More Box2DAS3 v2.1a Progress

| Boris

Ok, the first revision (r52) of Box2DAS3 for the next version is available now on SVN. Phew, that was a lot of work.

Lots of stuff doesn’t work, but the reduced testbed ought to compile and run.

Notes:
The old SAP broadphase works, as well as Dynamic Tree.
It’s 3-4x slower than the old version! It’s because I replaced some of the old optimizations with newer more naive code. It’ll improve over time as we re-inline stuff and so on.

What should you (the casual Box2D user) do now:

  • Still nothing. It’ll still be some time for the port to catch up with C++, and get cleaned up. And there’s the performance issue. I wouldn’t recommend moving unless you have an essential reason, or have a project that you are keeping continuously up to date.
  • I’ll be accepting patches now to lighten the work load, if anyone at all is keen. Post them on the forum, preferably declaring your intentions in advance. All patches must be under submitted under the same zlib license. They must be actual patch (diff) files. Updating the testbed examples would be a good excercise for someone keen to try out the new API.

Please comment on the forums

Sprite Choppa

| Boris

I saw a poster on TIGSource talk about manually cutting up sprite sheets, so I’ve dusted off a project from 2007 to solve it. Just load up a sprite sheet, select the background color, and export the results into a directory. It’s got a few extra features useful for what I originally wanted it for, too.

Just remember, this is from the archive, so way crappier than the stuff I do nowadays. I’ve barely touched it, except to brush off a few GUI bugs and delete menu options that don’t do anything.
But it does the job.

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ASDoc Enhancements

| Boris

I’ve not posted for a while, but that doesn’t mean I’ve not been doing anything. Generally less visible stuff (yes, some porting), but I have converted Box2DFlashAS3 to use ASDoc to generate beautiful documentation.
The results are available here. For lack of a better place, this will be their permanent home, and I’ll try to keep them updated to the latest revision.

I’ve put in a few customizations to the standard ASDoc template, that I’m going to share here, as they are generally useful. You will need to customize the files a bit for your own project, though.

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Control MediaMonkey From Launchy

| Boris

You ever want a Lauchy command to control MediaMonkey? Well now you got it. Just download the attached zip, and extract it somewhere Launchy can see .lnk files (like the default Utilities folder, e.g.). The same files work for Winamp, just change the names to something more appropriate.

The trick is an obscure little utility I found called CLAMP, that does all the heavy lifting for me. I also used a trick I picked up somewhere to allow .lnk (shortcut) files, with relative references, by prepending your link with “%windir%\system32\cmd.exe /c “.

By the way, I don’t actually use this myself any more. I prefer MediaMonkey’s feature that you enable mouse gestures on the systray icon, which is much more convenient for me and my wireless mouse.

Attachements

MediaMonkey Control

1300 Strips of Qwantz

| Boris

The entire Qwantz (dinosaur comics) archive expressed in one comic:

Qwantz, for those who don’t know, is a webcomic only in the sense of being a comic on the web. Despite having posted about 1300 comics as of writing, the images have not varied at all, just the text.

I’ve averaged every comic with a combination of Python and ImageMagic, but boosting the text somewhat so it it’s not just an off-white image. Ryan North must obviously use a template file to create that perfectly aligned text. You can even make out that panel 3 tends to start with “I”, and panel six with “T-rex”, I think.

Source available here.

b2ConcaveArc

| Boris

My first proper contribution to the wonderful Box2D engine, specifically the Flash port. I’ve added a third shape type to the engine, which dramatically increases the possible shapes you can describe. Hopefully my contribution will also show other people how to add shapes, and some of the deeper aspects of the engine.

It’s easier to describe than see, so try out a demo: Demo

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