Shuffle Board

Ah, simplicity...

I sat down today and wanted to whip this up. After a couple hours, I realized I was getting nowhere. I was approaching this completely backwards. See, originally I intended to keep an array of the x and y coordinates of each dot. THEN, I wanted to shuffle each of those arrays around and assign them to the dots. This turned into a huge hassle, as I realized by completely shuffling them, you always had some overlap (it was possible to have several dots in the same location). SO, I tried to store each x and y coordinate as a pair into an array. That sort of worked, but based on how I originally added the movie clips to the stage, I could only truly randomize either the rows or the columns. Everything moved in this case, but if all columns were randomized, then all rows would move together as a group.

So then it hit me. Don't shuffle the coordinates. Shuffle the DOTS! Duh! If I would have approached this from that perspective at the beginning, this would have taken minutes rather than hours.

Source files:
scrambleDots.fla
Scrambler.as

CatScope Gradient Mask

Ooh, masking! For those of you who have never messed around in Flash or any other graphics package, the idea of a "mask" may not be completely clear. The way I think about it is that a mask acts as a window over another image. Look out your window. Think of the outside as a single large image. Your window (NOT the wall!) is the mask. It's a bit misleading in that a mask actually SHOWS something instead of hiding it.

That being said, the above is an example of a mask. Not only is it a mask, but it's a GRADIENT mask (notice how it fades to black around the edges). Gradient masks can be tricky in Flash, as you have to use a dynamic mask via actionscript instead of simply plopping a mask onto the stage.

Painterly

This is one of many similar things I've put together. I sort of lumped them all together into a "Painters" series. Essentially you have various leaders that will chase your mouse cursor. As they do, they drop off little dabs of "paint" which fade and drift away after a few moments.

At some point in the future, I might combine many of the Painters into one single object that I can upload here. There were so many types...some that twinkled, some that DIDN'T fade, some that snaked off into tiny little extra tendrils...

Once again, a simple but fun one! Enjoy!

EDIT: Almost forgot! The large version is here.

Tiles

This isn't anything TOO amazing, but it's been laying around my drive for a little while. Just a fun little repeating sequence of tiles. And don't think this is the pinnacle of my programming! It's just a tiny little thing I whipped up quickly. Very quickly.

If you'd like to see it in a larger (1024x768) version, head here.

Welcome!

Welcome to this brand-spanking new blog! I have decided to set up an area where I can easily showcase my random workings in Flash. Why the title? Well, I've seen a million Flash workings that DO something. Either they're a set animation with a beginning and end, or a game that also only exists for a set time period. My creations tend to be a little more abstract and really don't have a set timeline. You see, they don't really have to do anything...

For the record, most everything I will be posting in the near future is still in ActionScript 2.0, but I plan to begin educating myself (finally) in AS3 after graduation this December.