Thanks to everyone that attended the session! If you weren’t able to make it, you are still welcome to have the resource files.

Someone had asked about whether I would be putting the PowerPoint file up here. I’m happy to, though I’m not sure what the value will be. I tend to make my files as public notes but often I don’t have the most useful information always in my ppt file (something I should probably change). I tend to use the slides as intros for what I am actually going to talk about Just give me a bit of time to take out my comments from the slides saying things like “look at that audience… aren’t they silly silly people.”

so files:

file: NYCTraffic-final.fla
description: This is the actual pretty and clean version of the file. I’ve gone through 6 months after building it the first time and re-thought a lot of the code. I’ve also added a lot of comments to the code and labeled everything.

file: NYCTraffic-before.fla
description: The contest only required that I submit only the SWF so I was a bit lazy on this file. The reason I am putting it up though is that it does show the approaches I took as a Flash 7 developer re-approaching Flash 4 syntax. I tended to underestimate Flash 4 capabilities and made things a lot less generic than I should. I’ve also tried to recreate some of the benefits from later versions of Flash.

file: NYCTraffic-loadError.fla
description: The difference here is that I’ve moved the camMC movie clip to only the part of the timeline where it appears. It will work fine on the desktop, but if you export a SWF and send it to your phone, you can see the load error. To reproduce, drill down to a cam, start the image load and then hit back and immediately hit back again. If you make it back to the main menu before the image finishes loading you will see the error.

file: pelletPop.fla
description: PelletPop is a game prototype so you can see the difference between an arcade game where code is running more frequently and using a lot more math. I’m going to post some math demonstration files that will explain it better.

A few other points from the session:

Sony Ericsson 910 phone running the NYCTraffic SWF. Note that the screen size is very different from the standard nokia phone. (Nokias are 176×208 and SonyEricsson is 208×320). The images below shows the initial version of the SWF. Notice that I don’t have the mat in place on this version so you can see a lot of seams.

Also notice that the Sony Ericsson doesn’t have soft keys. Instead, it has virtual soft keys. the 910 has a touch screen so you actually tap the soft keys on the screen. When you set the soft keys, the text you specify will actually be displayed (oops). I have also run into issues where the softkeys completely go away… it can be a pain

For any phone, I would suggest NOT setting the soft keys at the opening of your application. To save a file, you really need to be able to press the default left soft key which is the equivalent of the context menu on the desktop which is where the save option comes up. Since you can get your SWF in your inbox or through the web page, you need the save functionality to get it into the Flash repository.