Spider Experiment....

[lostinbeta]

Hey everyone,

Time for me to post another one of my recent experiments!!! :beam:

fluid_0ne noticed in a thread that it is one of my desires to learn AI motion in Flash (things like moving bugs and whatnot...hehe), he was nice enough to PM me with a link to a tutorial on something like it that I wanted to do.

I was ecstatic, and I thank him very much for that. The tutorial itself was hard to follow kind of because it doesn't go in depth what to do so I kept doing the wrong thing. Ok ok, I will stop babbling, the tutorial can be found here...

http://www.supersamuraiflash.com/chapter_one.pdf

Alright, now MY version is a bit different. It is different because the tutorial above is for Flash 5, and I decided to take that tutorial, and convert it to MX. So my experiment was to create the entire spider out of AS, and use no movie clips, just the drawing API and functions. I think I did it pretty successfully. The only things on the stage are the text and the toggle button.

Speaking of toggle button, to use this you can just go to the link and watch, or you can click on the little blue square toggle button to toggle the random motion on and off. With the random motion off you can drag the spider anywhere on the stage that you want. (please note you can still drag the spider when random motion is on, but he keeps trying to run to the same point ;))


I hope you enjoy it :)

http://www.lostinbeta.com/experimental/spider3.html

[andr.in]

Very nice! fps is kinda low for me but nice effect! One day I will be able to make such things on my own! mwahahahhaaaa

[eyeinfinitude]

That's cool, good job lost. =)

[SureShot]

What a cool effect - great work Lost!

[reverendflash]

I think that is absolutely fantastic lost...

I have no idea what I would use that for, but it is way cool...

I wish I had your aptitude for code. I can learn it, but it seems to exit my head as soon as I use it almost...

Revhttp://www.aulman.com/rev.gif

[Jubba]

good work. Dork!!! :geek:

lol keep it up man. Pretty soon Pom will be asking you for answers...

[nobody]

That looks mad good lost.
Great work:beam:

[mdipi]

wow very nice!

[Alex]

ah come on lost, you make my expirements look like crap. But it looks really good. :)

[lostinbeta]

=)

Thanks everyone, glad you all liked it.

Syko: Its not the FPS thats the problem, I set the speed of the easing to be slow because I wanted it to go slow. I originally had it at a higher FPS so the slow speed wasn't as slow as it is now, I forgot to change the speed when I lowered the FPS. I am not sure if I am going to change it back or not, I kinda like it, I am still thinking about that.

Rev: I have no idea what I would use it for either. I just really like AI motion and I really want to get into it, I think this is a pretty good start. My friend said this would make a great draggable menu (if I removed the random motion), where the legs are the buttons. Interesting idea, but seems tacky and annoying IMO.

Jubba: Yes... I am a dork :geek: . And as for Pom asking me for answers... YEAH RIGHT!!!! , but thanks for the support anyway ;)

[lostinbeta]

Ok, I made a few changes....

1) Few smaller code changes (although my code is still un-optimized)

2) Sped up the FPS (liked it better)

3) "Plastic Surgery" done on the main body (added blue circle inside... still with the drawing API)

4) Suction cups for feet (hehe Phil ;))


Same link as the first post :)

[mdipi]

THAT LOOKS SICK! very very nice now!

[lostinbeta]

Hehe, thanks Phil. As for a blinking eye effect. I don't think I am ready to tackle that with the drawing API in AS. It is hard enough to create a circle.


BTW: Thanks to Senocular for the circle code!!!!!! I got it from him while we were building the line tool in Flash a while back. This circle code ROCKS!

[pom]

Originally posted by Jubba
Pretty soon Pom will be asking you for answers... I guess so... :sure:

Anyway, that's very nice, Lost. I had a look at that tutorial when I was in Singapore, and I also found it confusing sometimes. I'm glad you could work it out. There's something I find strange though: why is it that the legs follow the head and not the other way around? :)

[lostinbeta]

Ilyas: You know I thought the same exact thing. I honestly have no clue why the legs follow the body instead of the other way around, but thats the way the tutorial works. The legs are positioned randomly according to a proximity around the body area, and if the body gets out of that proximity area the legs get repositioned.

