I Seem to be Having Tremendous Difficulty With My Lifestyle
I bit of a Hitchhiker's Guide reference up in the title in honor of the movie coming out this Friday. However, it happens to fit the subject of today's post (which may explain its obscurity). You see, I'm taking only three classes, one of which doesn't even have homework. So how do I manage to accomplish nothing for the past couple of weeks? Well, I suppose it's a complete lack of work ethic, but other than that I think it has to be my internet addiction. It's like a freakin' hydra. When I try to drop something so I spend less time on it, I manage to get on board several more things with which to waste my time. At the beginning of the semester, I decided to stop reading the webcomics I bookmarked (as opposed to the ones I haven't) cold turkey, only to find myself on the ground floor of two start-up role-playing forums (namely Freeform and EXE the Net Age) and pretty much allocating the remaining free time I loosened up to the Adventure Quest forums. But I suppose this isn't the real reason I have three weeks worth of Flash projects due this Thursday in my Interactive Projects in Flash class.
You see, this all started the week after Spring Break. I put off the draggable movie clip project because I thought it was due in two weeks, only to discover the morning of class that it wasn't. Then, looking over a fellow student's shoulder at some projects that got turned in that week, inspiration hit me based on a somewhat recent Bob and George comic. Thus, I took eight Robot Master sprites from MegaMan 5, turned them into fifty transparent gifs, added in a few minor enemies, and imported all of them into Flash. While I was simple, if long and tedious, to simply make draggable robot parts, there were several other elements that needed to be added to the project. For the past two weeks, I have been stuck on the first one I tried to do.
Here's the deal: You can put symbols, such as movie clips, into other symbols. This makes them child and parent movie clips, where the child is inside the parent. Now, maybe I've misinterpreted the instructions, but I'm pretty sure I'm supposed to make both the parent and child movie clips independantly draggable. My teacher seemed to think it was possible, but so far, it hasn't been. You see, symbols in Flash have what's known as a Hit State, which is the area in which the symbol recognizes that it's been clicked upon or moused over. By default, it is the exact same shape as all the visible elements inside the symbol, including other symbols. What those symbols do when you hit them depends on the action script codes assigned to that symbol. Got that? Good.
Here's the problem: while I can make child clips draggable while inside the parent, once I assign similar code to the parent neither of them move independantly. My class happens to have a discussion board, and for two weeks I've been waiting for someone to come up with a solution. So far, we've come up with two possible conclusions: there's either something wrong with my code, or somehow misinterpreted the requirements. Despite the fact that everyone else completed their projects on time, no one has been able to help me. That suggests that the problem isn't in the code. If it's not the code, perhaps parents aren't supposed to be draggable. However, one of the requirements is a button that resets child and parent clips to their original locations, which I think is a strong indication that the parents are expected to go somewhere. Another student suggested that child clips aren't supposed to be nested inside parent clips. But if that doesn't make them child and parent clips, THEN WHAT THE HELL DOES!?!? His suggestion was that child clips are supposed to be restrained to the area of the parent, but that doesn't quite sound like being "inside" the parent to me. I mean, the code for constraining movement is independant of other clips, and clips can start outside the contrainment area, so I think that pretty much rules it out. You couldn't hear that from where you are, but I just sighed aloud. That's because I know I should have just moved on to other projects, but I have this unexplainable need to finish this one first. It's like I'm obsessed, but I'm not actually doing anything. Hell, I have stuff due in my Fiction Writing class tomorrow that I haven't even started yet!
Well, okay. Maybe that last bit was more due to my laxisdaisical work ethic. Fortunately, I've already written something I can turn in, but it might be too long and I'm not exactly proud of it. It's a Chimera Knight piece, so you may see it eventually. Sooner if enough people request it.
In other news, I went to see Sahara yesterday. I think that was mainly because the video game based on it was produced by TKO Software, a game company based right in my home town. I think. The line between Capitola and Santa Cruz kinda blurs to me. Author Robert Anton Wilson (of the Illuminatus! series) tried to figure out which town he was in, only to discover he was in Live Oak. Keep Santa Cruz wierd, indeed. Anyway, the release of the game had to be held back because it was done well before the release of the movie, so hopefully it will be a good game. Then again, monkeys could fly out of my butt. If a game is based on a movie, superhero, or, worse, a superhero movie, chances are its the worst game you'll ever play. It's practically a law of physics. Almost every copy of the ET video game for the Atari (I think) is buried in a hole somewhere in the Nevada desert. I'm not kidding. It's that bad.
A sort of round-about way of saying this, but since I have ideas for video games, I was considering an internship at TKO. I think one of the reasons I didn't try to get one was because I can't drive and I'd need to take more than one bus to get there. And I wish I had more to say about it, because it almost seems like an non-sequitor at this point.
Anyway, Sahara isn't that bad a movie, and it has quite a few moments that could work for a video game. I'm not sure if all the songs fit the locales, though. But if there's one thing in this movie that is never actually explained: How does a Civil War-era Iron Clad ship which, as they point out, is not designed for intercontinental travel get all the way to Africa? Oh, there's a decent enough explanation about how it got to its exact location (which I will not spoil but is probably obvious by now anyway), but it doesn't explain how it gets from the battle at the beginning of the movie to the aforementioned Dark Continent. Also, there's a subplot about a disease coming out of Mali that it's warlord seems to take full credit for although by the end it appears he is not actually responsible for it. Speaking of the end, I'm probably going to have to watch it again since I had to go to the restroom during the climax. From what I hear, it's pretty cool. Two words: Delayed reaction.
