Ok, break’s over. Time to start working again. Of course, if Gabe was sleeping better, it might be easier to stay up late and do something. (Would also help if I wasn’t being lazy.)

I haven’t created anything new in AS3 in a few months now. That’s not good.

I was finally able to record a round of my SCOMaster game! Recap - It’s a multiplayer WiiFlash game designed to be played with teams in an instructor lead classroom setting. The object is to assemble a learning program structure the fastest - but watch out, because your opponent can take one of your SCOs and reuse them in their own program. Developed in Flash CS3 in about 150 hours.

SCOMaster Gameplay

Casey’s gone back to school and things are settling down with the new baby, so I’m finding myself with a little free time again. When I posed the Creating a Flash WBT Framework post, I had planned to follow it up shortly with a few learning interactions, but I never found the time. Now I have some of that time. And being inspired by this conversation on the Pipweks board, I think that it’s something that would help out a lot of people.

I don’t plan to make them drop dead simple to use, like the old ones that were included with Flash, but I’d like to ask my (very few) readers: “What would you like me to do?” Are there interactions that you’d like to see?

I plan on making them class based, following the MVC pattern, with the data stored in an XML file. Should make it easy enough to modify, but the AS3 code would be intermediate level so it would require some effort there.

If I don’t receive any comments, I’ll just start wandering in a random direction and post what I come up with.

Update, 1/21/09: Well, things didn’t go as easily as I’d planned. Work was crazy and then I took a break for the holidays and just couldn’t get motivated to start on these. Excuses. But I’ve finally gotten around to turning the computer back on in the evenings, so I’ll be picking up on a few odds and ends soon.

Also - thanks for all of the comments!

I don’t get to use Photoshop for illustrations very often anymore, so it’s fun when I do. I created this little thing to replace some uglier images on the same theme in a WBT we’re working on. Origional is here.

I’ve been playing around with using gestures with WiiFlash as an alternative input scheme. As a first step, I’ve taken the Flash Gesture recognition code from Didier Brun and modified it to work with a Wii remote instead of the mouse. It works pretty well - some of the letters aren’t easy to hit - but not bad for a first try. I’d like to modify with further have more “shapes” rather than “letters” to match. More to come on this when I get extra time.

It’s been quieter than usual around here be cause on July 9th, our son Gabriel James was born.

Casey went to the hospital with chest pains - and it turned out that she was in labor! After 14 hours of labor, Gabe arrived, 3 weeks early, at 11:21am. He was pretty big at 7lbs 2oz and dispite being early, everything was OK and we went home on time.

Sophie’s getting used to him, and we’re getting used to the two of them.

After a week and a half I finally finished my first real WiiFlash game - SCOMaster. It’s a competative, 2 player learning game designed to be played in a group setting. It illustrates the concepts of assembling a course in an LMS system. Bonus points are awarded for content reuse - they are SCOs after all! Unneeded objects and faulty objects can be sent back to the development team to be reworked - but at a cost.First one to build a completed activity tree wins.

Ben Hutchens, our graphic designer, created the art work for it. It took about 60 hours to program it using the WiiFlash classes that I had developed earlier in the year.

In February, I posted about using the Wii remote as a virtual mouse in Flash. While that approach seems to work just fine in a simple single player application, I found that it breaks really badly when you another player to it. I just completed my first two player WiiFlash game and I’ll document a few things that I had to differently.

Originally,  based all of the interaction with the cursors off of the typical mouse events (rollover, rollout, etc.), but this did allow for find out which player rollover the sprite or which player “clicked” on the sprite.

Each player’s cursor is just a sprite itself, so I switched to using the hitTestObject function against each players cursor sprite and the object sprite on a mouse event. This returns which of the cursors interacted with the object. Additionally, since the cursor sprites are big, you do have to see them from a distance, I found that I needed to add an additional sprite to the cursor - the cursor “point” - at 0,0 and use that for the hitTest rather than the actual big cursor sprite. If the “tail” of the cursor arrow is still over the object sprite, you shouldn’t count that as a roll over, since the point of the arrow is the important part.

So here are the functions for a rollover:

 private function onItemOver(e:MouseEvent):void {
var wm:Array = whichWiiMotesAreOverMe(Sprite(e.target))
for (var i:int = 0; i < wm.length; i++) {
_WiiMotes[wm[i]].doRumbleSeconds(.1);
_WiiMotes[wm[i]].cursorState = WiiCursorView.CURSOR_POINT;
}
}

// returns array of which wiimote cursors are over the sprite
private function whichWiiMotesAreOverMe(tgt:Sprite):Array {
var a:Array = new Array();
// _WiiMotes is an array of Wii controller objects
for (var i:int; i < _WiiMotes.length; i++) {
if (tgt.hitTestObject(_WiiMotes[i].cursorPoint)) {
a.push(i);
}
}
return a;
}

The functions for a mousedown are:

private function onItemDown(e:MouseEvent):void {
// gets the index of the _WiiMote object that clicked the sprite
var wm:int = whichWiiMoteClickedMe(Sprite(e.target));
}

// returns index of which wii mote cursor is over with the A button down
private function whichWiiMoteClickedMe(tgt:Sprite):int {
var wm:Array = whichWiiMotesAreOverMe(tgt);
for (var i:int = 0; i < wm.length; i++) {
if (tgt.hitTestObject(_WiiMotes[wm[i]].cursorPoint)) {
if (wm.length == 1) {
// simple test if only one cursor is over
if(_WiiMotes[wm[i]].isADown) return wm[i];
} else {
// little harder if 2+ are over, _LastClickWMIdx is the last Wii mote to have pressed a button
if(_WiiMotes[wm[i]].isADown && _LastClickWMIdx==wm[i]) return wm[i];
}
}
}
return -1;
}

This method, while probably not the best way, turned out to work really well in the game.

