Flint 2.0 released

I released version 2.0 of Flint particles today. This features one bug-fix and a number of minor speed enhancements over the beta that has been available for the past couple of weeks. I've also added an mxp installer to the downloads, and tested everything with Flash CS4. As usual, you can find more on the Flint website...

Posted on 27 October 2008 | 1 comment | continue reading

Object Pool class

Two of the slow operations in the flash player are object creation and garbage collection. If we pool objects - save objects when they're no longer needed and reuse them later when another object of the same type is required - then object creation is kept to a minimum and garbage collection is reduced to zero...

Posted on 8 October 2008 | 3 comments | continue reading

Back from Flash on the Beach

Flash on the Beach was fantastic. Once again John organised a very friendly, relaxed and social conference, with some truly inspirational speakers. Being a speaker myself added an extra excitement to this year's conference...

Posted on 2 October 2008 | 2 comments | continue reading

Flint does Papervision3D and Away3D

Today I released a new alpha of version 2 of the Flint particle system. This version adds renderers for Papervision3D and Away3D to the library, so that particle effects can be integrated with a 3D scene in these libraries...

Posted on 17 September 2008 | 1 comment | continue reading

Last chance for Flash on the Beach

Today is the last day when Flash on the Beach tickets are available, so if you're thinking of coming go and buy that ticket now. FOTB is my favourite flash conference and this year I'm privileged enough to be speaking there for the first time so that's another good reason to come along, in addition to the many reasons Jens describes here.

Posted on 5 September 2008 | no comments | continue reading

3D version of Flint Particle System

Today I released the alpha of version 2 of Flint. This version does 3D particle effects as well as 2D effects. The alpha is fairly stable and can be downloaded from Google code.

The 2D effects have some enhancements over previous versions. The 3D effects are all new, and include most of the features from 2D, along with some new stuff. At the moment, rendering is done via Flint's own new 3D renderers, but I'm developing renderers for Papervision3d, Away3d and Sandy3d so that Flint can be used as a particle system with any of these 3d libraries too.

Posted on 1 September 2008 | 1 comment | continue reading

C# version of Flint Particle System

One keen user of Flint (Ben Baker) has ported it to C#. The project is called Flint-sharp and is on GoogleCode at http://code.google.com/p/flint-sharp/. There's a few features still to implement, but most of it is working well...

Posted on 1 September 2008 | 1 comment | continue reading

Garbage Collection

I recently received a support query on Flint regarding garbage collection. In discussions on the forum I was reminded that many Actionscript developers don't know how the Flash Player's garbage collection works...

Posted on 12 August 2008 | 1 comment | continue reading