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R1665

Age 40, Male

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ActionScript 3.0

Posted by R1665 - December 22nd, 2011


...is a bitch. Seriously.

I decided a week or two ago that my next great priority should be to finally learn AS3. I must say that my learning experience so far has been less than spectacular. As with Flash itself, my learning technique involved getting a guide book and taking it from start to finish. For Flash, that technique worked like a charm. However, this same method seems considerably less effective for me with this AS3 training.

Now, I am only on the fourth chapter out of twelve (done very part-time), but I'm seeing some serious red flags here. First of all, the way AS3 is formatted pisses me off. A lot. The way my guide book is introducing me to the format pisses me off. A LOT. I can thumb through the book and see a lot of cool stuff ahead, but I know that this book will likely be inadequate for giving me the proper instruction for doing it. That REALLY pisses me off.

The problem seems to be in the innate nature of coding. It has to be done perfectly or it just doesn't work. Flash itself isn't like that. With flash, you can always find a workaround to a problem or do anything multiple ways if one particular thing isn't working for you. It's flexible like that. Script, however, is NOT flexible. Not at all. If it's not exactly right, it's exactly wrong. No wriggle room. Keep that in mind.

This book I am using does a decent job of teaching little aside tidbits and nuances of the coding environment, but fails on the real meat of the job. It offers a grossly inadequate level of comprehension. You can sit somebody down at a computer, tell them what to type, and watch the end result appear, but that does not mean that the person doing the typing actually COMPREHENDS what they are doing.

Without comprehension, you're just wasting your fucking time. It's all meaningless keystrokes.

...and that's all I've been doing for the last two chapters.

Book: "It's time to learn Technique X! Open exercise file 4. Notice how blah is blah blah blah. Got to line 4 and type blah blah blah. Copy line 4 and paste to line 5. Change blah in line 5 to blah. Export. Now that you have a solid understanding of Technique X, it is time to move on to Technique Y..."

Me: "What? Back the FUCK up, Hoss! I didn't learn a goddamn thing! I just followed instructions! Where's the comprehension?!"

With my flash lessons a few years ago, I could stop after any chapter or lesson and just play around with the program to see how things worked. I could take any part of it and do it a little differently just to see how that would change the presentation. Wanna know what that looks like in ActionScript? I looks like this - "Error 1855 - Your shit doesn't fucking work."

It certainly doesn't help that the language of AS3 seems unnecessarily convoluted. In AS2, you could go to a button and write code that basically said, "push button, go here". Nice and direct. Push button, shit happens.

What does that look like in AS3? It looks like this - "Make button push an event. Make event listener to wait for button push. Make event handler to wait for event listener to say it's done. Make event handler say 'go here'".

In other words, AS2 = Brain makes hand move.
AS3 = Mouth says hand should move. Ears hear mouth say the hand should move. Ears tell brain to move hand. Hand moves.

It's really fucking redundant. Who came up with this shit?

------------

I'm going to start back from the beginning tomorrow after I cool off. This crap is getting to me.

/rant

R1665

ActionScript 3.0


Comments

Not the positive of posts but who gives a shit......

Negativity is seriously underrated.

R1665

i wonder what you are trying to accomplish by learning this......
Happy Holidays Mr. Riggs!

My short-term goal is to learn everything in AS3 that I could do in AS2, which wasn't much, but was still very important. Anything else I learn along the way is bonus.

R1665

Well, FUCK.

I absolutely comprehend your frustration. Unfortunately, my knowledge of coding is fairly equal to the one of that little goat/sheep/dumb bullshit sauce there. So I can't give you pointers. I've only worked with RPG Maker which envolves almost no coding at all...

If you in fact comprehend the program, will it improve largely your flash projects (sounds like a dumb question... but, hey, I still prefer windows xp over vista or 7 for example).

Cheers! Don't let some stupid manual get you down!!!

Happy Holidays!

The issue is that I have upgraded from Flash 8 to CS3. I could still use all AS2 stuff in CS3, but I want to start using an AS3 VCAM. It's much more versatile.

Unfortunately, using an AS3 VCAM requires that I at least learn how to do all of my old AS2 techniques in AS3 now. Of course, my AS2 knowledge was just as bad as my AS3, but at least I had cobbled some useful AS2 tricks out of already-existing code.

