dispatchEvent()™

Hi. I recently released a new naming convention for KitchenSync. There were a few reasons for this.
1. People found Synchronized to be a pain in the ass to type over and over again.
2. I’m going to add queue functionality which means I needed to support asynchronous functions. I thought SynchronizedAsynchronousFunction didn’t make any sense.
3. Some of the classes conflict with the Flex SDK. The easing classes still do but it should be better now.
4. While I love flat package structures, I felt that the system needed to be a bit more hierarchical.

Among other changes, all actions now use the initials ‘KS’ instead of ‘Synchronized’.

Classes have also been moved to multiple packages.

• org.as3lib.kitchensync - Contains the new KitchenSync class and the KitchenSyncDefaults. These are global classes that control the entire system.
• org.as3lib.kitchensync.easing - Contains all the easing function classes.
• org.as3lib.kitchensync.action - Contains all Actions
• org.as3lib.kitchensync.action.tweenable - Contains classes that represent properties that can be tweened.
• org.as3lib.kitchensync.core - Contains the internal workings of the system
• org.as3lib.kitchensync.util - Contains helper classes.

The changes to the names of classes are listed here: Naming Changes

The changes to the package structure are listed here: Package Structure

Help with converting older code is here: Legacy help

The new naming convention went up yesterday in version 1.2. I fixed everything with the refactor command in FB and with find and replace so there’s a good chance that there are a couple of bugs, although, my demos are still running correctly. Please let me know if there are any problems with the wiki or the library.

We’re happy to announce a new addition to the blog - Caleb Johnston has joined as a contributor. Caleb is currently a developer at Your Majesty and is a swell guy.
Check out his first post.

Wow. What a week. I have the results from the KtichenSync survey which was taken by 49 people (including myself). Thanks to everyone for taking it. Here’s what I’ve learned.

1. The most glaring thing I learned from the survey is that NOBODY’S USING IT! Come on people!

Aside from myself, only 5 people reported that they have actually used KitchenSync, of them, only one has used it for a real project. The good news? That person is none other than Aral Balkan and that project is GAE SWF, so it could be worse.

2. People love Tweener and TweenLite.

People listed Tweener as one they’ve tried but TweenLite came up more as a favorite. Not surprisingly, people loved TweenLite because of it’s incredible small size and speed.

Two people voted for KitchenSync as their favorite. Hey, that’s the same number as the people who have used it for a project. Coincidence?

3. People think KitchenSync is okay (even though most haven’t used it) but to make it better will require matching the features of the other leading tween engines.

People want performance above all else which would explain why TweenLite, currently the fastest of the competitors, is the favorite of the group.

Here is how people prioritized individual features.

4. In the tools department, Flash and FlexBuilder came in at a tie. For those of you who do your coding in Flash and have never used FlexBuilder, I suggest you give it a shot. Flash is miserable as a programming tool (but that’s a topic for another post). Also, despite the cries of distaste from the FlashDevelop crowd, people apparently love TextMate.

In conclusion, I think KitchenSync has a lot to offer. It’s a unique with a sophisticated architecture and some advanced features. However, these tests are proof that to be taken seriously, KS will need to add the basic, missing features that are found in other systems. So the big aim of version 2.0 will be to patch the holes and optimize for speed. I guess that’s what I was planning to do in the first place but it was great to get everyone’s input on the project.

That’s it! Thank you so much for taking the survey! Stay tuned for updates to the project over the summer.

Aral Balkan, champion of open-source flash, just annouced a Flash / Flex extension to the Google App Engine called GAE SWF. He also announced that KitchenSync will be a part of it. I’m very excited to see what happens with both projects.

GAE SWF

Woo! KitchenSync v1.1 is out! It now supports timecode, default values, new easing functions and juping to a specific time in a tween. Go check it out!

Changes in 1.1:

• ADDED jumpToTime() method to Tween (this may be moved to AbstractSynchronizedAction in a later release)
• ADDED getTimestampFromFrames() and getTimestampFromMilliseconds() to TimestampUtil
• ADDED Timecode to TimeStringParser. Now “:ss”, “mm:ss;ff”, and “dd:hh:mm:ss;ff” are supported.
• ADDED ActionDefaults class for storing default initialization values.
• ADDED easeOutIn() to most of the easing functions (buggy. seems to overshoot target in some cases)
• ADDED version check in Synchronizer.initialize()
• CHANGED type of Numbers within Timestamp to int.
• REFACTORED all actions to contain super() in the constructor.
• REMOVED errors that are thrown when pause() and start() are called at the wrong times.

