Actionscript Glory, and other ramblings
I taught myself how to use Flash 5 and Actionscript 1 back in 2000. I slowly followed it as it grew into a full featured programming language. As I went along I also learnt some of the key aspects of coding. For loops, while loops, dot notation, Objects, functions, types.
Previous toActionscript I had taught myself QBasic on a (I think) 95 machine. This was when I was around 12. I think the biggest thing that excited me about Flash was that I no longer had to draw my graphics pixel by pixel. Though I must say looking back at some of those ‘games’, as I called them at the time, I am very impressed with what I achieved. Completely self taught QBasic at the age of 12. By the age of 13 I was drawing and animating with color using arrays of pixels.
Mind you the point of the game really shows my youth. Basically, it was tag. Two players (you, and a friend or the computer, yes I even created an AI computer controller) tag each other back and forth while a 3rd entitiy follows the player that is in, trying to kill him. I implemented a shooting fireball, mines that explode when walked on (and then leave a crater), rocks (block movement obviously), even rocks that periodicaly appear and disappear!
I was a lonely child, far from town and the other kids, out in a large paddock in Masterton. Left to my computer and its bits I taught myself the beginings of a carear which I am now fulfilling. I would spend hours a night in that QBasic editor/compiler adding features, looking for bugs. I remember one time, with about 100 subroutines, probably 5000 lines of code maybe more, looking for a bug. I spent from when I got home around 4pm until about 10pm going through my code, searching for it.
I probably tried implementing something to make it all cooler. Anyway it turned out to be a simple typo on a varible name. I fixed it and it worked! I remember sitting there for those 6 hours knowing that I would find it, just had to look and wait. I’m glad we have intelligent IDE’s now. It would have taken 5 seconds to fix that bug today. Boy I was happy when I got it though. It’s that same feeling that drives me in my work, keeps me going. That buzz you get when something works. Something you thought up, designed, implemented and now can see going through the motions.
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In: Uncategorized · Tagged with: actionscript, Flash, qbasic
