Friday, May 22, 2009

Avatar Core Development Stall

For the moment, not much work is being done with Avatar Core. There are two main reasons 1) Busy with my day job (really busy) and 2) I'm not entirely sure where I want to go with the API.

The API is particularly important as JavaScript comes into play. There's two sides of Avatar Core with JavaScript. One side is the ability to provide a JavaScript API for talking with Avatar Core in SWF form (as seen in My Avatar Editor). The other side is being able to port the entire Avatar Core framework to JavaScript allowing for it to be used without the Flash dependency. And really, in general, it is good to have a solid, simple API for working with frameworks like this. The question is, how good is it now, and can it be "down-ported" to a less-capable environment gracefully. At the moment, I'm not sure, which is why I'm going to think about API direction for a bit before movin forward much more with improvements and other fixes, particularly what it means in terms of having a JavaScript implementation.

18 comments:

Jonathan Maxwell said...

Thanks for the update .. and i totally understand as my day job has just quadrupled at the moment. Will get back to you over summer though as plans progress - thanks, Jonathan

Anonymous said...

hy there, is there a way to edit the language file (if there is one)or load an external xml maybe sorry for my bad english i´m german

senocular said...

Hello,

Sorry, there is no language file. Everything is hardcoded in english.

Anonymous said...

ok thank you,
now when i open the myavatareditor.fla file and change the words in german and then go to file > export > it ends up in a myavatareditor.swf file with only 46.9kb (same if i dont change anything) + the swf only shows tehe please update your flash player screen. [using flash cs4]

Anonymous said...

i know its geting annoying now...

but this app is to cool to leve it just for the [english world] kan i make my changes to the fla and send it to you or give you a pass for my fdp site and you compile it? i´m to stupid to get it done by my self (or maybe a step by step to get it out of flsh cs4)

thank you for spending your time on a noob like me :-) (p.s. i´m not gonne spam your blog one more time)

senocular said...

Localization is a very difficult and time consuming task. When I created this application, I didn't expect that localization would be an issue, nor did I really have the time to implement it (it's already taken years to get to this point). That's not to say I don't feel it is important, it's just one of those things that got left out. But that's also why the project is now open source, so that people who want changes or additions can now do it themselves - or at least find someone else who can.

If/when you manage to get a German/localized version working, I will link to it from the My Avatar Editor web site. If you're having troubles compiling, please reference the developer pages there.

reiner said...

thanks for answering,

the point is i never workt with flash befor but your app is that cool i´m gonne dig my self into it

(i promise youl get a german version of it :-)

Dave said...

I am having a major issue with the editor. I have Flash CS4 installed and I downloaded the source for the editor. The problem starts right away, when I compile the .fla immediately after opening it, I get compiler errors(for example NativeDragEvent could not be found). I've checked all my settings and everything seems fine. I have all the classes that are needed. Is there something I have to do to test this locally?

This is a time sensitive issue, and any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Dave

email:dave@lushconcepts.com

senocular said...

Dave,

You'll need to update your player globals or turn strict mode off. This is mentioned in
http://www.myavatareditor.com/developers.html#advancedusage

reiner said...

thanks that was exactly my proplem

dave said...

Thanks for the quick response. I had already tried what you suggested. In the end I did get it to work.

Just in case anybody else runs into this problem and is new to Flash CS4, this is what worked for me:

1.Open both .fla's in the src folder.
2.Open the publish settings and go to the flash tab. Click on the Settings button.
3.In the Settings dialog box select the External library path tab. And add this path(may differ on some systems):
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Flash CS4\Common\Configuration\ActionScript 3.0\AIR1.5\airglobal.swc

Note:Make sure of course that you have the AIR 1.5 SDK(which you can grab from Adobe)

Hopefully that may save someone a few hours of head smashing.

reiner said...

dave...
thank you

reiner said...

Localization .... done
i made it, if you´d like a german My Avatar Editor i´l send it to you if you want to [reiner.mrozek@gmx.de]

Anonymous said...

hello... hapi blogging... have a nice day! just visiting here....

Anonymous said...

Hello, I did my Mii at avatar editor but everytime I click on SAVE it dosent save or do anything, any help will be appreciated.

Thx in advance :)

reiner said...

Load or Save buttons do not work using Internet Explorer on Windows Vista

( http://www.myavatareditor.com/guide.html )
If you are finding that the Load or Save buttons in My Avatar Editor are not working when viewing the editor in Internet Explorer on Windows Vista, this may be because that functionality is being blocked by Protected Mode. If you turn off Protected Mode or use an alternate browser such as Firefox, then that functionality should be restored.

Peter said...

Interesting work, you're doing...

I have an idea: would it be possible to generate mii's from portrait photos? This would of course require some kind of analysis of the photo, to get the characteristics of the face, and then to reflect this in the properties for the mii.

Anonymous said...

Thank's for your work, i like.
It would to have pilot's suit like that as in our MII on Mariokart