r3dux.org

I had to cover a class on Flash today, and I haven’t touched it in over a year, so I got up bright and early to make sure I wasn’t too rusty…. and yeah… I was. Really rusty.

I was thinking in C++ and Python and Java, not thinking in AS3 and everything was wrong – so I decided to write a PS3 XMB (Cross Media Bar) “Wave-Thing” as practice. In fact, it doesn’t even do the waves – just the sparkles. Still, was a good exercise to get my head back in the game.

There’s nothing to stop me implementing the waves as fixed DisplayObjects moving in parallax (easy, weak), or via blurred splines (preferred, harder) – but at least I got the sparkles, um, sparkling…

I think I will do the waves, I need some spline practice…

Update: Modified so spark is allocated to MC with one of four levels of blur, increased spark density, spark has 50% chance of pulsing again without being re-initialised, spark has 1% chance of being big on initialisation.

Credits: PS3 wave background from: http://blog.guifx.com/2009/04/24/playstation-3-wallpapers/