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2006 The Battle of the Script!

Created By  Satori Canton, at  4/6/2006 - 6 comments.

Satori has been an internet consultant since 1994. He is an Adobe Flex Champion, specializing in Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) using Flash, Flex and AIR.

Click to view this author's website.

Update: The Battle of the Results!

April 2006 marks the Seventh (7th!!!) birthday of ActionScript.com. It's our birthday this month, but YOU are getting the presents!!!

With the support of our friends: Sapien, O'Reilly and friends of ED we are excited to announce the 2006 The Battle of the Script!

This year, the battle theme is going to be "Injecting TextScript." This one is pure candy. Nothing difficult and everything fun. It's simple enough that our newest friends can participate, and subtle enough that even the best of the best have to struggle to compete.

In the last few weeks, we've released the TextScript Text Effect Infrastructure as an open source class; and we've also shown how to Inject TextScript to create your own custom text effects. But this just scratches the surface. There is so much that can be done with TextScript that we're offering thousands of dollars in cash and prizes to uncover the best TextScript injectors in the world.

We want to find the most innovative/creative developers that can use the TextScript class to create the most awesome text effects imaginable. It's a very simple infrastructure, but within it, you can really create almost anything.

To get up to speed on the subject, check out these articles:

Those articles will give you the full background on the class and show you how to use the class. Where you take it from there is what this contest is all about.

Submissions will be judged by the following criteria:

  • Innovation/Creativity
  • Use of the Medium
  • Visual Impact
  • Code Efficiency (clear code and optimizing resources)
  • Frame Rate
  • Adding Functionality/Extending TextScript
  • Wow Factor (show us something that we weren't expecting and didn't cover in the above criteria)

Prize Packages

We wrote TextScript with PrimalScript (Sapien). The core infrastructure is directly from Hack #49 in "Flash Hacks" (O'Reilly). The physics used in the animation of the core TextScript effects comes directly from "ActionScript Animation" (friends of ED). The code structures for TextScript are (somewhat) strict Object Oriented design as learned from "Essential ActionScript 2.0" (O'Reilly) and "Object-Oriented ActionScript for Flash 8" (friends of ED). And finally, the blend and filter effects that TextScript uses comes straight out of "Essential Flash 8" (friends of ED). The cash comes straight out of our own pockets. But this makes the prize pool the ultimate Flash developers tool box. It's the best tools and the best books on the subject that we could find. So, what do you win?

GRAND PRIZE

  • $500.00 (USD) Cash!
  • 1 Registered Copy of PrimalScript Enterprise Edition (Sapien)
  • 1 Copy of "Flash Hacks" by Sham Bhangal (O'Reilly)
  • 1 Copy of "ActionScript Animation" by Keith Peters (friends of ED)
  • 1 Copy of "Essential ActionScript 2.0" by Colin Moock (O'Reilly)
  • 1 Copy of "Essential Flash 8" by Glen Rhodes,Todd Yard et. Al. (friends of ED)
  • 1 Copy of "Object-Oriented ActionScript for Flash 8" by Peter Elst and Todd Yard (friends of ED)

SECOND PLACE

  • $250.00 (USD) Cash!
  • 1 Registered Copy of PrimalScript Professional Edition (Sapien)
  • 1 Copy of "Flash Hacks" by Sham Bhangal (O'Reilly)
  • 1 Copy of "ActionScript Animation" by Keith Peters (friends of ED)
  • 1 Copy of "Essential ActionScript 2.0" by Colin Moock (O'Reilly)
  • 1 Copy of "Object-Oriented ActionScript for Flash 8" by Peter Elst and Todd Yard (friends of ED)

THIRD PLACE

  • $100.00 (USD) Cash!
  • 1 Registered Copy of PrimalScript Professional Edition (Sapien)
  • 1 Copy of "Flash Hacks" by Sham Bhangal (O'Reilly)
  • 1 Copy of "ActionScript Animation" by Keith Peters (friends of ED)
  • 1 Copy of "Essential ActionScript 2.0" by Colin Moock (O'Reilly)
  • 1 Copy of "Object-Oriented ActionScript for Flash 8" by Peter Elst and Todd Yard (friends of ED)

FOURTH PLACE

  • $50.00 (USD) Cash!
  • 1 Registered Copy of PrimalScript Standard Edition (Sapien)
  • 1 Copy of "Flash Hacks" by Sham Bhangal (O'Reilly)
  • 1 Copy of "ActionScript Animation" by Keith Peters (friends of ED)
  • 1 Copy of "Essential ActionScript 2.0" by Colin Moock (O'Reilly)

FIFTH PLACE

  • $25.00 (USD) Cash!
  • 1 Registered Copy of PrimalScript Standard Edition (Sapien)
  • 1 Copy of "Flash Hacks" by Sham Bhangal (O'Reilly)
  • 1 Copy of "ActionScript Animation" by Keith Peters (friends of ED)
  • 1 Copy of "Essential ActionScript 2.0" by Colin Moock (O'Reilly)

To enter the contest, all you have to do is create your own TextScript Injection. All submissions should include the original FLA, a compiled SWF, any necessary media files or external classes (not including TextScript). Non-Standard Fonts that are used in a submission should also be included in packages for consideration, but will not be published as we recognize that they are copyrighted work. Submissions can be e-mailed to textscript@actionscript.com through the entire month of April 2006. All submissions must be received before May 1st, 2006.

All submissions, and award results will be published at ActionScript.com in May 2006.

Official Rules (and legal stuff) can be found here (including important stuff about rights to make all submissions public after the contest).

Questions/Comments/Discussion, please post in the comments below.

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Reader Comments

  1. matias sanchez  Replied:
    ( 4/10/2006 At 6:19 PM)

    nice!! now we´ll see who is the most virtous programmer :D

  2. saco  Replied:
    ( 4/23/2006 At 6:51 AM)

    it's good but I can't send mail

    I get this
    Could not deliver message to the following recipient(s):

    Failed Recipient: textscript@actionscript.com
    Reason: Remote host said: 550 Requested action not taken: mailbox unavailable or not local

  3. Satori Canton  Replied:
    ( 4/23/2006 At 10:21 AM)

    There were some issues with mail late yesterday due to the server change over. If anyone submitted entries from Friday April 21, 2006 to today Sunday April 23, 2006, you may want to re-submit your entry.

    An auto response will be sent to confirm that we've received your entry.

  4. Wael Saad  Replied:
    ( 5/12/2006 At 2:32 AM)

    Hi, I don't know if this entry was rejected before or not but here it is again anyway.

    I think TextScript is an excellent class.. I would love to see it grow.

    the reason it doesn't work with Flash mx components v2 is very simple if you look up getNextHighestDepth () in macromedia ActionScript 2.0 Language Reference

    it will read:-
    Note: If you are using version 2 components, do not use this method. If you place a version 2 component either on the Stage or in the Library, the getNextHighestDepth() method can sometimes return depth 1048676, which is outside the valid range. If you are using version 2 components, you should always use the version 2 components DepthManager class.

    =============================

    so just for demonstration purposes to get textScript working with Flash 8 components do the following:-

    after this line:- import textScript;
    insert this line _global._depth = 0

    and in the textScript.as class replace this line

    var teText:MovieClip = scope.createEmptyMovieClip("ascTextPhrase" + scope.getNextHighestDepth(), scope.getNextHighestDepth());

    with this one:-

    var teText:MovieClip = scope.createEmptyMovieClip("ascTextPhrase" + _global._depth, _global._depth++);

    and this line :-

    var m:MovieClip = scope.createEmptyMovieClip("ascTextCharacter" + scope.getNextHighestDepth(), scope.getNextHighestDepth());

    with this:-

    var m:MovieClip = scope.createEmptyMovieClip("ascTextCharacter" + _global._depth, _global._depth++);

    That's it.

    I also mentioned I would love to see textScript integrated with ZigoEngine v1.1 which is not out yet but should be out soon.

    http://www.mosessupposes.com/Fuse/fuse1.1docs/ZigoEngine.html

    Regards,

    Wael

  5. lucian olteanu  Replied:
    ( 11/7/2006 At 7:44 AM)

    could anyone, please, write to me how to apply these functions?

  6. Amit sinha  Replied:
    ( 11/17/2006 At 5:04 AM)

    How to start a Textscript in the Flash

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