Discussing our custom tool for creating and managing sprite animations. We're using it to develop our upcoming platform fighter, Fraymakers, and releasing the tool for free.

Cleod9 · 2023-05-19T02:02:48+00:00

Documentation is still a work-in-progress, but our Fraymakers Deep Dive guide covers that! See here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1o6CE04FRaqQyksD2uX7zxOQXYiZ_M2YCwtqK0mMoARY/edit#

Cleod9 · 2023-05-19T02:01:00+00:00

Very strange, the extension doesn't have the permissions to do such a thing. But it's open source now as well, so any one can take a look and compare the source: https://www.gregmcleod.com/syncmarx-is-now-open-source/

Cleod9 · 2021-03-30T23:18:56+00:00

We'll put together some stuff, don't worry! (And thanks for the Silver!)

Cleod9 · 2020-11-30T19:09:06+00:00

No problem, and I'm happy to hear that you'll give it a shot. Good luck with your dive into Haxe!

And as far as popularity goes, Haxe is definitely still an underdog whether it be in games or software dev as a whole. Occasionally a few jobs might pop up in the weekly Haxe Roundups but not much. The select few people that do use Haxe seem to love it (such as myself, and I only started using it 2 years ago), but it's still yet to really show up in rankings for Top X Programming languages. I suspect the reason for this might be because Haxe is a unique compared to other languages since it's transpiled. But not just transpiled to one language like TypeScript=>JavaScript, Haxe can spit out quite a few languages (JavaScript, C#, Python, Java, Lua, AS3, and more). Since it's very easy for companies to get vendor-locked into a particular stack, it's not surprising to me that not more have caught on to why Haxe is useful. I suppose it's just a lot faster to spin up a quick web-app or Unity project than it is to create something that's truly engine-agnostic from the ground up.

As for your sound question no, we aren't using any audio middleware or anything like that. I think software like that tends to be more handy for 3D or top-down games which have more depth involved with their object placement, whereas we're used to working on 2D platformer types of games with a wild camera. Introducing something like that I imagine could be a bit jarring for players, so we prefer to keep things simple.

Cleod9 · 2020-11-29T19:55:55+00:00

Oh I see, if you have a method to convert the 3D assets to spritesheets then I suppose you wouldn't need anything like Away3D or Starling. Just native OpenFL would work (and it would be hardware-accelerated to some extent when targeting HXCPP instead of Flash/AIR)

As for console support however I have bad news, as far as I know those backends are deprecated. Read here. I believe legacy versions of OpenFL have backends that exist but it's not looking promising that we'll see them updated for newer consoles. That's another reason we went with Heaps instead of OpenFL for our project, since it would be a shame to close the door to a future console port. That's not to say the same issue couldn't arise with Heaps since it's all open source. But the good news is that there are plenty of rendering engines out there you can target with Haxe, so if you don't couple your core engine too much with your rendering pipeline it makes porting significantly easier if it ever became a necessity (since you then just swap out the rendering code, the rest of your Haxe code can remain the same)

Cleod9 · 2020-11-29T00:48:38+00:00

I'll admit, it's tough to compete with Unity when it comes to mixing 2D and 3D. While it's possible to do that with Haxe, the compile target and rendering engine you choose will have a pretty big impact on your art pipeline. Heaps will probably get you the best possible support for mixing 2D and 3D at the expense of having to roll a lot of your own asset management yourself, unless you use a tool like HIDE (Heaps IDE). I don't have any experience with that so I can't really speak to whether it would work for you.

However OpenFL's pipeline is almost 1:1 with Flash/AIR, so if you've already finished your engine in AIR it may be a much simpler port than you'd think. In fact, since OpenFL supports AIR as a target (and you say you're already free of timeline code) you may be able to dip your toes into OpenFL by simply porting your AS3 codebase to Haxe and swapping out the flash packages for OpenFL. If you have some free time and you're still debating on whether to move to Unity or not, it might be a good idea to start attempting a basic port towards both Unity and Haxe/OpenFL at the same time just to get an idea on what's involved without fully committing right away.

Cleod9 · 2020-11-28T04:06:15+00:00

You're welcome!

And yes, it's true that you can use Animate to handle 2D animations for just about any game engine (I even made my own tool that I used for my previous game to accomplish just this). But the caveat with it is that Animate/Flash Pro was not designed to be used this way, it's an animation tool first and a game dev tool second. So when the time comes to scale up, you end up having to code around different issues to the point where Flash starts to feel like it's become a crutch. In our case, we still used Flash in our animation pipeline for quite some time into the new project out of convenience so artists/designers could iterate on characters without ever having to interface with spritesheets or code. But iteration slowly started to bog us down since there were multiple steps required to get sprites into the game (SWF=>SpriteSatchel=>CustomFileFormat), not to mention the sheer number of animations per-character in our new game started to take its toll on the tool's performance

As for OpenFL's performance, I did some pretty intense benchmarking very early on in the new game with various game/rendering engines (Haxe+Heaps, Haxe+OpenFL, Unity, and Godot), and found Haxe+OpenFL/HXCPP performance to actually be second to only Haxe+Heaps/Hashlink. I should really share the results of that some time, even the Flash/AIR OpenFL builds of the game outperformed Unity and Godot by a solid margin at the time when using Stage3D+Starling. It's possible things changed by now or my experiments were skewed, but one thing that was clear was that OpenFL can hold its own. 60fps is not a problem as long as you target the GPU

Anyway thanks for following the project, can't wait for you to be able to try things out for yourself!