For those of you keeping score, that's three movies I had to relieve myself in the middle of. The other two are Independance Day and Digimon: The Movie. And now, another quiz result:
Sea
?? Which Angel Or Demon Are You ??
brought to you by Quizilla
You see, this all started the week after Spring Break. I put off the draggable movie clip project because I thought it was due in two weeks, only to discover the morning of class that it wasn't. Then, looking over a fellow student's shoulder at some projects that got turned in that week, inspiration hit me based on a somewhat recent Bob and George comic. Thus, I took eight Robot Master sprites from MegaMan 5, turned them into fifty transparent gifs, added in a few minor enemies, and imported all of them into Flash. While I was simple, if long and tedious, to simply make draggable robot parts, there were several other elements that needed to be added to the project. For the past two weeks, I have been stuck on the first one I tried to do.
Here's the deal: You can put symbols, such as movie clips, into other symbols. This makes them child and parent movie clips, where the child is inside the parent. Now, maybe I've misinterpreted the instructions, but I'm pretty sure I'm supposed to make both the parent and child movie clips independantly draggable. My teacher seemed to think it was possible, but so far, it hasn't been. You see, symbols in Flash have what's known as a Hit State, which is the area in which the symbol recognizes that it's been clicked upon or moused over. By default, it is the exact same shape as all the visible elements inside the symbol, including other symbols. What those symbols do when you hit them depends on the action script codes assigned to that symbol. Got that? Good.
Here's the problem: while I can make child clips draggable while inside the parent, once I assign similar code to the parent neither of them move independantly. My class happens to have a discussion board, and for two weeks I've been waiting for someone to come up with a solution. So far, we've come up with two possible conclusions: there's either something wrong with my code, or somehow misinterpreted the requirements. Despite the fact that everyone else completed their projects on time, no one has been able to help me. That suggests that the problem isn't in the code. If it's not the code, perhaps parents aren't supposed to be draggable. However, one of the requirements is a button that resets child and parent clips to their original locations, which I think is a strong indication that the parents are expected to go somewhere. Another student suggested that child clips aren't supposed to be nested inside parent clips. But if that doesn't make them child and parent clips, THEN WHAT THE HELL DOES!?!? His suggestion was that child clips are supposed to be restrained to the area of the parent, but that doesn't quite sound like being "inside" the parent to me. I mean, the code for constraining movement is independant of other clips, and clips can start outside the contrainment area, so I think that pretty much rules it out. You couldn't hear that from where you are, but I just sighed aloud. That's because I know I should have just moved on to other projects, but I have this unexplainable need to finish this one first. It's like I'm obsessed, but I'm not actually doing anything. Hell, I have stuff due in my Fiction Writing class tomorrow that I haven't even started yet!
Well, okay. Maybe that last bit was more due to my laxisdaisical work ethic. Fortunately, I've already written something I can turn in, but it might be too long and I'm not exactly proud of it. It's a Chimera Knight piece, so you may see it eventually. Sooner if enough people request it.
In other news, I went to see Sahara yesterday. I think that was mainly because the video game based on it was produced by TKO Software, a game company based right in my home town. I think. The line between Capitola and Santa Cruz kinda blurs to me. Author Robert Anton Wilson (of the Illuminatus! series) tried to figure out which town he was in, only to discover he was in Live Oak. Keep Santa Cruz wierd, indeed. Anyway, the release of the game had to be held back because it was done well before the release of the movie, so hopefully it will be a good game. Then again, monkeys could fly out of my butt. If a game is based on a movie, superhero, or, worse, a superhero movie, chances are its the worst game you'll ever play. It's practically a law of physics. Almost every copy of the ET video game for the Atari (I think) is buried in a hole somewhere in the Nevada desert. I'm not kidding. It's that bad.
A sort of round-about way of saying this, but since I have ideas for video games, I was considering an internship at TKO. I think one of the reasons I didn't try to get one was because I can't drive and I'd need to take more than one bus to get there. And I wish I had more to say about it, because it almost seems like an non-sequitor at this point.
Anyway, Sahara isn't that bad a movie, and it has quite a few moments that could work for a video game. I'm not sure if all the songs fit the locales, though. But if there's one thing in this movie that is never actually explained: How does a Civil War-era Iron Clad ship which, as they point out, is not designed for intercontinental travel get all the way to Africa? Oh, there's a decent enough explanation about how it got to its exact location (which I will not spoil but is probably obvious by now anyway), but it doesn't explain how it gets from the battle at the beginning of the movie to the aforementioned Dark Continent. Also, there's a subplot about a disease coming out of Mali that it's warlord seems to take full credit for although by the end it appears he is not actually responsible for it. Speaking of the end, I'm probably going to have to watch it again since I had to go to the restroom during the climax. From what I hear, it's pretty cool. Two words: Delayed reaction.
For those of you keeping score, that's three movies I had to relieve myself in the middle of. The other two are Independance Day and Digimon: The Movie. And now, another quiz result:
Sea
?? Which Angel Or Demon Are You ??
brought to you by Quizilla
posted by Nicholas DeVivo at 10:40 AM
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