It's basic trigonometry. You take the difference between the position of the character and the mouse cursor and pass it to a trig function to calculate the angle of displacement.

var diffX = _xmouse - player._x;
var diffY = _ymouse - player._y;
var angle = Math.atan2(diffY, diffX);

This will get you the angle in radians. Since the _rotation property in Flash is in degrees, the value must be converted:

player._rotation = angle * (180/Math.PI);

At 9/17/08 10:27 PM, ssjskipp wrote: No, eval is the same as:
object['property'], just
eval("stuff");

Irrelevant anyways, it's deprecated.

Only way you can make editable AS is to write a function that parses a string, and runs functions if they exist.

That's redundant, it's still only one line of script either with a function or directly.

Yes, yes you can. That is, in fact, the sole purpose of Macromedia Flash (or Adobe Flash now).

Not quite, but you can redefine functions during runtime:

somemovieclip.onEnterFrame = someNewFunction;
// overwrites the previous onEnterFrame function.

There is no way to dynamically create code, though (at least not anymore, I believe the eval function could do that, but it's deprecated).

All this talk of computer hardware has me salivating.

I just built a new PC over the summer (profile news post with specs) and it's blazin'. It kills all of my games (except Crysis, which runs on high @ 1280x1024, average of 45 FPS). I spent about $1000 CND on parts and just ordered a Samsung 2053BW (20" widescreen LCD) monitor to do the beast justice (using a three-year-old Dell 17" LCD).

Booting that rig was just a massive egotrip. I couldn't stop grinning for like four hours (about when the WinXP installation rejected my serial key :D).

I do all of my web development in Notepad++, which is an open-source (and thus, free) alternative to Notepad. It has built-in syntax highlighting for many, many different languages and all the nice little perks of any coding IDE.

To make a website, you'll definitely need to learn HTML. HTML is the markup that browsers read in order to render a page, there is no alternative. I also highly recommend learning about cascading style sheets (CSS), which lets you set the design for your entire site in one page.

HTML should be used to define the structure of a page, while CSS is used to define style. JavaScript will enable you to create user-interactive websites, while PHP (alongside a database, such as MySQL) will provide for more advanced server-side scripting such as forums and user/login systems.

You can learn about everything you need to know at W3Schools.com.

Speaking of school and breakfast,

I'm now taking a web development program in a technical school for one semester, then a second semester after high school graduation. The school is associated with my high school, so the four courses I'm taking in the program count as elective courses towards my graduation.

Anyways, this school is completely AWESOME because they have a culinary arts program, in which the students prepare hot breakfast and lunch every single day. It's inexpensive and you get served faster than any restaurant (about three minutes for breakfast, lunch is ready-made by noon). It's perfect because I'm always there early with half an hour to spare before class.

It's also a much more mature environment -- being a technical school, all of the students are attending by personal ambition. Does wonders for the social atmosphere.

This is not backseat modding. If a mod had to personally shut down each and every ineligible collab, this place would be too flooded to conduct any worthwhile discussion.

Informing somebody of the law is not the same as vigilantism.

Archive the .exe into a .zip or .rar or .7z or something. Then put it on your site and people can download it, extract, and play.

There was a contest a while back. The winning songs were featured in the game and I believe they received prize money.

So yes.

I lent God of War 2 to a friend who then went away for the entire summer, and I'm not going to the same school as him for first semester.

Also, I forgot who I lent Spiderman 2 to... the best game of the trilogy. :(

... Diablo 1?

Sorry, it's

MouseEvent.MOUSE_LEAVE

If you're using Actionscript 3.0, there's a Mouse.MOUSE_LEAVE event you can use. In Actionscript 2.0, the only real option is to place borders on your flash and detect when the mouse touched them as "out of flash." The Flash Player keeps registering the last point the mouse was at inside the bounds of the flash.

At 8/15/08 11:03 AM, TheCrook wrote: Far Cry 2 is being developed by Ubisoft Montreal, which is pretty weird seeing as how similar the graphics are to Crysis.

Oh, wow. I didn't know that. Are they even using the CryENGINE2?

Those system requirements look identical. It's not a new engine, they just optimized it or something. Maybe it'll actually RUN on those minimum specs now.

It looks amazing. I'll definitely be picking it up on PC.
Anybody else notice how Crytek seems to be progressing in their games? Far Cry was linear, than Crysis allows some choice of approach and nonlinearity, now Far Cry 2 is completely open.

Sushi isn't always raw. None of the sushi I've ever had was, at least.

Restart.

I've been laying in bed for the past hour and a half, trying to fall asleep, but I just... can't. So here I am, refreshing the Flash forum.

Every time this happens I feel strangely depressed and a bit guilty. Damn society for telling me when I should be awake. A paper route has prevented me from being a night person for the last five years, but I'll be resigned as of this Sunday, August 17th... I have a feeling my last two weeks of summer will be spent primarily in the night. I wonder how much I could accomplish if I forced myself to work on Flash every hour awake past midnight or something...

Gah, I'm rambling.

At 8/15/08 12:34 AM, Blackfang wrote: Yeah duel core, i have an AMD Athlon. now lets stop making this reg lounge look like a chat room.

A worthy suggestion.

I would ask you, what do you primarily use the laptop for? If only for productivity, and no gaming, I would take a Macbook over anything, simply due to how I've heard others praise them. My only real beef with Apple computers is the lack of games and upgradeability, neither of which are very important for a laptop.

At 8/15/08 12:24 AM, VinceDash wrote: What is RPG 2003 BlahBlahBlah thing ?

Just as the name implies, it's a program that allows you to create your own traditional roleplaying games using a pre-made engine and graphics (though you can import your own graphics and change mostly anything through scripting). Most games created with it end up looking and playing the same. You can distribute the games you make, but they're a custom file format and the client needs to have the RPG Maker runtime installed to play it.

AFAIK, there is no automated method with which to convert an RPG Maker -made game into a .swf file. The only way would be to completely remake the game in Flash yourself.

All you'd need is a basic understanding of variables. You could learn how to do something like this in a day.

No.

Somebody asked the same thing earlier today, but referring to RPG Maker XP.

Impressive. Did you use A* for that?

If so, somebody could use your expertise.

At 8/15/08 12:13 AM, Blackfang wrote: yes i know that. i put a comma instead of parentheses

But then "Core 2 Duo" is Intel... or did you just mean "dual-core AMD Athlon X2?"

Oh, hah. Newgrounds cut off the link URL at the asterisk.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A*_search_algorithm

Oh god, people. He's talking about the A* (pronounced "ay-star") pathfinding algorithm.

The basic concept of it is a point-based system. The transition from one tile to the next is worth a defined amount of points. A* is an algorithm to find the path that spends the least points from one point to another. To be efficient, tiles directly in the direction of the endpoint are checked first (regardless of obstacles). Logically, it's quite simple. The hard part is implementing it.

Now, if that's completely wrong, it'd probably because I've only read a single article on A* and never actually tried to use it anywhere. Feel free to correct me.

At 8/15/08 12:02 AM, Blackfang wrote: core 2 duo processor, AMD athlon X2

Wait, what?

An "AMD Athlon X2" is a processor.

I actually thought it controlled pretty well, if just a bit cumbersome. Each attack flowing into the next... I didn't like the gunplay, though. Seems a bit tacked on. I don't like how there's no way to choose what to aim at before you start shooting.

Also, the equipment system is interesting, but I get turned off by really detailed statistics in an action-RPG. Picking up a new sword to see it offers a +3% bonus to some obscure stat... it seems arrogant and desperate, like a wooden boy jumping up and down shouting, "I'm a real RPG! Loooove me!"

For the record, I do not own and never plan to own an Xbox 360 -- I played through the demo at a friend's house.