In the last article we learned that a ByteArray shared between two workers also shares its length field but not its position field. This raises a followup question: what about when the length changes? Today’s article sees what happens when you change the length of a ByteArray that is shared between two ActionScript workers to see just how shared that length field really is.
Archive for category AS3
ActionScript workers allow you to take advantage of today’s multi-core processors by creating multiple threads of execution. These threads will invariably need to share some data between them. By default, all data passed between the workers/threads is copied, which can be really slow. The ByteArray class can be shared without copying. Today’s article discusses this and talks about some quirks that come along with it.
The assert function is found in many languages to provide a way for you to check for errors only in debug builds of your code. For release/production builds, the asserts are removed to make the compiled code smaller and remove all of the overhead of the error checking. Flash doesn’t come with such a feature built-in, but can we build one ourselves? Today’s article will try to do just that using nothing but Adobe’s modern AS3 compiler: ASC 2.0.
It’s been about seven months since my last test of AS3 versus JavaScript and there have been several major releases of both browsers and the Flash Player. Today, we pit every major browser against each other and Flash Player itself to get an updated picture of which provides the fastest scripting environment on the web.
While ActionScript Workers made their debut in Flash Player 11.4, the Mutex class didn’t arrive until the next version: 11.5. This class is specifically designed to solve a subtle problem that cropped up in the last article. As you’ll see in this article, it does the job quite well! The result is even faster message passing between workers/threads, which is often key to efficiently using multiple core CPUs.
Like it or not, HTML5 is all the rage these days. It seems like everyone, everywhere is talking about the “death of Flash” and the triumphant rise of HTML5 in its place. Many developers who would have used Flash are now considering building on top of HTML5 features like the <canvas> tag. This got me wondering: how well supported are these features across desktop and mobile browsers? I couldn’t find any existing stats on this, so today’s article is my own report. If you write your game in HTML5, what percentage of users will be able to see it? Read on for the answers.
ActionScript workers add threading to AS3 so that you can take advantage of today’s multi-core CPUs. I’ve written a couple of articles about them so far, but skipped over the basics of actually setting them up and using them. This is surprisingly tricky! Read on for a crash course on how to use workers to speed up your app.
