http://www.ruelke.org/blogMostly programming related stuff on ActionScript 3 (Flash), experiements and more or less useful discoveries.en-usManuel Ruelke, rss@ruelke.netSun, 20 May 2012 08:37:14 +0200 I have recently started to look into JavaScript more closely. I believe that it will be even more of a big thing in the near future than it is now. I have been using JavaScript for a long time now but as I now know I have never really gotten it right. After I read Douglas Crockford’s "JavaScript: The Good Parts" and "High Performance JavaScript" by Nicholas C. Zakas I had a much better understanding.Anyway, one thing that has really helped me out many times is test-driven development. So, to m... (read more) http://wwww.ruelke.org/blog-entry-149.html rss@ruelke.net (Manuel Ruelke) http://www.ruelke.org/blog-entry-149.html Mon, 24 Jan 2011 12:00:00 +0100 For a little home project I needed to count the number of colored pixels in an image. I knew that there were 5 colors in the image total. What I did not know was how many pixels of each color were in the image. So, I went ahead and wrote a little app in Javascript using the HTLM5 Canvas object, the getImageData() as well as the getAsDataURL() function.You can download "Mr. Color" to your hard-drive. The whole script is contained in one html file. Nothing is loaded from a remote location. I did n... (read more) http://wwww.ruelke.org/blog-entry-148.html rss@ruelke.net (Manuel Ruelke) http://www.ruelke.org/blog-entry-148.html Sun, 05 Dec 2010 12:00:00 +0100 We are making browser games - Flash games to be exact. Once in a while, we stumble upon a problem in our software caused by an external force. Sometimes, we have to deal with the ever changing browser behavior (Yes, I´m looking at you Safari, … and I saw that, Opera!) Well, sometimes some API provider changes an interface. However, we never had Adobe causing us any pain so far.I once wondered how people discovered the quirks in their development tools/SDKs/software tools, which they then blog ... (read more) http://wwww.ruelke.org/blog-entry-147.html rss@ruelke.net (Manuel Ruelke) http://www.ruelke.org/blog-entry-147.html Mon, 29 Nov 2010 12:00:00 +0100 This page shows a few examples of the music I made in the past. Have fun checking it out! http://wwww.ruelke.org/blog-entry-145.html rss@ruelke.net (Manuel Ruelke) http://www.ruelke.org/blog-entry-145.html Sat, 13 Nov 2010 12:00:00 +0100 Starting programming at the age of 15 I have been hooked on computers for a long time now. They have always fascinated me, so there was no choice but to go deeper into that field. During my time at university a friend and me started developing games. Between 2001 and 2005 we made about a dozen freeware games together, which were all published on different print magazines and even more websites around the globe. Our last one was awarded the "Deutscher Entwicklerpreis 2005 - Bester Nachwuchsentwic... (read more) http://wwww.ruelke.org/blog-entry-54.html rss@ruelke.net (Manuel Ruelke) http://www.ruelke.org/blog-entry-54.html Fri, 15 Oct 2010 12:00:00 +0200 I lived abroad a couple of times. I made online diaries about my time in Finland (2001) and USA (2003). You can find these here:Finland 2001USA 2003 http://wwww.ruelke.org/blog-entry-146.html rss@ruelke.net (Manuel Ruelke) http://www.ruelke.org/blog-entry-146.html Sun, 10 Oct 2010 12:00:00 +0200 Cross-platform font support? Every platform (Windows, Mac, Linux, …) has their own set of standard fonts? You never really know what fonts a user has installed? Flash provides a solution for this: standard font family names! By using “_sans”, “_monospace” and “_serif” the Flash player automatically chooses a font accessible on the system that has no serifs (“_sans”), is mono-spaced (“_monospace”) or has serifs (“_serif”). So, if you decide to use e.g. “_sans” the player will fir... (read more) http://wwww.ruelke.org/blog-entry-144.html rss@ruelke.net (Manuel Ruelke) http://www.ruelke.org/blog-entry-144.html