interesting note to self: MovieClip.hitTest() is not affected by a clip's _visible property!

useful for using invisible movieclips for manual mouse testing.

this simple little project is just me playing with the Microphone class in flash.

if you have a microphone connected to your computer, click the "turn mic on" button. you will get a security warning asking if you want to allow bunnyherolabs.com to access your webcam and microphone (don't worry, i'm not using the cam, and not recording the audio anywhere!). then you may have to set the recording level ("gain") with the slider. as you talk (or otherwise make sounds into the microphone), the face's mouth should wag open and closed.

yes it's a very crude drawing, but it's just a fun test!

UPDATE! if you want to embed this into your website or myspace, use this code:

a few of you have asked for code to embed my verlet demo into your websites. here it is:

have fun!

i think every flash coder ends up writing some kind of verlet integration demo. here's mine:

the code is based on the article advanced character physics (by Thomas Jakobsen) which was presented at the 2001 game developers conference.

i plan to use this for the monkey pet as he swings around.

what, no source code? sorry, the code is such a mess that it's embarrassing!

(i am also aware of flade, the flash dynamics engine, but (a) i thought i'd learn more doing this myself, (b) flade is actionscript 2.0 and my pets are still written in actionscript 1 (although i may upgrade the pet code someday) and (c) i don't need all of flade's features — the only physics i really need is gravity. i haven't looked at any of the code in flade…)

i've finally started looking at actionscript 2.0, which was introduced way back in flash MX 2004. yes, i am behind the times. it looks a lot more java-like, and less javascript-like, although apparently it's based on stuff proposed in early draft specs of the next version of ECMAScript.

i haven't tried coding anything in it yet. as a longtime java programmer, i'm sure it won't take long for me to get used to, but i think i'll miss the freewheeling, uber-dynamic, prototype-based style of actionscript 1. plus, i'll have to keep mentally switching gears as i go back and forth between actionscript coding and javascript coding.

note to myself mostly: AOL tries to break a Flash Pre-loader.

i wonder if this could be the related to the problem that some AOL users have in loading the pet customization page, since the customizer loads a flash movie into itself. it's not loading an image, mind you, but still…