I suppose it would be harder to move all 8 legs to random new positions and then move the body to an area there.

[Aislin]

the link didn't work for me just now Lost, and I wanna know what everybody else saw!

*doesn't wanna miss out*

...
*cries*

[lostinbeta]

Link works fine for me Aislin :-\

[Alex]

it works for me to.

hey lost, you should add the song "the itsey bitsey spider"

lol

[Aislin]

aw man... Now I need to fix something. I hate figuring out IE.
*kicks microsoft*

[UNFLUX]

looks cool lost, very nice! =)

Not sure where I've seen something similar, but still, you rock.
Nice work as usual.

[c!rYx]

that is really neat...

[lostinbeta]

Unflux: Go to http://www.ultrashock.com/ and go to "FLA SOURCE FILES" then search for "Spider", it will return what you may have seen. The spider there was done by the same guy, but considerably different than the one in his tutorial. And thanks :)

C!rYx: Thanks :)

[UNFLUX]

mmm...nope that's not it either. no biggie, I like yours. =)

[Iammontoya]

Hey Lost, nice job. You know this means that you should write the tutorial..heheheh

I have an Fla somewhere about some bugs moving along the screen. It was awesome and very nicely done. Do you want it? Perhaps you have it. Anyway, this thing would kinda create it's own bug from a list of mc's, but it was pretty cool and the movement was awesome.

Let me know and I'll send it to you.

[lostinbeta]

Unflux: Well that spider is the original, so I don't know what spider you saw ;)


Montoya: I should write the tutorial? But the tutorial wasn't originally mine, so I can't really write the tutorial :P And I would LOVE that file if you have it man. It is something I want to start getting into :beam:

[ahmed]

uh.. can i have the file too? :)<b>

[Raydred]

ewwwww.. its a spider...
They make me scream like a girl... uhh did i say that? *nervous chuckle*

Good job Lost, i like your expirements, and im hoping to get some expirements up sometime... =T

Anyway good job! =)

[lostinbeta]

:love: RAYDRED'S BACK!!!!!! :love:

I like your experiments too man, I can't wait for you to start getting back into Flash. Forget C# and PHP..... YOU DON'T NEED THEM!!!! Come back to the AS side!!!!

[fluid_0ne]

lost>>> i ya want to i can mail you original spider (by deconcept.com)
pm me

[lostinbeta]

I already have the original spider by deconcept. I got it from his site, and I could also download it from ultrashock if I wanted to.

But I created my spider from scratch just using little bits and pieces of code that I got from that tutorial and modifying them a bit as well.

I didn't want to just take the original .fla file and modify that to my needs, thats no fun. I take much more pride in this spider since I created it all myself (aside from motion code from deconcept and circle code from senocular that is)

[pom]

Originally posted by lostinbeta
I suppose it would be harder to move all 8 legs to random new positions and then move the body to an area there. I suppose too :) Actually, supersatori did something like that for the contest with his gridwalker.

[lostinbeta]

Yeah I know, I downloaded the .fla of it.... the code was gibberish to me :P

Nah, I understood a lot of it, but overall it was just super advanced and I felt I should just back away and wait.

He did only use 4 legs though, and they positioned themselves according to grid position, so thats a bit easier I would think.

[fluid_0ne]

i wasn't talking about editing original one, just looking at it and getting some inspiration... but if you have one, than ok...

btw
great work
have you been to the www.deconcept.com ??
there're some fun experiments...

[lostinbeta]

I knew you weren't talking about that, I just kinda like to babble when I am tired.

Yeah, deconcept.com is where I got the original spider .fla, most of his stuff can be found on ultrashock as well.

They are some great experiments, but I noticed they are mostly for Flash 5, and a lot of that stuff can be simplified in Flash MX.

He would probably be one super friggin awesome MX coder if he is that good with Flash 5 (never used it, but I hear Flash 5 AS was a pain in creating stuff like he created).

[fluid_0ne]

http://www.deconcept.com/entries/04/walker.html
this one is cool:)

[lostinbeta]

Yeah it is, I know which one you are talking about even though you did the swf code wrong :P

[fluid_0ne]

fixed :beam: