Ok, so recently I needed to get a Flash swf into a Flex project and have the two talk to each other. Ok, fairly normal, I did it for a page navigation scroll bar that was AS2 and got it to talk with our Flex project and it works great. Problem though, the Flash swf I need to bring in will exist on another server, and the scroll bar I had worked on, we embedded into the project.

I spent days working on this. Why?

Well, two things:

1. We get these files from a design firm and I wanted to not change their code that we gave them earlier.
2. Cross domain issues.

I tried everything I could think of to bust this open, searched around, and came up with the solution. I had to change the code that the design firm used, moving them from AS2 to AS3.

Sean the Flex Guy has an excellent and simple tutorial for doing half of what I needed. It loads in a Flash swf animation, and then Flex talks to it to move the animation forward frame by frame. So that was covered, at least once I made the decision to move to AS3.

The other half, Flash talking with Flex wasn’t covered, but I found a solution in the Adobe Docs. As long as both the Flex and Flash swfs have their Security.allowDomain set properly, then the two can communicate back and forth (this needs to be set for the Flex to Flash work too). What I found out, was that events, such as Mouse events, will bubble if this is set properly. So all I needed to do was to listen for the MouseEvent that was fired when the buttons in the Flash swf were clicked. The rest was easy.

I imagine that if there is something else that happens in the Flash swf, you can create a custom event for it, and listen for that in the Flex swf. Since there are more things in Flash and Flex than are controlled buy your MouseEvents Horatio.

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Ok, so some of you might be wondering what happened to the accessibility project that I was going to be working on several months back. Well…

It turns out that the major stumbling block here was the wmode tag that was being used. It needed to be set to wmode=opaque, and it was set to wmode=transparent. Why? Well, wmode transparent as most of you know, allows for Javascript dropdowns to flow over the Flash Player, which we have on many of our client sites. Unfortunately, how it does this is it makes the Flash Player effectively transparent (go figure) to the web browser’s DOM. So the web browser doesn’t take it into account when drawing things on screen. This has the added effect of making the screen readers that attempt to read the contents of the Flash Player either not see it at all, or act erratically when they do start to read it. Nice eh?

So, setting wmode=opaque, the five second change, solved most of the problems with our accessibility, so there was no need for me to do the research and my project on it was cancelled. I do still think that there was a lot to learn for everyone on accessibility, and that the sources out there do cover it, but not all in one place. We’re under tight deadlines though, so any saved time is taken by other things. Considering it meant that I didn’t have to work a weekend or too late, I was totally cool with that.

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Ok, I had meant to post things earlier, but at least it’s sooner than the last gap was long.

Gen Con was a blast, at least as good as last year, I would say baring a few things, even better than last year. Vegas After Midnight ran very well, and we got both exceptional feedback and a host of possible playtesters. VAM was stripped down to start, but Daniel Perez (http://dmperez.com/) focused in on something that I hadn’t been able to put a name to. That was that we only had half or less of the Madness mechanics in the game. We just had ways to incur Madness, but nothing about it’s effects, or how to track it. So we slashed the things on the character sheet that required Madness (really just a few things), and ran with the edited versions. As I said, they went great, and the feel of VAM without Madness is there, now we just need to add in the darker aspects of Madness to make it complete.

Going as press for the second year in a row was definitely worth it. I got a great interview with Greymalkin Press about their new game Desolation, which never got recorded due to a recorder snafu. I am working with them to get it redone soon. Oh, and btw, Matt Somers, one of the key designers, has been my friend since college. Full disclosure and all that.

I also got to play Hellas with Jerry Grayson (http://hellasrpg.com), and that was awesome. I had the pdf review copy before the con, but it was so nice I had to buy a copy. So you can expect to hear it played on The Game Master Show (http://thegamemastershow.com) soon, along with Desolation.

Met a bunch of old friends, many of them podcasters, and met a fair amount of new ones. Played several playtest sessions with them, like: Mythender, and Mecha. Two excellent games, that just need a bit more polish. I expect to hear about them coming out within the next year.

I did get to go to the White Wolf party this year, thanks Matt - I think, but if you want to hear more about that, you’ll have to listen to the podcast for The Game Master Show that comes out soon. We’re recording it tonight.

Toodles!

It’s been a looong time since I have last posted, but…

I am at Gen Con 2008, day 2 (Friday). Mick and I have run Vegas After Midnight (http://vegasaftermidnight.net) three times now, and it has been excellent. We have learned a lot of the rough spots, and already started sanding them down. We have loved all of our players, and a good portion of them we think are going to playtest for us. We are going to run it at least three more times before the end of the con, and I can’t wait to run them!

I’ve also done an interview for The Game Master Show (http://thegamemastershow.com), and ended up recording silence through my own fault. We also have played Hellas (http://hellasrpg.com), again, awesome - more to come on that front.

Ok, Erin is pulling me out to eat. So more later hopefully!

I thought that I posted this earlier, but when I went back to reference it, it looks like it didn’t post.

My research into accessibility for Flex custom components continues. This time I have something from Zeus Labs. It documents Josh Tynjala’s same efforts as mine in looking into accessibility. He’s discovered some limitations of the flash player, the article is dated May 5, 2008, so it’s timely and focuses on the current Flash Player 9.

Here is a summary of the article, followed by a link to it:

• Flash Player isn’t accessible on a Mac. (Probably since it uses the Windows accessibility code for Windows, and it looks like it does not include the Mac version of the same.)
• AccessibilityProperties class doesn’t support roles. Everything is viewed as an image by a screen reader in Flash, not buttons or lists, or any other role.
• AccessibilityProperties doesn’t expose the display list hierarchy. Things like TabBar’s don’t display as a tree of objects in an assistive application, but as a list of objects. Whereas a Windows application shows a tab list as a tree of objects.
• Some accessibility APIs in Flash Player are undocumented. Go to the article for the specifics.

Zeus Labs - Adobe needs to improve accessibility in Flash Player (http://www.zeuslabs.us/2008/05/05/flash-player-accessibility-feature-requests/)

What it comes down to is this: While Adobe has definitely improved the Flash Player accessibility, it still isn’t up to the standards of something like an HTML page.

My search continues.

Ok, I’ve been using Scribe Fire (http://www.scribefire.com/) for about a week now, and as you can tell from the frequency of my posts, it makes posting quick and painless. Writing this from the train, it is also obvious that posting while offline is also another bonus.

So I’ll be using ScribeFire to make posts from now until something better comes along. Thank you Chris Miller (http://www.unquietdesperation.com/) for making my life a little easier by suggesting it.

Flex 3 makes accessibility for the standard components quite easy. However, when creating ActionScript custom visual components, things get, well, murky. I haven’t found too many posts at all about this out there, so I’m going to document the work that I am doing right now, so that myself and others could possibly benefit from it later on.

Here are the links I have found so far. I’ll post more of my discoveries as I am able.

Creating Accessible Applications - Adobe
Accessible Rich Internet Applications using Dreamweaver CS3 and Flash CS3
Lin Lin: Flex 2 and Accessibility

Ok, so last night was the first actual play night of my new fantasy campaign, and I am still surprised by the fact that I was able to convince the group to try out a new system other than DnD. What I am I using? You probably guessed by the title. I’m using the Fate system as represented in Spirit of the Century, modified by the work that Mick and I are doing on Vegas After Midnight (http://www.vegasaftermidnight.net/). The armor and equipment rules specifically, along with a slightly reduced power level from the standard SotC. (Less skills, only seven aspects)

Overall, I have an awesome group that I play with. We’ve been playing for several years now, with a few players leaving and a few new ones coming in, but in general a very stable group. I was worried about the game on several levels, the characters gelling being one of them, since they didn’t last game with another GM. It looks like most of that was due to people having shifting schedules and not a change in the group dynamic itself. *whew*

So, the game. As I said, it went quite well, the players only stumbling a little on the rules here and there. Once they got the hang of one though, we didn’t need to revisit it. Magic is going to be interesting for a while. The setting was formerly a DnD setting, so right now the stunts are more or less patterned after the levels in DnD. Oh, the characters are about 10th level in DnD terms as far as power level goes. The Fate system made for a much more cinematic style of play. I started them out with a combat and not so heavy on the roleplaying, since it would teach the crunch in a quicker manner. The combat and spellcasting was excellent! There is one player in my group who always plays a caster, but has always interpreted spells in his own way and never the same way twice. Fate has allowed him to do what he wants with spells, and not to worry about some description somewhere. It totally worked.

My big surprise of the night was another character who was also playing a caster, this one a mage, and his description for his spells were awesome. I found myself realizing halfway through the night that I was still in DnD running mode and not in cinematic SotC mode, but he totally got it even though it was his first time playing. Casting spells that would put aspects on the scene like “Portal to the realm of earth” and at the same time another one of “Sucking Vortex” so that they could push the elemental creatures they were battling into the portal and get rid of them, but also using the Sucking Vortex aspect to help them do it. 100% recycled SotC awesome!

Whew, ok, that’s enough for now. Next game is next Wednesday, and if it relates to VAM playtesting and design I might post more about it. Unless you comment and ask for more anyway.

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