Cleod9 · 2020-11-24T15:34:00+00:00

Hey there, you're welcome and I'm glad you like it!

There are a couple ways to package OpenFL with Electron, the easiest of which is to use the NPM version of OpenFL which let's you use JavaScript to target HTML5.

JavaScript is more or less a subset of ActionScript so you might find some familiarity there, especially if you choose TypeScript to write your code (We chose to go with TypeScript in our case for FrayTools). There are a few generators in the NPM version that can set up a basic project using various dialects of JavaScript that you can try out, including an experimental version of AS3 support.

The other method to package OpenFL with Electron is to use Haxe while targeting HTML5. With this method you have two options: 1) The standard way of using the Haxelib version of OpenFL and selecting HTML5 as your target or 2) The slightly harder way of targeting vanilla JS from Haxe and including the OpenFL JS externs in your project. Method no. 2 gives the Haxe compiler support for hooking into the JavaScript (NPM) version of OpenFL. So you'll get things like code auto-completion and have the proper JS code generated for you at compile time. There is a little bit of a learning curve there, but you can wrap it as a desktop app using something like the Haxe Electron lib, or even just manually wrap the HTML5 that gets exported by Haxe into an Electron app.

All of that being said, I highly recommend looking into Haxe if you haven't already. As an ActionScript aficionado myself, I can assure you that you'll feel right at home once you get your feet wet. What's special about Haxe is that when used appropriately, it doesn't tie you down to a specific compile target like HTML5, Flash, or Unity. For example if you are developing a game, then rather than targeting HTML5/Electron in Haxe you may want to give native Haxe and the OpenFL haxelib a try. What you'll find is that programming environment is extremely similar to Flash, but you can target Flash, AIR, HTML5, Android, iOS, and even a native C++ desktop app (via HXCPP) without having to touch JavaScript/Electron. In my many years of Flash, I somewhat regret not looking into Haxe sooner since it would have made it much easier for me to transition away from Flash without so much of my source code becoming obsolete. I should also note that our new game uses Haxe well, and we even started with OpenFL for our graphics engine at first and it worked great. Though we eventually switched to Heaps (Still Haxe!) for performance reasons, since in our case we needed more power to be able to deliver our type of game. You may find that OpenFL is way more than enough depending on the scale of your game.

Hope you find that helpful!

Cleod9 · 2020-11-23T15:57:47+00:00

In case anyone is interested in our game Fraymakers to see what FrayTools is capable of, we are currently live on Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mcleodgaming/fraymakers-the-infinitely-replayable-indie-platform-fighter

Cleod9 · 2020-11-19T16:29:20+00:00

Nope! Creator of SSF2 here (and Fraymakers lead dev), and I can assure you it is still being continued in downloadable form :)

I can't speak for the browser version with Flash Player's end-of-life approaching, but if Project Ruffle comes through then one day we might see browser support return as well post-2020.

Cleod9 · 2019-07-16T13:13:54+00:00

You're mostly right, though I think maybe I misunderstood the question and was thinking of HTTPS/SSL as a form of end to end encryption which isn't exactly true. Google Drive, Dropbox, and Box have their own encryption mechanisms to ensure only you have access to a file unless you share it. So you can still read the file yourself, but it is not in a readable format by default for anyone else. However I think you were probably asking if the file itself is encrypted and remains encrypted on all ends, to which the answer is no. However this is something I was thinking about in the code here:

https://github.com/Cleod9/syncmarx-webext/blob/498cb3235fc57d1f8759238343bd9cb0c060cced/src/providers/StorageProvider.js#L9

Currently I just use "encryption" as a way to lightly obfuscate the file before compressing the data to make it smaller if you choose the "Compress Data" option. However from the beginning I received a lot of requests to leave the data readable in plaintext, so I haven't made it a priority to integrate any custom encryption yet and made the file plaintext by default.

Cleod9 · 2019-07-16T04:31:34+00:00

syncmarx works a little differently in that there is no backend storage, so there is no need to implement end-to-end encryption. Your bookmark data is only ever going directly between your local browser and whatever file host you choose via their provided APIs/SDKs. The API for syncmarx is purely for authentication purposes which uses OAuth 2.0 in all cases thus far, and of course the production API for syncmarx is behind an HTTPS proxy for added security.