I've got almost everything I NEED for AS3, but none of that information came from my training. I'd like to have some level of proficiency with coding rather than just frankensteining it from other sources.

R1665

AS_3.0 is definitely tricky to tackle. Just hang in there and stay focused. The more focused you are the quicker your brain absorbs all the required knowledge.

Fuck As3 stick to what you know that always works out the best.

Anger management bro....
a simpler program bro
taking notes from other animators bro
none of these mean anything to you now but soon you will realize that this might do minor changes to the upcoming animation

I start my computer repair classes in January, I have to take a basic coding class the first semester and an advanced one the second, I sure hope my books and teachers are a lot better than your book or I am not gong to be able to keep up.

Well, you can ask a teacher for clarification if you find something confusing. A book? Not so much.

R1665

yeah... I know what you mean. the last videos I posted were AS 3.0 It's not something you want to get into trust me :/ I had to go back to 2.0
you should totally do the same :)

I've reached the point with AS3 where I can do all of my old AS2 techniques, so AS2 is officially obsolete. Of course, that doesn't change the fact that the AS3 coding language was evidently created by a sadist.

I still have no real comprehension of AS3. I'm just cobbling together code from other sources. Same thing I did with AS2, actually.

R1665

R1665, maybe you should get MaelstormM--who happens to be a badass programmer--to help, although he specializes in game development rather than VCam.

Nah, my core programming needs are minimal. You might be surprised at just how little coding I can get by on.

R1665

Might have spoken too soon on keeping AS3...

What I have come to realize is that AS3 is Adobe's way of hate-fucking anyone below Stephen Hawking's level of intelligence. If you're not an AS3 guru, then you're in for a world of hurt on even the simplest of commands.

Guess what I just discovered doesn't work on my current project? stop();

That's right. STOP doesn't work. Take a moment to process that.

STOP. DOESN'T. WORK. It's the same line of code that AS2 had, or it's supposed to be, anyway. ...except now to doesn't work. STOP doesn't work. It doesn't fucking work. Unbelievable.

The most basic ability that every flash animator should know is how to stop the timeline. It is the core of menu design. If you cannot at least stop a timeline, then you might as well just pack it in and go home.

AS3 has turned a simple STOP command into something that is unforgivably prone to error. It works only when it wants to and if it doesn't work, then good luck finding the mile-long block of code that would make it work.

This saddens me. It really does. I thought I had a functional enough grip on AS3 to make it work for my movies, but it would seem that even the simplest of commands have become nightmarishly stupid and frustrating.

STOP... DOESN'T... WORK.

Sorry, AS3. You're done.

R1665

I told you to forget about it I knew i was right.

i used to be a flash animator, but then i realized stop doesn't work.

"most basic ability that every flash animator should know is how to stop the timeline" - AAHAHAHAHAHAHAhahahahahaha - LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL!!! ROFL!!! Just get rid of it! I remember TomFulp could not put a pause button on one of his Madness Combat games a few years ago. Maybe that's why...

so i finally found your ass...u need to make an update damn it when is sakura gonna kick some ass

I stick to action script 2. I've heard that the only good thing for 3 is that it's good for making games, but if it's just movies then I've heard 2 is the best for that. I hated 3. 2 wasn't too heard, i was able to find a lot of tutorials on newgounds to teach me the basics on it, but trying to learn 3 was a nightmare. Good luck with that.

I'm not bothering with AS3 anymore. Complete waste of time, it sucks, end of story.

R1665

Actionscript 3 does suck. It's why I will never upgrade my flash program.

Well, you can upgrade your flash version and still use AS2. I've recently gone from Pro 8 to CS3 and AS2 is still an option.

R1665

so R1 ima ask a random question what do you think about the SOPA(stop online piracy act)and PIPA (protect IP act) that is probaly gonna shut down most websites?

Won't pass. Too much public scrutiny and money running against it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eN Qh56czKgc
1:45 and on. (delete the space)

R1665

when are u gonna give a update..man its been new years for while now

Beginning of February.

R1665

start

get r1665Input
get cerapInput
awesomeness = r1665Input + cerapInput
print awesomeness
dountil (crap = r1665Input + cerapInput) or theEndofTime

So.........in the meantime can you give any hints to the new additions to the exiles team?

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