Flash Assignment Progress #5 - Conclusion

I didn't post up what happened with my assignment. Deadline passed quite a few weeks ago.

I did finish the program. I had a few more things I wanted to put in for interactivity and such but on the day of the deadline, every button in the program broke.

The final product did not come out how I had intended at all. The assignment was about interactive experiences yet I believe my program does not fufil that requirement. Sure, there are buttons for navigation and such but interactivity is alot more than that. I wanted controls for searching, zooming, etc and the inclusion of icons. I wanted each button on the "tree" to ask a question about each person before closing the sub menus. I achieved none of those.

I had to change the complete structure of the site in order for it to be functional, meaning I missed the deadline by a crapload of hours. Instead of each button navigating to a new sub movieclip, I had to make each page a seperate SWF and have it load on the main or "index" swf. It meant a crapload of deleting, copying and pasting, and re-writing of code to push it out before the deadline.

In total, the program consisted of approximately 53 files. 25 seperate flash files, 25 exported swfs, 1 PHP script, 1 XML file and finally the index page exported to HTML.
The PHP script was for a feedback page which doesn't function, mainly because it would require the program to be hosted on an actual PHP server. The XML file was for the photo gallery.
I'd say this program doesn't show my potential at all, but then I wonder, maybe this is it. Maybe this is what I'm capable of... I don't know.

The documentation also took a massive hit. It needed to be hand drawn and scanned. I didn't know this, and also have no avaliable scanners around to make use of. so I had to just draw things in Microsoft Word as a substitute. It's an "initiative approach" but it still sucks. My creation documentation was almost over in the word limit. I think I was off by about 1 word so I had to trim and cut ot the chase with much of the document.

All in all, this project isn't one I'm too proud of looking back on it. Alot more could have, and should have been done with it.

Flash Assignment Progress #4

lol@deadlines.

My depression has been playing quite a fun game with me. So much in fact that I've completely overshot my personal deadlines to finish this project.

It's now the 30th of November, and I've only just finished my Introduction Animation. Yeah, that bad.


I've also discovered a problem that could arise from making the site fully in Flash. For some reason or another, the site isn't auto adjusting itself (I changed the publishing settings and checked, it's treating it as it would on my native resoultion).
I had a photoshop image which I made to be the background once the introduction was done. It's set to the same resolution as the Flash file (1024x768). Now, ff I view the site as a Flash SWF, naturally it comes out fine. The background takes all of the space as it should. When I view it as an HTML however, the background takes up only the center, leaving a really large noticeable black border around 200 pixels on each side.
The site IS auto adjusting for different resolutions, the components in the site aren't. As they've been developed for a smaller resolution, they may turn out too small of bigger monitors (which is bad, considering the background is an image).

It was probably a bad call in the first place to make the resolution that low, but I'm going through a website creation learning process. My old assignment from last year (making a website in dreamweaver) taught me a lesson in thinking about the user: - not everyone is going to have a resolution similar to yours. It's a simple lesson, yes, but one I completely overlooked, hampering the experience on smaller monitors. Fair enough the university screens now hold a bigger resolution, probably better than my own. Then again, it's not just about what works on my/uni screens, in theory it's a wider base than that.


It's also put me in a bit of bother about the background. It's about three shades of light blue. Before that, it's black. So effectively, I have a black border on a light blue background. It doesn't look tasteful at all but most of my introduction stuff has been designed on the basis that the background remained dark for their lifespan.
The quick fix was to just increase the length of the photoshopped background. There's still a border, because I didn't increase hte length to a ridiculous amount. I don't want to end up developing for 1440x900 monitors again and run into the same issue I did last year. I don't know how badly it will impact those on smaller resolutions, but for now I'm just working on getting it finished and working. Bug fixes and tidying can come later on.

I'm now hoping and aiming to finish by Sunday at the absolute latest, documentation and all. I'd still be working on it now, but my brother is sleeping in an awkward place and as I have no desk, his feet are dangerously close to the power jack of the PC. I just abandoned what I was doing for the sake of my data.

It's also snowing. Maybe I'll be able to take another day off to do what needs to be done, legitimately this time, and maybe squeeze in a little Fallout 3 to keep me going.


That is, if Univeristy does decide to close this time... either way, depends on how it looks in the morning.

Flash Assignment Progress #3

I'm a lazy bugger, aren't I?

I woke up really late today, around 6pm. I haven't really had the mentality to do any work so I've been lazing about in bed and playing games all day. It's bad, I know. I didn't even finish off the introduction like I wanted to yesterday because I let my focus drift away. Instead, I ended up browsing a few technology sites and going to bed.

I let my depression take over again today and just couldn't bring myself to get out of bed. When I did, that drive to do work just wouldn't materialize. I should really just buck up and do this because the amount of work I have to do is piling, plus the fact that I remembered I have tests coming up and need to space out enough time to revise. My timings have to be picture perfect or else I'll be screwed.

Oh depression, how I loathe you.

I really do wish I had my own place...

Flash Assignment Progress #2

TypeErrors are persistent little buggers, aren't they?

To fully understand what the problem is, it may help to go back to before I amended my working version with a new one.

You see, I had my preloader which worked and the intro all out under seperate layers on the main Timeline. A friend recommended that instead of grouping all those layers and wasting space on the main timeline, all the elements should be under "categorised movieclips". In simplier terms, the Preloader would be one big movie clip, containing all the secondary clips like the actual loader, the mask which reveals the loading bar, etc and the Intro would be one big movie clip, which contained all the secondary movie clips for that function. Getting the picture? The problems started when I interfered with the balance and adopted this approach.

After playing around with it today, I'm starting to see where the problem lies. Basically, the function which should run when the preloader has loaded all the content tells Flash to go back into the Main Timeline (parent) and start playing the second frame (which is where the intro clip is). Flash then reports back that there's nothing in Frame 2 to play, so skips straight to frame 3 and pulls up the TypeError #1009. This was my initial thought and led to an indication that something within the Actionscript code for the preloader is going wrong.
 
Now, I can't post the full code due to the fact that the University's Plagarism bot will most likely pull it up and start putting flags in my work, hampering or even seriously damaging my grade. I can only post small (really small) snippits.
 
The preloader has a "loading" condition, which executes a function where the data is being loaded, and a "Complete" condition, which executes a function when all the content is loaded.  The error was specifically pointing to the "Complete" function, which only had one line of code. [ MovieClip(parent).gotoAndStop(2) ] and then skipping the intro clip after pulling the error.
 
After a while, I figured out that, by mistake, I omitted a stop action in the second frame of the main timeline. So what was happening was I was telling Flash to go to frame 2 and play whatever was there. Without the stop action, Flash was effectively ignoring the frame, acting as if it didn't exist. Conflict in interests really.
In other terms:
 
Code> Please go to Frame 2 in the parent Timeline after preloading and do whatever function is located there.
 
-Preload-
 
-Frame 2 skipped, jumps to Frame 3-
 
Flash> Frame 2? That doesn't exist. Your referencing me to play a non existent frame
 
Once I put in the stop action on the second frame, the Intro clip played after the preloader, however, the TypeError still popped up, meaning that the omitted stop action was not infact causing the null object reference.
 
What could it be?
 
I asked for a second opion from a friend who seemingly fixed the error but didn't excatly know what was causing it. He had an idea, but when I amended that, it still brought up the problem.
I went back into the Loader's Actionscript to figure out why. My friend sent back the amended file which I contrasted with the broken one.
 
I found the problem.
 
Turns out using 'MovieClip(parent).gotoAndStop (or gotoAndPlay)' method in preloaders isn't a good way to achieve what I was after. Flash pretty much had no idea what excatly I was trying to reference using that code so brought up the error. My friend had decided to replace it with a nextFrame method instead which did the job and got rid of the error.
 
It means at the end of the intro clip I had to declare a new variable which would treat the parent timeline as a movie clip, something I probably should of done before declaring such a method in the first place.
Novice mistake, but mistakes are the key in learning. You don't forget the mistakes you make, and try ot think of ways to avoid making that same error in the future.
 
But I'm just glad it's fixed. Major props to my friend on that front.
 
So for the end of today, I would like to make the final animations for the introduction and the User-Clickable "Door" to enter the site. Maybe do some animation clean ups to make everything look smoother and some final testing to make sure all the errors are properly ironed out. 
Tomorrow, I aim to start making the main menu, buttons, layout, pages and page transistions (more animations).
Saturday will hopefully be the page content and Sunday will hopefully bring forth the beginning of the creation of the application. Gives me a bit of time to decide on what I'm going to do for interactivity and the approach to take with the app altogether.
 
I'm aiming for the Website and Program to be completed, compiled, ironed out for bugs, amended, licked, sealed, approved, stamped and whatever else by at least Wednesday 24th November 2010. Then, I aim to complete all documentation (Project Plan, Specification, Creation Procress, Hand Sketches and Storyboards (finalisations)) by Monday 29th November 2010. There's also a size limitation of 16MB which, in my opinion, is ridiculous for such a document, feature heavy assignment. However, those are the rules and they have to be followed.
 
After that, comes Video Editing and DVD Authoring in Premiere Pro for a second assignment, due on the 16th of December.
 
My brain is slowly shutting off just thinking about all the work that needs to be done.

Flash Assignment Progress

A day has passed. Still here with my TypeError problem. Because of this, I can't progress with the assignment.  It's looking as if I might have to start the whole project over again and repeat the processes from a fresh slate, which would make it the fourth or fifth time I've done so. Although I won't have to change anything so I won't have to redo all my Printscreens but it's not something I would want to be doing again with the time ever so quickly decreasing.

Tomorrow, I hope to have sorted out this TypeError problem by any means necessary, even if it means restarting the project and redoing all the components. I also hope to be working on the Site Content and at least make some in roads in the Application base. I'm undecided as to whether make it within the Site's SWF file or make a new flash file with the family tree application and then embed it in. It kind of defeats the purpose of developing natively in Flash but then it also makes for easier debugging between the two if a problem persists. I'll think about it if I get to that point tomorrow.

What I was thinking about today though was my Introduction Clip. My idea was to have something reveal as if it's being drawn on the screen in real time, like a circle or something. Once the item is fully visible, it'd glow and return back to it's original state. A name would then appear next to this object, retract and then reveal the Site or Application name, with the object now acting as a User Clickable Door to access the site. Once it's clicked, the door opens and zooms to a white page, in which another movie clip shows a transition of the background colour change from White to Blue. That's the general idea of what I'm trying to achieve. for the start of the website. I'll admit, it does seem a bit over the top and it might become time consuming, but if it works, it'll be pretty sweet.
I got around to making the Introduction clip of the reveal using a mask layer. What I should of done is make the mask a rectangle, which decreases in height to reveal the shape. Instead, I used a circle. Bad choice.

The object I'm trying to reveal isn't a standard shape like a square or a circle. It's an outline of a cartoon tree. There are points in which one part might be a near straight line and another might have a really big curve which interfers with that. Take the diagram below as an example:

-----------
|             |
|             |
|             |
|________|___) <--- Reveal starts from here and goes clockwise

What do you suppose the problem will be if you try to get a rotating half circle to reveal a shape like that? Some parts of the image will reveal before others do, which is excatly what happened with my shape. Instead of removing the circles and replacing them with transforming rectangles, I decided to skew the shape of the circles during the rotating tween effect. It works, to an extent, but it's a lot of tedious work to keep creating keyframes and skewing the circles at each frame so the reveal doesn't look messy or glitchy. If I have to start over, I'll surely use Rectangles instead.

Till then, back to debugging.

Flash CS4 + Actionscript sometimes.....

Sigh... Flash, how you torment me. Sometimes, I really wish Adobe had a video school for training with these programs so it wouldn't be such a task for novices to use it.

After the good part of 1 month, I decided to get started on my assignment, the creation side at least. I've been doing some of a speicifactions/requirements document in the meantime so it's not all bad. The task is to create a family tree (which now has to be your own) using any program and have it as part of a website.