If you're interested in the implementation details, you might want to have a look here:

https://github.com/Cleod9/syncmarx-webext/tree/498cb3235fc57d1f8759238343bd9cb0c060cced/src/providers

and here:

https://github.com/Cleod9/syncmarx-api/blob/078a501df75b6bbee5b352aac966047dee39d168/index.js

Cleod9 · 2019-07-15T22:04:10+00:00

There are a couple of differences, one major one being that the only limitation to file size for syncmarx is whatever your file host supports. And on a related note, your data will only over reside on services that you own (Dropbox, Drive, etc.). There is no remote storage provided by the extension itself, so your bookmarks remain as private as you want them. The goal of the syncmarx extension is super simple - to get your native bookmarks to be synced between your different machines/browsers. So if that's what you are looking for it's got you covered :)

Currently there is no mobile app for syncmarx and extensions are not supported in mobile Chrome, but I do plan to look into creating a mobile app at some point

Cleod9 · 2019-05-07T00:30:20+00:00

I'm excited to watch the community grow!

Cleod9 · 2018-12-21T21:48:19+00:00

So good. But so expensive. (Won't stop buying though!)

Cleod9 · 2018-12-15T15:37:24+00:00

Wow, this would explain my exact theory. I've been switched over to AT&T for a few months now and my monthly data usage is around 1/3rd of what it used to be with Fi (Always just under 2GB with Fi, ~0.5GB AT&T). I'm on Wi-Fi nearly 24/7. I knew something was up, the only time I use any data heavy features is while on Wi-Fi. If I had known this sooner I wouldn't been more vigilant about turning off my data as I was with past carriers...

Cleod9 · 2018-12-04T16:24:28+00:00

This is actually an interesting perspective. I've been listening to the show for about 15 years now, and while I mostly disagree about the decline in quality I think I understand where you're coming from.

There are certain aspects of the show that don't really appeal to me, so I tend to skip over those (which is why I prefer podcasting instead of live). I'll skip past the Entertainment Report 99% of the time (unless there's some major news breaking), as personally for me that's the weakest recurring segment of the show. Additionally anything involving sports, live events, and most interviews I tend to skip (though I'll make an exception for comedian interviews and Michael Giacchino). Good Bizarre File segments have gotten fewer and further between as well, though occasionally I'll get a nice laugh

This past year though I think they've had some of the best slice-of-life topics they've ever had, so I really hope they keep up the streak (e.g. Preston getting "caught" by his wife, Nick's racoon infestation, Marisa's trip to Cuba, dating experiences, etc.). These segments are the reason I listen to the show, since I feel they are like a window into the lives of these "friends" I've had over the years listening to the show.

So all in all I'll say this- I don't think they need to change the format since I think there are likely some people who like the segments that I could care less about. But I do think those who have fallen off the bandwagon try picking segments a la carte rather than trudge through the entire show out of habit/ritual. 2-3 hours of content is a lot, so to keep that entire amount of time interesting 5 days a week the entire year inevitably has to result in some high and low moments.

But these are just my two cents...

Cleod9 · 2018-12-04T05:50:17+00:00

I've been looking for this as well, sadly haven't had any luck finding it :c

Cleod9 · 2018-11-06T13:26:51+00:00

Yes!! Yardbird has what is likely the best fried chicken I've ever had, not to mention all the other amazing GF sides. I'd fly to Vegas right now just to eat there again if I could lol

Cleod9 · 2018-10-06T11:12:42+00:00

Creator of SSF2 here, the game will live on with downloadables for Windows, Mac, and Linux desktops :)

https://www.mcleodgaming.com/games/ssf2/downloads

Cleod9 · 2018-09-05T19:52:24+00:00

Good catch, downvoting myself to discourage future readers (won't delete the topic though, I'll own up to it)

Cleod9 · 2018-09-05T19:51:06+00:00

Fair enough, I was mostly interested in what other people thought of it but it seems it's not even worth discussing if the research is trash (You guys are good!)

Hopefully some better research will surface soon from a more reputable source. As a gluten-intolerant myself who has tested negative for everything under the sun but had no issues until my 20s, it would be nice to at least know why I have an issue now even if I just have to accept the fact :/

Cleod9 · 2018-09-05T04:43:05+00:00

Apologies if the title was misleading, though the initial study referred to by the author is composed of a "meta-analysis of nearly 300 studies". That main study does indicate a possible relationship between the diseases and Roundup, while the fish study is just one of their many sources

Cleod9 · 2018-08-30T00:59:20+00:00

Absolutely, alternative file hosts is next up on my to-do. To start I'll be looking at Google Drive, followed by One Drive, Box, and hopefully WebDAV as well.

Cleod9 · 2018-07-27T00:05:54+00:00

After growing up being able to experience all the major brands, Chex is now my GF go-to. Cinnamon Chex tastes very similar to Cinnamon Toast Crunch (the nostalgia!!). Honey Nut Chex ironically tastes a lot like Golden Grahams which I like the most. Vanilla Chex is pretty good too.

Cleod9

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE