March 2009

This is a little tutorial covering using ActionScript 3, PHP and AMFPHP to create a MySQL-based High Score Database.  You should have some familiarity with each as this isn’t exactly a “Beginner’s How-To.” For a recent game project I’ve been working on, one of the requirements was a simple High Score Database. After finishing it, I thought I’d post about how I went about coding it. Let’s jump right in with the ActionScript first…

So from the game’s .as files, the idea was to display a DataGrid that shows all the scores submitted to the database. I also wanted to create a ScoresDB class that handles all of my database calls and parses the database results, all ready to be added to the DataGrid.

So that we’re all on the same page, Main.as will refer to the main class that handles adding the DataGrid to the stage, and handles other game functions. ScoresDB.as will refer to the ScoresDB class that handles the AMFPHP/PHP/MySQL calls. HighScore.php will refer to the AMFPHP Service that actually interacts with the MySQL database and returns result sets.

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I decided to split the original blog post into two separate posts as “Secure” Flash/MySQL DB calls is fairly short, and it was scattered about in a post more on how to set up a High Score DB with AMFPHP. So this will be a couple of very specific tips Read more…

Thanks to a comment posted by doggy, I’ve updated the FishEyeMenu class to listen for MouseDown events and keep track of selected items.   New Functions: public function get selected():* public function get lastSelected():*  public function set selected( clickedItemEvent:MouseEvent ):void   New Event Type FishEyeMenu.SELECTED_CHANGED – Triggered upon a change Read more…

This will be a quick post on some gotcha’s to keep an eye out for when loading your ActionScript 3 game swf from a preloader swf. Nothing revolutionary here, back in mid-December, I had posted a blog on ActionScript 3’s Event Handling and the stopPropagation method and just the other day working on the code for a new game project, I ran into a situation where I should’ve used the method, didn’t, and ran into some issues.

Note: If you’re here looking for code on how to write a flash preloader, Lee Brimlow’s video tutorial on Preloading in AS3 gives a beautiful example. When I was originally learning how to code a preloader, that tutorial, and a couple of other tutorials around the net that escape my memory at the moment, were absolutely perfect.

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