Sun, 12 Sep 2010 12:00:00 +0200 Flash cookies are little pieces of information that Flash applications can store on a user´s hard drive. They are not part of the browser´s temporary internet files and so they won´t be deleted when you delete all you internet settings.If you google for "delete flash cookies" most of the answers you will boil down to go to Adobe sitefind the manager programdelete the cookiesSome people simply feel awkward about that ... seemingly having no control about these cookies. Actually, the problem is... (read more) http://wwww.ruelke.org/blog-entry-142.html rss@ruelke.net (Manuel Ruelke) http://www.ruelke.org/blog-entry-142.html Fri, 25 Jun 2010 12:00:00 +0200 We have been frantically working on our Flash - based MMO for quite some time now at Rough Sea. We are pretty much getting close to the finish line. Well, the game has a login login form that is completely embedded within the Flash app. No big deal, huh? The Problem Today, I got a pretty interesting bug report from quality assurance:If you open our game in the Windows - version of Apple`s brand-new shining Safari 5 and try to type something in a text-input field (like the login form) and then h... (read more) http://wwww.ruelke.org/blog-entry-138.html rss@ruelke.net (Manuel Ruelke) http://www.ruelke.org/blog-entry-138.html Fri, 11 Jun 2010 12:00:00 +0200 In your life as programmer you stumble upon one issue again and again: releasing/clearing an array. Normally, you would think deleting the contents is faster than creating a new array. With Flash this is not always the case.Basically, there are four ways (I can think of) to clear an array:Using length { array.length = 0 }Using splice { array.splice(0,array.length) }Using new { array = new Array() }Using [ ] { array = [] }Since it is not possible to simply identify the fastest way I made a small ... (read more) http://wwww.ruelke.org/blog-entry-136.html rss@ruelke.net (Manuel Ruelke) http://www.ruelke.org/blog-entry-136.html Sat, 13 Jun 2009 12:00:00 +0200 For a map generator, I recently had to figure out a way to fit about 10 million values (representing the map data) into memory and work with them efficiently. Flash isn´t exactly cut out for this task but I had very good reasons to go through the pain and implement it in AS3 anyway.There are several approaches to solve this problem. To investigate further into this I created a small testing suite. This is how it works:The test suite contains one test class (cDataHandlingTest) that writes ... (read more) http://wwww.ruelke.org/blog-entry-135.html rss@ruelke.net (Manuel Ruelke) http://www.ruelke.org/blog-entry-135.html Sun, 29 Mar 2009 12:00:00 +0200 My notebook, an Acer Travelmate 5520G, has a bit of a heat problem. Playing Half-Life 2 or Team Fortress 2 for an hour or two forces it to simply shut down. I have been trying to solve that problem for quite a while now.I downloaded a program called SpeedFan, which helped me monitor the CPU temperature. Well, as it turned out the computer shuts down when it reaches excess temperatures of 95° Celsius (200° Fahrenheit). Admittedly, this is way too much.The very same program also reads out the cu... (read more) http://wwww.ruelke.org/blog-entry-134.html rss@ruelke.net (Manuel Ruelke) http://www.ruelke.org/blog-entry-134.html Mon, 23 Feb 2009 12:00:00 +0100 My javascript table canvas did not work with the browsers Chromium and Google Chrome: The reason is that these browsers do not tolerate empty table cells. Putting empty img-tags into the cells makes them appear again, though! This reminds me on the old Netscape browsers (say 4.7), which had a similar problem. http://wwww.ruelke.org/blog-entry-129.html rss@ruelke.net (Manuel Ruelke) http://www.ruelke.org/blog-entry-129.html Sun, 18 Jan 2009 12:00:00 +0100 This is a guide to get AsUnit to work with FlashDevelop. I assume that you have a working installation of FlashDevelop up and running. If not you may use this guide http://www.theyak.net/flashdevelop/ to get there. For this guide I used FlashDevelop 3.0.0 Beta7 and AsUnit 3.0 2007-10-11 version (release 162). 1. Download AsUnit Go to http://www.asunit.org and download the "Framework". It will contain all the classes and sources you will need to get you... (read more) http://wwww.ruelke.org/blog-entry-127.html rss@ruelke.net (Manuel Ruelke) http://www.ruelke.org/blog-entry-127.html Wed, 07 Jan 2009 12:00:00 +0100 A little javascript gimmick: a canvas made of a dynamically created table. Each pixel is made of one table-cell, which color is set by changing its background color. The animations show scenes from some Amiga games. The resolution of the canvas is fairly small so the script is able to run on computers with around 1 GHz without problems. ... (read more) http://wwww.ruelke.org/blog-entry-114.html rss@ruelke.net (Manuel Ruelke) http://www.ruelke.org/blog-entry-114.html Fri, 20 Jun 2008 12:00:00 +0200 Finally, we (divaided) got our own myspace-page. In Germany Myspace isn`t as popular yet as it is in the US. It is used by a lot of bands and musicians as a platform to share and introduce their music. The page can be found here:>> divaided`s mySpace-page http://wwww.ruelke.org/blog-entry-92.html rss@ruelke.net (Manuel Ruelke) http://www.ruelke.org/blog-entry-92.html Fri, 20 Jan 2006 12:00:00 +0100 During my diploma thesis I created a small 3D software renderer. My theses explains all the algorithms used and talks about the basics regarding 3d rendering (visualization and transformation pipeline, camera and so on). Furthermore, I discussed who trigonometric functions can be realized efficiently in software.>> documentation of mr3d-Engine(javadoc) >> ZIP of the mr3d-engine... contains sources, precompiled classes, samples, thesis as pdf (a lot of the stuff is in German, though!) http://wwww.ruelke.org/blog-entry-60.html rss@ruelke.net (Manuel Ruelke) http://www.ruelke.org/blog-entry-60.html Mon, 03 Oct 2005 12:00:00 +0200 Meine Huldigung an das Kultgetränk aus Nordhausen: den "Pfeffi". Bei diesem Lied gibt es sogar meine liebliche Stimme sogar mal richtig zu hören. =) Ein echter Pfeffi-Song für Pfeffi-Fans.My praise to the liquid craze from Nordhausen: the Pfeffi (a peppermint liquor). Here you can hear me actually singing in person.>> Download Eiskalter Pfeffi, mp3, 3:40 min, 3448kB http://wwww.ruelke.org/blog-entry-75.html rss@ruelke.net (Manuel Ruelke) http://www.ruelke.org/blog-entry-75.html Sat, 18 Sep 2004 12:00:00 +0200 This is an orchestral track, which was originally intended for Zak2. It is pretty epic, as the name indicates. I haven`t had time to remaster the track, so there are some clumsy transitions and edges to the song.>> Download Epic Hymn, mp3, 2:07 min, 1994kB http://wwww.ruelke.org/blog-entry-73.html rss@ruelke.net (Manuel Ruelke) http://www.ruelke.org/blog-entry-73.html Thu, 20 May 2004 12:00:00 +0200 A powerful track with lots of synthesizers.>> Download Power Play, mp3, 3:37 min, 3404kB http://wwww.ruelke.org/blog-entry-74.html rss@ruelke.net (Manuel Ruelke) http://www.ruelke.org/blog-entry-74.html Fri, 09 Apr 2004 12:00:00 +0200 The background music of the game "Wuchtel 2". It is a calm electronic track.>> Download Wuchtel 2 Gametracks, FastTracker-Modul, 5:05 min, 311kB http://wwww.ruelke.org/blog-entry-70.html rss@ruelke.net (Manuel Ruelke) http://www.ruelke.org/blog-entry-70.html Tue, 09 Dec 2003 12:00:00 +0100 Diese Seiten entstanden als Teil einer Studienarbeit für das Fach "Kommunikation und Rechnernetze". Es behandelt die Grundlagen der Telefonie mit dem Internet Protokoll (IP). >> Link zu den Materialien von VoIP http://wwww.ruelke.org/blog-entry-58.html rss@ruelke.net (Manuel Ruelke) http://www.ruelke.org/blog-entry-58.html Tue, 02 Dec 2003 12:00:00 +0100 Dieses Lehrmaterial enstand im Rahmen einer Belegarbeit im Fach "Erweiterte Kapitel der Systemprogrammierung". Es behandelt die Grundlagen der Datenübertragung zwischen zwei Rechnern, deren Centronics-Schnittstellen per Crosslink-Kabel verbunden wurden.>> Link zu den Materialen zu "Parallele Schnittstelle" http://wwww.ruelke.org/blog-entry-59.html rss@ruelke.net (Manuel Ruelke) http://www.ruelke.org/blog-entry-59.html Sun, 02 Nov 2003 12:00:00 +0100 Background music of the game C-Break (check out the track record). It is a fast track for a fast game. Electro-style.>> Download C-Break Theme, FastTracker-Modul, 1:41 min, 304kB http://wwww.ruelke.org/blog-entry-68.html rss@ruelke.net (Manuel Ruelke) http://www.ruelke.org/blog-entry-68.html Fri, 03 Oct 2003 12:00:00 +0200 Menu music for the game C-Break. It is a bit slower than the game music, but he style is similar.>> Download C-Break Menu, FastTracker-Modul, 1:36 min, 353kB http://wwww.ruelke.org/blog-entry-69.html rss@ruelke.net (Manuel Ruelke) http://www.ruelke.org/blog-entry-69.html Fri, 03 Oct 2003 12:00:00 +0200 This song was originally intended for Zak2, but as far as I know it was not used. This track has an ethnic edge. >> Download Jungle Theme, mp3, 3:29 min, 3274kB http://wwww.ruelke.org/blog-entry-71.html rss@ruelke.net (Manuel Ruelke) http://www.ruelke.org/blog-entry-71.html Sat, 14 Jun 2003 12:00:00 +0200 Another track for Zak2 for the intro. It is supposed to sound like the theme of an action movie.>> Download Zak2 Intro Theme, mp3, 3:08 min, 2938kB http://wwww.ruelke.org/blog-entry-72.html rss@ruelke.net (Manuel Ruelke) http://www.ruelke.org/blog-entry-72.html Tue, 06 May 2003 12:00:00 +0200 A track I have made in MadTracker. For the first time I sampoled my own voice (the laughing). It is a melodic techno-style.>> Download Titan, FastTracker-Modul, 3:48 min, 1575kB http://wwww.ruelke.org/blog-entry-66.html rss@ruelke.net (Manuel Ruelke) http://www.ruelke.org/blog-entry-66.html Thu, 21 Nov 2002 12:00:00 +0100 In a couple of long nights in Finland I wanted to make something similar to Chris Hülsbeck`s Turrican soundtrack. Back then, I was really fond of his work. Today, I think he`s pretty much overrated. The Turrican music rocks but his CDs do not in the least bit. Anyway, I found the first part of the track 6 minute track I have made. If I ever find the (admitedly better) second half, I`ll post it here as well.>> Download JumpAndRun-Track, mp3, 3:13 min, 2.94MB http://wwww.ruelke.org/blog-entry-132.html rss@ruelke.net (Manuel Ruelke) http://www.ruelke.org/blog-entry-132.html Wed, 20 Feb 2002 12:00:00 +0100 This is a module I made in SkaleTracker. Very dark, slow and mystical.>> Download Floating Steel, FastTracker-Modul, 4:43 min, 1527kB http://wwww.ruelke.org/blog-entry-67.html rss@ruelke.net (Manuel Ruelke) http://www.ruelke.org/blog-entry-67.html Fri, 12 Oct 2001 12:00:00 +0200 A later FastTracker-module. Check out the machine-gun sounds I used as percussions. It is techno, but a bit on the harder side.>> Download Stalking The Battleground, FastTracker-Modul, 3:44 min, 1528kB http://wwww.ruelke.org/blog-entry-65.html rss@ruelke.net (Manuel Ruelke) http://www.ruelke.org/blog-entry-65.html Tue, 05 Sep 2000 12:00:00 +0200 One of my very first productions I made on my PC (386). Typical techno of the 90s.>> Download Devil´s Walk, FastTracker-Modul, 3:33 min, 352kB http://wwww.ruelke.org/blog-entry-64.html rss@ruelke.net (Manuel Ruelke) http://www.ruelke.org/blog-entry-64.html Mon, 10 Aug 1998 12:00:00 +0200 You may freely download my music, as well as copy it. Furthermore, you are allowed to store and listen to the music for private use. You may not use my music in projects accessible by the public no matter of what nature they are. That means you may NOT use it e.g. for presentations, computer games, on samplers, films, movies, as a download offer or as background music for websites. I just want to make sure my music will not be abused. If you would like to use my music, please contact me at manue... (read more) http://wwww.ruelke.org/blog-entry-100.html rss@ruelke.net (Manuel Ruelke) http://www.ruelke.org/blog-entry-100.html Thu, 10 Apr 1997 12:00:00 +0200