Greetings from GDC ‘08. I’m here in S.F. getting the scoop on the game industry first hand. So far there has been some pretty exciting things and I’ve been totally overwhelmed by the sheer size of the industry.

One of the most interesting things that I saw today was the Independent Game Design Competition. Here were a few of my favorites from the competition finalists.

Flipside

In Flipside, you play an escaped mental patient with bipolar disorder. You start out a happy-go-lucky person in a brightly lit field
but at any time, you can let your dark side show and flip the screen into a nightmarish version of reality. You have different abilities depending on which world you’re in so you’ll need to go through both modes to beat each level. The amazing visuals for this featured a lot of DIY-looking textures such as cardboard and the character really looks like a paper doll.

Fez

At first glance, Fez is a classic 8-Bit, 2-D platformer with incredibly cute graphics. Then the camera flips around and you realize that your character is actually in a 3-D space. Well, mostly. Your character only interacts with the environment in a two dimensional way so using the depth-squashing adds a puzzle-like element to the gameplay.
Pay special attention to the faux-Engrish used in the dialog.

World of Goo

In world of Goo, you control a colony of crude oil-like creatures who are able to stretch themselves into complicated structures. The goal of the game is to engineer a structurally sound scaffolding to move your colony to a destination. The gameplay is quite a lot like Stick Remover but in reverse.

Crayon Physics Deluxe

Crayon Physics Deluxe is a very simple yet very expressive game. The goal is to move a ball to a target across the screen and all you have to work with is a crayon. All you do is draw something with your crayon and it becomes an object with physical properties. The genius thing is that there are as many ways to get the ball to the goal as you can think of.

Tomorrow morning I’m off to San Francisco for the Game Developers Conference! It’s very exciting! If you’re going too, send me an email and let’s meet up there. Here’s what I look like:

KitchenSync version 1.0.1 was released last week. This version is just a patch that fixes a few minor issues. Here’s the change log for this version.

===== v1.0.1 (2008.02.04) ======
Fixed Cubic.easeOut bug.
Made getters for Tween's toValue and fromValue.
Added source code to main download.
Added metadata for events.
Updated docs and added summaries to all wiki pages.

I received some feedback from people who were having trouble setting up KitchenSync for use with Flash CS3. I didn’t know this before but you cannot use .swc files compiled with the Flex SDK in a .fla file (WTF, Adobe!) Also, some people were confused by having to use SVN to get the source. To help solve these problems, I’ve added the latest source code as its own download.

I’ve also written EVEN MORE documentation including help for downloading and setting up the source code.

Finally, if you’re using KS, drop me a line or post to the mailing list. I’d love to hear any feedback you may have!

Johnny Chung Lee is my nerd hero!

After about 6 months in development, I’m very proud to announce the release of KitchenSync, a multi-purpose tool written in ActionScript 3.0 for doing tween based animations and timing of functions and much more. The project is open-source under the GNU LGPL and hosted at Google Code. Please take a moment to check it out and feel free to write to me with questions, comments or suggestions for improvement!

KitchenSync is more than an animation library

KitchenSync is more than an animation library. Tweens are a major part of KitchenSync but that is not the end. It also allows you to sequence sounds, functions, and event dispatches among other actions. The framework is open-ended allowing you to come up with new ways to work with the virtual timeline.

KitchenSync was designed with developers in mind

KitchenSync was designed for developers who want a smart way to handle animation or other time-based functionality with code. Written from the ground up in ActionScript 3.0, KitchenSync relies on smart object-oriented architecture rather than complicated shorthand. It includes a number of features and shortcuts, such as the clone() method, that save effort for developers. KitchenSync makes extensive use of events and informative runtime errors and is quite flexible when it comes to extending the functionality.

KitchenSync aims to…

• offer a well-architected, extensible framework for working with time-based animations and events.
• take advantage of the power of ActionScript 3.0 while using OOP best practices and design patterns and without requiring the Flex framework.
• respond to the needs of developers with a rich set of features.
• be a full-featured library for animation and timeline based actions.

Links

• Getting started
• Types of synchronized actions
• Units of time, parsing time strings, and sync mode
• API Reference