What a cryptic error message, yeah? Good grief! Thanks Adobe! Googling didn’t come up with very much, either.
Turned out I was passing two constant registers to an operation.
So basically, in order to compare two temporary registers, you have to copy one of them to a temporary register first.
This code failed in my vertex shader:
ife vc7.x, vc5.x
But this code works:
mov vt1, vc7
ife vt1.x, vc5.x
Go figure. Wonder why that is. Solution found on a comment on this article.
Today I had a similar problem to the one in this post – but instead of hanging, Flash Builder just failed to start up and quit during the “loading workbench” phase of initialization.
In the earlier post, I mentioned deleting a .snap file in [workspacelocation]/.metadata/.plugins/org.eclipse.core.resources, but previously I hadn’t been able to find it. This time, there WAS a .snap file in that folder, but it was hidden.
Deleted it, and Flash Builder starts up like a champ.
According to this thread, Flash Builder will only notice when your library SWC changes if it’s in your project folder. Kind of sucks if you use the same SWC in multiple projects, like I do, but it appears to be the only option. Also, sometimes you need to clean the project to make the refresh happen.
Now, I’m not using the Flex framework, but also from the linked thread, if you use Flex you might be able to turn off a “global SWC cache.” I tried it for my plain-jane actionscript projects and it didn’t work.
Here’s the secondary method:
Find the .options file in the /Applications/Adobe Flash Builder 4.7/eclipse/plugins/com.adobe.flexbuilder.project_4.7.0.349722/ folder and look for a line like this:
# use a global swc cache across all projects when compiling with flex sdk 4 or higher com.adobe.flexbuilder.project/useGlobalSwcCache=true
Try setting useGlobalSwcCache to false then restart Flash Builder and see if that helps.
NOTE: This may result in longer compile times in Flash Builder if your workspace includes Flash Library Projects since those generated SWCs will no longer be cached and instead will be rebuilt every time.
Again, I tried this secondary option, but it didn’t work for me (OSX 10.10.3 Yosemite), possibly because I don’t actually use Flex, and the comment in the config file specifically mentions Flex SDK.
We’re developing a set of games for iOS, some objective-C and some using Adobe AIR, and we’re using an iOS custom framework to hold a bunch of storyboard-based screens that we want to use across all the apps.
On the AIR side, we’ve created an Adobe Native Extension and figured out how to include our framework in it. This may be a subject for another blog post, because it was quite complicated, but this post really helped us figure out how to get all the images, storyboards, and sound files (among other assets) to get included in the ANE, and thus into the final app. We also used it to include our custom font file that the storyboards made heavy use of.
However, this was not enough. Using this post, I was able to troubleshoot all the possible steps that could go wrong. I had to make sure that the .ttf file got included in the final output of the framework, but the real key was Step 4 – adding the font information to your app’s info.plist file. Since an ANE is NOT an app, these keys need to go in the info.plist of the final app the ANE gets included in. But AIR apps use an Application Descriptor File, not an info.plist file. The info.plist file of the completed .IPA is auto-generated when the app is built.
Not to worry, Adobe has provided a place in said app descriptor file where you can specify items to add to the auto-generated info.plist. Appropriately enough, it’s called the InfoAdditions element. The content of this element must be wrapped in CDATA tags, and anything inside it will be added to the info.plist of the final app. So, in an XCode sample app, I followed step 4 above and created the required key/value in XCode’s graphical plist editor, and then opened the generated file in a text editor and copy/pasted those values. Here’s what I got:
<key>UIAppFonts</key> <array> <string>name-of-your-font.ttf</string> </array>
And here’s what that looks like pasted into an InfoAdditions tag in the app descriptor:
<iPhone> <InfoAdditions><![CDATA[ <key>UIAppFonts</key> <array> <string>name-of-your-font.ttf</string> </array> ]]></InfoAdditions> </iPhone>
I’ve omitted lots of other things that are in my descriptor for brevity – keys specifying minimum iOS version, custom URL schemes, which devices the app targets – but you get the idea.
Once I had this all put together, it worked like a charm! Our storyboards look great as ever with their custom fonts!
Today Flash Builder randomly started hanging while loading the workbench on startup.
I found a lot of places that said to delete the .snap directory located at [workspacelocation]/.metadata/.plugins/org.eclipse.core.resources but there was never a .snap file or folder.
Eventually I found a trick here that said the following:
remove all the <editor> elements in workspace\.metadata\.plugins\org.eclipse.ui.workbench\workbench.xml
I did that and at least got Flash Builder to start up.
You apparently can also delete all the files in the [workspacelocation]/.metadata/.plugins/org.eclipse.ui.workbench as well (this removes your custom window layouts), but I haven’t tried this method.
