This post should help you convert from Actionscript 2.0 to 3.0. AS3, in my opinion, was the biggest jump for Adobe from Flash 8 to CS3. It’s shown to be heaps faster than AS2, with a whole new bunch of classes and features. I won’t teach you everything there is to know, this is just a small step for you if your facing this dilemma. If know nothing about AS2, don’t bother reading.

Firstly the properties are represented differently, there is no more underscore when you are setting properties:

//AS2
this._x = 100
//AS3
this.x = 100

The next thing you need to notice is that you can no longer add code to movieclips directly on the stage, all coding is now done from the timeline. Also, no more using ‘_root’.

If you are not already into defining variables or classes properly, AS3 forces you to do this or an error occurs. This is the correct format:

var name:Class = value;
//eg
var i:Number = 0;

A big difference in AS3 for game development is the use of event listeners. Now, instead of calling a function like ‘onEnterFrame’, you create a custom function that will execute on the event, then add an event listener to the MC you want the event to listen to. Here’s a quick example with the enter frame event: (more…)

Hey, welcome to my new blog!

This new blog will make it tons easier for me to keep you posted on news from Kabomb, as well as flash related news from around the web. I’ll also be able to post open source tutorials, prototypes, and flash experiments that you can follow. You’ll be able to comment on all my posts and I’ll try to reply to the ones that need a reply, if not just email me.

If you have no idea what flash is or you want to get into it, you can download a free trial from the Adobe Website where you’ll also need flash player (you should already have it) to see all the examples on your web browser.

Okay, let’s get down to business - my first tutorial - Cursor Effects. This lets you create effects like those in my Cursorized series where MC animations continually come out at the cursor which creates a really cool effect.

Here’s what I did.

Now I’ll explain how I did it.
(more…)