via Windows store, but that’s an other story.

The first time you’re looking for putting your AS3/AIR game on the iOS store, you will find lots of tuts. However for the Mac App Store, that’s an other story. This one is the most concrete that I found.

Here is my bash script, FromAirAppToMacAppStore, working for AIR 13:

#!/bin/sh
#!/usr/bin/env bash
#$ -N $2
 
DIR="$( cd "$( dirname "$0" )" && pwd )"
 
cp $DIR/Info.plist $DIR/"$1".app/Contents
cp $DIR/Icon.icns $DIR/"$1".app/Contents/Resources
 
rm $DIR/"$1".app/Contents/Frameworks/Adobe\ AIR.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/WebKit.dylib
rm -rf $DIR/"$1".app/Contents/Frameworks/Adobe\ AIR.framework/Versions/1.0/Resources/AdobeCP15.plugin
rm -rf $DIR/"$1".app/Contents/Frameworks/Adobe\ AIR.framework/Versions/1.0/Resources/Flash\ Player.plugin
rm -rf $DIR/"$1".app/Contents/Frameworks/Adobe\ AIR.framework/Versions/1.0/Resources/adobecp.plugin
 
chmod -R 777 $DIR/"$1".app/
 
#codesign -f -v -s "$2" $DIR/"$1".app/Contents/Frameworks/Adobe\ AIR.framework/Versions/1.0/Resources/AdobeCP15.plugin
#codesign -f -v -s "$2" $DIR/"$1".app/Contents/Frameworks/Adobe\ AIR.framework/Versions/1.0/Resources/Flash\ Player.plugin
#codesign -f -v -s "$2" $DIR/"$1".app/Contents/Frameworks/Adobe\ AIR.framework/Versions/1.0/Resources/adobecp.plugin
codesign -f -v -s "$2" $DIR/"$1".app/Contents/Frameworks/Adobe\ AIR.framework/Versions/1.0
codesign -f -v -s "$2" $DIR/"$1".app/Contents/Frameworks/Adobe\ AIR.framework
codesign -f -v -s "$2" --entitlements $DIR/entitlements.plist $DIR/"$1".app
 
codesign --display --entitlements - $DIR/"$1".app
 
productbuild --component $DIR/"$1".app /Applications $DIR/"$1".pkg --sign "$3"
 
codesign -v --verify $DIR/"$1".app
 
exit 0
 
#sh FromAirToMacAppStore.sh "SillyFamilyDesktop" "3rd Party Mac Developer Application: DaVikingCode (XXXXXXXXXX)" "3rd Party Mac Developer Installer: DaVikingCode (XXXXXXXXXX)"

For more instructions (and latest update) have a look on my Github’s repository. Note that I’m moving some repositories to Da Viking Code‘s Github account, the Citrus will move too 😉