Announcing my newest finished project, Box2DWith. I’m collecting together various utility classes for doing all the stuff with Box2DFlashAS3, but found annoying. Demo, Docs
ASDoc Enhancements
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.
Control MediaMonkey From Launchy
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
b2BuoyancyController
Following the poll, buoyancy seemed to be the popular choice for Box2D feature. I decided against the fancy and probably unreliable technique I was going to use, and have produced a “controller” based on good old, geometry, cribbing a fair amount of Erin Catto’s notes on the subject. Demo
1300 Strips of Qwantz
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.
Box2D Raycasts
b2ConcaveArc
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