As a last-ditch effort, you could do one of the following:
.metadata folder in your workspace folder. You will have to reimport ALL your projects after doing this.This happens because the Eclipse workspace gets corrupted. The easiest way I've found to recover from this is as follows: 1. Use Windows Task Manager (Ctrl+Shift+Esc) to make sure FlashBuilder.exe isn't running as a process. End the process if it is. 2. Navigate to your workspace folder (the default location is under your users folder in "Adobe Flash Builder 4.5", though you may have placed is elsewhere). Mine is c:\Users\grayson\Adobe Flash Builder 4.5 3. There is a folder named .metadata (on Windows 7 there is an issue where it may appear as a nameless folder because Windows started truncating the "extension") move it to another location on your hard drive. 4. Launch Flash Builder to make sure that this it has solved the issue. 5. Close Flash Builder (this writes the default workspace settings to the .metadata folder in your workspace location) Inside the original copy of the .metadata folder you made, COPY the following folders to the same location in the newly created .metadata folder in your workspace folder, overwriting the files and folders that are there. .metadata\.plugins\org.eclipse.core.resources\ .metadata\.plugins\org.eclipse.core.runtime\ (as I mentioned before, Windows 7 can truncate the folder names to be without the last portion of the name, so you may see two folders that appear to be named "org.eclipse.core.runtime". Copying them will still work) 6. This will restore the projects, workspace settings, and key bindings. (the dialog/window layout will be reset to the defaults and External Tool Configurations aren't copied. I looked but didn't find where those are stored)
Today FlashDevelop got stuck on startup into an infinite loop of the following error:
Binary stream '0' does not contain a valid BinaryHeader. Possible causes are invalid stream or object version change between serialization and deserialization.
I found this really old forum post that said to delete the whole FlashDevelop app data folder.
So, I deleted/renamed the folder located at C:/Users/YOURUSERNAME/AppData/Local/FlashDevelop, and it works again!
This one’s a weird one. Sometimes Flash Builder 4.7 has a problem where weird errors come up in library code (Feathers, usually) that doesn’t have any actual errors in it.
The error raised is the following: com.google.common.collect.ComputationException: java.lang.NullPointerException
The (non-obvious) solution is to find a little button called “Mark Occurrences” in the toolbar and turn it to OFF.
Here’s a picture of what the button looks like when set to OFF:
And here’s what it looks like when set to ON:
Oh, and sometimes restarting Flash Builder doesn’t do it, so sometimes in order to fix it, I have to set mark occurrences to ON, close and restart FB, and then set it to OFF again to get it to work.
More info is available in this post in the Feathers forum here.
Situation: I’m making an app for iOS and Android using Flash Builder 4.7 and AIR SDK 4.0. It includes the Lua 5.2 interpreter as compiled from C code into a SWC using CrossBridge (formerly FlasCC). I’m just using the lua.swc file from the crossbridge samples. However, apparently there’s some problem with the multithreading code or something (is multithreading even supported in AIR 4.0? I don’t remember), because I get the following run-time error when debugging on the device (not on Android or AIR simulator, just iOS):
Error #1520: Mutex cannot be initialized.
Solution: I don’t know why this works, but if you add the following compiler options:
--swf-version=17
It works. This probably means I’m targeting an older flash player and one day I will need to figure out how to get the Lua interpreter code.
Here’s a pretty picture of the box where you enter the code in Flash Builder 4.7:
Box2D has these things called “sensors”. What are they? They are shapes that can be attached to a body with a fixture just like any other, but the crucial difference is they don’t participate in collisions. In other words, something colliding with a sensor will never cause the object containing the sensor to change position, speed, rotation, or acceleration. “So, what’s the point?” you say. The point is you can still cause code to execute when these collisions begin or end, through your contact listener.
What good does that do? Plenty. You can use sensors to determine when any two shapes start or end colliding. You could use sensors to define field-of-vision for enemy units, create a proximity alarm when the player gets too close to laser tripwires or torpedoes, guide a heat-seeking missile, manage fog of war rendering decisions, or help enemies avoid crashing into other enemies and walls.
In my upcoming game Deep Space Demolition Derby, I’m using sensors in a few places. First, there is a big circular sensor surrounding the player:
The above picture shows the game in debug mode, where the shapes overlaid on the sprites show the Box2D objects that represent the sprites for physics purposes. I have chosen to represent most of the objects in my game with circles. You can see a small circle around the player, and a small circle around each collectible crystal. This defines their physical extent – when those shapes touch, a collision has happened.
The large circle around the player is a sensor that doesn’t cause collisions, but causes collectible crystals and powerups to appear when you get close enough. Also, when you have a magnet powerup, any crystal that is within that distance will be sucked towards you.
Enemies have sensors to help control their AI. I put a couple of circles to the front left and right of enemies. These are like “vision” areas that help the enemy “sense” what’s in front of it to the right or left sides. When a wall or other enemy or the player overlaps either of those sensors, the enemy turns away to avoid a collision.
In the picture below, the enemy’s sensor has overlapped with the player and so it will turn to avoid a collision:
The next picture shows the enemy has turned away and dodged the player:
As development continues, I’m sure I’ll find a lot more uses for Box2D’s sensors. I’m excited to continue exploring this cool feature, and excited for the possibilities it has to improve my games.
I use FlashDevelop for a lot of work projects. It’s a much better IDE for writing code-based ActionScript 3 projects than Flash itself.
Today, out of the blue, it started freezing on startup while trying to load the last project I had open. I thought I’d post about it in case a.) it ever happens to me again, or b.) it helps you, dear reader.
A quick Google search produced this forum thread, which solved it for me.
The solution was to rename/delete the file C:\Users\[USERNAME]\AppData\Local\FlashDevelop\Data\ProjectManager\Settings.fdb, which probably got corrupted.
Back to work! 🙂