Category Archives: Flex

Air NativeProcess and bash file to compile haXe nme project

AS3, Flash, Flex, Haxe, NME, Programming, , , ,

Last week I’ve made some test with haXe nme and box2d. The result is awesome : beautiful perf and a quick export on the target required! When I tried to run box2d from flash on a iPhone there was really bad performance : 10 dynamics objects – 5 fps. With haXe nme, more than 80 dynamics objects and 30 fps… that the power of native app. And for the fun I had an html5 box2d export, but not running smoothly.
At the moment, what I’m really missing is a powerful IDE for writing code and don’t use the console (even if it works great). FlashDevelop is the best one, but runs only on windows. Sadly, FDT supports haXe but not the nme. However it seems that JetBrains are working on a plugin for haXe and nme! But right now, I use Sublime Text 2 with the haXe plugin.

Anyway, I thought it would be cool to have a simple utilitarian app to create nmml files and compile projects with options (targets, mode, …). An Air application seemed to be an elegant way. Let’s go for a proof of concept on this last part :

The problem was how to run terminal command line with Air? The NativeProcess class provides command line integration and general launching capabilities. The NativeProcess class lets an AIR application execute native processes on the host operating system.
So it means that if I write a simple bash file, I’m able to run it with AIR!

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CitrusEngine flash extension

Citrus Engine, Flex, JSFL, , , ,

Hey there,

While improving my skills on the Flash Platform, I started to learn Flex and on an other way JSFL (using for Flash IDE extension).
So I mix them together, and I offer to the CE community my first Flash extension.

You can find it here : https://github.com/alamboley/CitrusEnginePanels
It requires Flash CS5.

On a project, you have always recurrent tasks. Using the CE for your game, you will create a hero and using the right labels for example. Adding a platform, baddy, cloud in the flash IDE to create a level required to create Movie Clip and specify their classname, their filepath (swf, png…) and some others options.

So what can you do with this extension ? In what way it will improve your productivity ?
I made it to be really simple to use, fast and efficient. Things that you can do with it :
– generate the correct labels for your hero, baddy, missile… such as idle, walk, jump… on a label layers !
– add to your level CE objects (hero, platform, coin, cloud…) on a specific layers with the same name and color, with some options (filepath, classname if not the original one), specific options too (oneWay for platform, parallax…).

Notice that you need to create only one time your object and duplicate them on your stage to add many. If you want to create a similar object too, just duplicate it in the library.

All of the CE objects are not in this extension, I will add them later. Before that, I would like to have your opinion about the plugin : how to improve it ? more options ?
I think that somes options for instance the endX and endY should not be included in the moving platform level fla, and be controlled by code…

Any idea is welcome 🙂