Stuff that won't get you chicks: augustus 2008

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25 augustus

Flash Games and frameRate

Browsers, browsers and more browsers. If you're a flash game developer, you've probably been upset about the performance from browser to browser. I used to crank up the ol'FPS in my FLA's and hope they would run smooth in all browsers. Besides that being a horible practice and usually making the problem worse, it hasn't been much of a problem with actionscript 3.

If you work with animators, they can be quite peculiar about how their work is presented, and as they should be. There's no silver bullet frame rate that you can set your movies too( action games primarily), since it's dependant on the browser.

If you create an swf where it's framerate is set to 24 and you play it back in Firefox 3, your fps will be 24( windows ) and just about every other browser will do 20 - 22fps. That's really not that big of a deal you say, but the animators you work with will grumble and call you names till the end of time or atleast until you can make their work display as intended.

So here is a little hack I use when showing previews of games/applications when animation is under scrutiny.

if( ExternalInterface.available )
{
	var js:String = "function(){ return navigator.userAgent; }";
	var browser:String;
	try{
		browser= String(ExternalInterface.call(js)).toLowerCase(); 
	}catch(e:Error){}
	
	if( browser.indexOf("firefox") != -1 ){
		stage.frameRate = 24;
	}
	else if( browser.indexOf("safari") != -1 ){
		stage.frameRate = 30;
	}
	else if( browser.indexOf("msie") != -1 ){
		stage.frameRate = 30;
	}
}

This works pretty well, it just adjusts the frame rate ever so slightly to get the playback to always be 24fps in the browser.
Now, this little hack also makes some asumptions as well. It assumes the allowScriptAccess is set to "samedomain" or "always" and people are using the latest & greatest browser of their choice.

Not sure if this will help anyone, but I felt it was way too long since I posted something. In the coming weeks I'll be posting some samples of how I work with FlexBuilder and Flash CS3 when developing games.

-T

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