Electronic Space Nintendo » DConsole

Elevator pitchin’ at FOTB10

Andreas — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 11:53:03 +0000

I’ll be doing a terrifying 3-minute elevator pitch at this year’s Flash On The Beach. I applied just for the heck of it, didn’t assume I’d get accepted, but weyheyhey. Tension rising!

My session will be about my ongoing Doomsday Console project, or more specifically the next iteration of it (which is under super secret development by TOP MEN). I’ve tried many debugging tools before but none have helped me as much as the DConsole has. It’s traditionally a very tough sell though. Hope to build some more interest and perhaps cause some thinkings about writing your own tools to enhance your workflow?

3 minutes.. My presentation will need TDSI.

A quick Doomsday Console example

Andreas — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 16:02:16 +0000

Today I sat down to do a few performance tests of copyPixels with a variety of configurations of an alpha bitmap and the mergeAlpha flag, all in Release mode. This is a very typical situation where the Doomsday Console is useful, and I thought I’d share the source and swf. It’s modest, but a classic use case.

To perform the tests, use the commands “doCopyPixelsTest” and “doCombinedTest”. The default test iteration count is 1000, but it can be changed by typing in the commands as such: “doCombinedTest 5000″ or “doCombinedTest 5151″. If the input field isn’t focused, you can reset focus with the tab key.

This is the core use of the console. Binding text commands to methods, calling them through the command line and printing results back out. Note the creation of commands with “ConsoleUtil.createCommand”, as well as the calls to ConsoleUtil.print() in the following source.

package
{
import flash.display.Bitmap;
import flash.display.BitmapData;
import flash.display.BitmapDataChannel;
import flash.display.Sprite;
import flash.events.Event;
import flash.events.MouseEvent;
import flash.geom.Point;
import flash.geom.Rectangle;
import flash.text.TextField;
import flash.text.TextFieldAutoSize;
import flash.utils.getTimer;
import no.doomsday.console.ConsoleUtil;

/**
* ...
* @author Andreas Rønning
*/
public class Main extends Sprite
{
private var alphaTexture:BitmapData;
private var colorTexture:BitmapData;
private var resultTexture:BitmapData;
private var rect:Rectangle;
private var pt:Point;

public function Main():void
{
if (stage) init();
else addEventListener(Event.ADDED_TO_STAGE, init);
}

private function init(e:Event = null):void
{
removeEventListener(Event.ADDED_TO_STAGE, init);
// entry point

var w:int = 256;
var h:int = 256;

alphaTexture = new BitmapData(w, h, true, 0);
colorTexture = alphaTexture.clone();
resultTexture = new BitmapData(w, h, true, 0);
resultTexture.lock();
alphaTexture.perlinNoise(w, h, 2, 412, true, false, BitmapDataChannel.ALPHA, true);
colorTexture.perlinNoise(w, h, 2, 322, true, false, BitmapDataChannel.BLUE|BitmapDataChannel.GREEN|BitmapDataChannel.RED, false);
rect = new Rectangle(0, 0, w, h);
pt = new Point();

addChild(ConsoleUtil.instance);
ConsoleUtil.show();
ConsoleUtil.createCommand("doCopyPixelsTest", doCopyPixelsTest);
ConsoleUtil.createCommand("doCombinedTest", doCombinedTest);
}

private function doCombinedTest(numTests:int = 1000):void
{
ConsoleUtil.print("Starting combined test...");
var tare:Number = 0;
var i:int;
var testStart:Number = getTimer();
for (i = 0; i < numTests; i++) {}
tare = getTimer() - testStart;
testStart = getTimer();
for (i = 0; i < numTests; i++)
{
resultTexture.copyPixels(colorTexture, rect, pt);
resultTexture.copyChannel(alphaTexture, rect, pt, BitmapDataChannel.ALPHA, BitmapDataChannel.ALPHA);
}
ConsoleUtil.print("Plain copypixels followed with alpha copychannel: " + ((getTimer() - testStart) - tare));
}
private function doCopyPixelsTest(numTests:int = 1000):void {
ConsoleUtil.print("Starting copypixels test...");
var tare:Number = 0;
var i:int;
var testStart:Number = getTimer();
for (i = 0; i < numTests; i++)
{
}
tare = getTimer() - testStart;
testStart = getTimer();
for (i = 0; i < numTests; i++)
{
resultTexture.copyPixels(colorTexture, rect, pt, alphaTexture, pt, true);
}
ConsoleUtil.print("with alpha texture, merge alpha: " + ((getTimer() - testStart) - tare));

testStart = getTimer();
for (i = 0; i < numTests; i++)
{
resultTexture.copyPixels(colorTexture, rect, pt, alphaTexture, pt, false);
}
ConsoleUtil.print("with alpha texture, no merge: " + ((getTimer() - testStart) - tare));

testStart = getTimer();
for (i = 0; i < numTests; i++)
{
resultTexture.copyPixels(colorTexture, rect, pt,null,null,true);
}
ConsoleUtil.print("copypixels, merge alpha: " + ((getTimer() - testStart) - tare));

testStart = getTimer();
for (i = 0; i < numTests; i++)
{
resultTexture.copyPixels(colorTexture, rect, pt);
}
ConsoleUtil.print("plain copypixels: " + ((getTimer() - testStart) - tare));

}

}

}

For more information on the Doomsday Console and its further uses, please visit the googlecode site.

To double-tab or not to double-tab…

Andreas — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 01:09:58 +0000

A feature request for the Doomsday Console was a UNIX-style double-tab search. When typing a word, hitting tab twice in quick succession would take the word currently under the caret and do a search of all available commands and list them for you. Definitely handy if you have a command or method name on the tip of your tongue.

The trouble, of course, is that the tab key in the console is currently seriously crowded. Shift-tab toggles the console, tabbing while typing autocompletes, tabbing while typing an argument adds a space. Adding double-tab, which by necessity means i have to wait for a few milliseconds (more like 150 for my slow fingers to keep up) before committing actual tab actions reduces all the other tab functionality to a nagging crawl. What seems like a short moment soon becomes unbearable; in keyboard terms, 150ms is an aeon.

So how to implement it effectively? On one end, i’m actually really big on the idea of putting as much on the tab key as possible, making it the natural go-to-guy for your fingers whenever you want something done that ISN’T a command call, but on the other, i’m only up for that until it gets confusing.
Kieran/dBlue suggested an AJAXian approach where typing a word and then waiting a second or two automatically performs a search for you. I call this the “uhhhh-search”. I like how simple it is, but the fact of the matter is that the list of hits grows HUGE as soon as the search term is short enough. The idea is that searching for “cannon” will return both “bigCannon” and “cannonBall”, so a search of “ad” will typically give you a list of at least a couple lines. To have the console cluttered with random searches is not an ideal solution.

The final solution i’ve settled on is to drop any doubles or combinations, and try to be contextual. If the word under the caret is known in its entirety to the dictionary, skip to the end of the line and append a space as normal. If it is unknown however, do a search for it. I’m not sure it’s the optimal solution, but it leaves a minimum of clutter, can be toggled off, and still follows well with the tab-for-everything idea.

Give it a spin, and tell me what you think!

Screencastmania!

Andreas — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 22:18:30 +0000

I published a 41(!) minute screencast of me just blabbing and showing off features of my AS3 console project. If you want to hear a sick norwegian talk about shit and show off sort of buggy code, go for it! Yeah!