My instinct told me that Flash would be a good fit for all the tasks. Instead of making an independant Flash SWF and embedding it into a Dreamweaver page, I figured it'd be alot easier to make the Site and Application native Flash. So I have been using Adobe's Flash CS4 to try and achieve my goal. Unfortunately, in only my first two creations (preloader and Introduction Movie Clip), it already broke.

The preloader seems to break the Introduction Movie Clip. Without the Preloader, the Introduction Movie clip works. The preloader and Introduction movie clip are both part of the same SWF yet Flash seems to be treating them seperately, pulling up the TypeError: Error #1009: Cannot access a property or method of a null object reference after the preloader. Weirder thing is, the Introduction Movie Clip runs for maybe 1/2 of a second before stopping and pulling up the Output error.

I'm not sure what's going on. My guess is that Flash thinks that there's nothing on the stage at the referenced keyframe in actionscript so it pulling up the error or it might be an Actionscript code problem or error, both of which aren't easy to fix without some trial and error. I can't really fix it because I have to sleep. My week off became a "semi week off" since I have to go to University today.
If I find out a solution, I'll be back here to let you know the results.

Why I sometimes disappear.

Let me start off by saying, I haven't been on this blog in such a long while. Alot's been happening, most of it not really good, but it's always a good idea to have somewhere to jott down your mad ramblings at 6am.

As an update, I got a new PC. I built it myself from the ground up. Bought the parts and assembled them with the payout of a nice, shiny, Blue Lighted, Raedon Powered PC. I then opened it up again and did some basic wire mangement with the two watercooling holes in the case (I didn't buy a watercooling kit) which made for more cuts and such. The payload for it is that I haven't got anywhere to put it, which means it, and me, have to stay on the floor. It also doesn't have a monitor yet, so I have to use a really old one from one of the old, departed PCs. (it's not a CRT one though which is good).
I had regretted the decision to buy the parts after some events which happened in the family which I won't go into, but me and a friend deemed it a "great investment in which the rewards will become apparent in the future".

To be honest, I am starting to see those rewards. Besides being able to run my multimedia programs and games at decent speeds, it also means that I don't have to share it. Usually, whenever a new PC graced this abode, I would have to share it with my Brother. On the PCs which have come and sadly gone, he would load his programs onto it (most of which I deem as space sucking crap) and, which has now become a recent habit of his, not switch off the power when he's done with it. However, the rules changed since this wasn't a PC which my mum bought.
The PC which she did buy is still operational, but it's being horded because my Brother's laptop has gone in for repairs. I had a go on it today because I had to retrieve something for him while he's away. From the look and feel of it, I was worried to say the least.  I think the PC was on for 2 weeks straight without being switched off! And those programs....those programs are just awful. Everything seems to load on startup and one of the programs had nuisance like behaviour (opening on startup, constant notification pop-ups in the tray, killing the process in task manager but it reopens itself 20 seconds later).

It's times such as that where I wish I hadn't let him "borrow" my External HDD. I have to buy a new one and I'm shorthanded in the finances front to put it kindly.

Outside of Technology, Life has recently taken a turn in the tides. Things weren't always as messed up as they are now. I don't really know if they could get better. Everything that's happened, both past and recent, has stressed me out beyond belief and made my depression worse than ever. I've comtemplated dropping out of University four times in 2 weeks and missed out on lectures because of it. My focus has now changed and my resolve is wavering.
I want to move out of this house and get my own place, for a start. Maybe it will change things, maybe it won't, But living here has now become...just wrong. Anytime I'm out, I don't feel like I'm coming "home" but coming to "bullshit". That's how it feels for me, that I'm coming back to more bullshit. Coming back to a place where the environment is dull and sometimes, increases stress to intolerable levels just isn't a place i want to be, you know? Where you have to conform to the rules of a tyrannist just for the betterment of others, and no benefit to yourself. And when you don't conform, you're labelled as a horrible person. This is no family environment and this is no home.

Maybe there's some light at the end of all this, who knows?
Till then.