I’m presenting to the Bank’s Flash Community of Practice this Thursday on how to create a basic Flash WBT that includes SCORM  tracking. Below is the PPT deck that I’ll be using and below that is the sample file.

SCORM and Flash WBT Overview

This is an example file of a Flash WBT on the timeline, where my previous example was pure script. SCORM 1.2 compliant using my wrapper and Pipwerks SCORM API.

Timeline Based WBT Demo

I’m releasing the source code to the 2nd WBT framework that I created for Wachovia in mid-2004. Essentially, it works just like the example demo that I posed a few days ago: 1) an array of page IDs and 2) pages are movie clips in the library attached as the learner progressed though.

This version is pretty complicated, so it’ll be a challenge to figure out how it all works. But there is value in seeing the code for the individual page interactions. It’s not SCORM or AICC compliant - but it did track as a Docent Outliner module - those files aren’t included.

The framework file is the main file for a course. It loads an structure XML file (xml\framework.xml) that defines the list of modules for the course. The blank file what each lesson is built from. It contains all of the templates and is capable of running a course from an XML document.

These are Flash 7 FLAs. The code is Flash 6/MX level Actionscript. There aren’t really many comments in the code since I coded it for myself. But I did train a few coworkers how to use it. I haven’t worked in the code for over 3 years, so if you ask a question about it, I probably won’t remember what I did.

Here’s a preview of the interactions in the blank file:

http://www.nudoru.com/assets/portfolio/experimentalflash/ft2_samp.htm

Here’s the code:

Flash Template 2 Code

I put together part 1 of what I plan on being a multi-part series documeting the creation of a Flash WBT framework for creating SCORM compliant courses. This first once starts with an interface created in Flash CS3 and goes though the steps of adding the code to make it all work - and track on a SCORM 1.2 LMS. I’m using a custom wrapper class that I made for Pipwerks’ SCORM class. You need to know a bit about programming in Actionscript 3 - nothing advanced, but this isn’t in a tutoral format.

I’m hoping to fill a void with this - I know that there are a lot of people trying to develop WBTs in Flash and they have no idea where to start. I’ve been doing this for 4 years, and I know that I would have loved something like this when I started.

Example Documentation

Example Source Files

Please let me know if you find a bug, have a question, or have a comment or suggestion on what to cover next or how to make this better.

A few months ago, I made a comment about spinning off my ramen player for use at work and turning it into a player for learning content. Well, my first project with it is about to go live, so it’s worth another mention.

I’m calling this player “Scientia.”  I’ve added a lot of code for progress, tracking and completion. I’ve also integrated Pipwerks excellent SCORM wrapper into it.

The project is a system walk-though that’s presented to the learner with an avatar character. I’ve written up a short explanation of how the avatar SWF and audio player SWF work together. It’s pretty brief - post a comment if you want more information on it and I’ll see what more I can write.

Using XML events in a Flash player system

Also, I’m presenting at this month’s Bank of America Flash CoP meeting on Flash and SCORM communication. I’m going to create a very simple WBT/SCORM framework using Pipwerk’s wrapper. I’ll post the files and how-to when I get it written.

Someone asked me how I the background animation on my new site. Here’s the code. You’ll need to download TweenLite and have it in the class path. This is a Flash 9 FLA with AS3.

Nudoru.com Site BG

I just uploaded an update to my personal web site after 3 years “I’ll do it later.”

http://nudoru.com/

Creating this version was a bit of a struggle for me - not only as a fight against procrastination but trying to figure out what I wanted to “say,” if anything, about myself. The result is something simple and subdued overall with a strong grid layout and a little flair. I’m not really sure what that “says” about me - but I think that it’s fitting for where I am at this point. I also wrote my first bio in over 7 years and took out a lot of old crap from my portfolio. So much of what I’ve done these past 5 years has been code - I have little to show visually.

I created it using my ramen player. There are a few things that I still want to add - like sound effects - but I’ll get around to it later.

I remembered that I had a Twitter account, so I decided to start using it. I installed AIR and the twhirl client, so that tweet while working. Hi ho, hi ho.

Saw this post on StudioBanks’ blog referring to the chalk board effect on the Starbucks Coffee At Home site. I thought it was pretty cool too, and that I can see using something like this in a future e-learning app. So, I spent a little time creating a demo of it. It’s pretty straightforward, and could be modified to show an external SWF instead of the circles - which would make it actually useful.

Chalk Board Effect Demo

Chalk Board Effect Source

Little utility of the month (I swear I want to to more of these to post): Mouse positioning debugger. This is a little utility script that will be part of ramen to help position items on the screen. Turn it on and it displays cross hairs showing the current position relative to the stage and a child MC of your choosing. Can also draw boxes and it’ll track the width and height.

Mouse Position Debug Demo

Mouse Position Debug Source

Off to the Ballantyne satellite offices to be locked in a room for 2 whole days of process mapping fun!

Crap. I hate it when that happens. BAC EL merged the instructional designers, developers and quality management into one design team. And we got 2 levels of new management.

I should be more upset about it. But after being outsourced once, this “chage wave” just doesn’t seem as big. Roll with it.

Ryan Taylor point’s to an article on Grant Skinner’s blog about a bug in FP9 where loaded SWFs are not removed from memory when you tell Flash to.

This is a problem that I’m seeing with ramen just as Ryan is seeing with his PGA app. I was watching the memory usage of a current project and it was taking up  >90mb of ram, GC ran and then it went down to 60mb. Still to high, but damn! I was pretty careful when I was coding it null out references and stop listeners/timers - but I think that I need to make another pass as it.