Rich Shupe
Session
Meet LoaderMax
The white zone is no longer for loading and unloading only. These days we need to pause, resume, prioritize, queue up, and more. But why stop there? Why not delegate some of the responsibilities and make your life easier?
What if your loader set up the work for you, monitored the progress of other loaders, and even automatically handled display and playback of some of those tasty bits you're loading? Meet LoaderMax--the ultimate AS3 loader/preloader/bulkloader, and brought to you by GreenSock, maker of the animation tweening packages TweenLite/Max and TimelineLite/Max.
This session will cover a lorry load of features offered by this tiny giant (only 7-15k!), with plenty of examples and source code. From the basic (loading a single item) to the advanced (nested loaders, integrated subloading, and more), attendees of every skill level, and users of will benefit.
Rich will even be giving away some Club GreenSock memberships--full of goodies like TweenLite plugins (like motion blur, physics, and custom transformations), classes for liquid layout and text animations, access to beta programs and source updates, and more!
Workshop
Getting More from AS3
ActionScript 3.0 is fast and powerful enough to make things like byte-level asset manipulation, sound generation, and real-time 3D engines--all with better compile-time and runtime error reporting than any prior version of the language. With that power and performance, however, comes a steeper learning curve. This one-day workshop will help take your AS3 skills to the next level.
The day will begin with in-depth look at the language's two most fundamental building blocks--the event model and display list--to bring attendees of varying skill and experience levels to a similar understanding. Experienced scripters will not be without interest, as custom events, memory management, and communicating across between AS3 and AS1/AS2 assets will be covered.
During the morning session you will build a sound visualization project, taking it from a single timeline script to a reusable object-oriented structure. After lunch, you'll develop essential OOP skills as you focus on inheritance, composition, encapsulation, polymorphism, and more. By day's end, you'll have combined everything you've learned to create a basic particle system--a great first step in building OOP architectures for rich visuals and applications.
Source files will be provided, so you won't have to worry about typing and learning new concepts all at the same time. Instead, you can spend your day taking notes, asking questions, or even putting your own spin on source files and sharing with the rest of the group. A class blog will also be created if you want to share with the rest of the world.
What Prerequisite Skills Do You Need?
- Intro-level knowledge or better of Flash Platform and ActionScript
What Hardware / Software Do You Need?
- Laptop
- Personal (3' or 6') extension cord just in case!
- Flash CS3 or later
- Flash Player 10.1 or later