Ok, so there’s not much to say here!

I’m no mathematician, but I’ve been working on putting together a simple particle engine which harnesses the awesome power of Actionscript 3.

My reasons for attempting such a project are purely artistic, as a large amount of work for my next exhibition is generative, and is made by using various rendering methods to map the movement of particles in a system. More posts relating to this will be coming up, including my solution for simulating organic lines in Flash, using a custom pencilLineTo method. I’m excited about this one in particular, as it means I can produce complex generative work using AS3, but maintain the appearance of hand drawn work.

Anyway, more on that later! For now, here is a rather cute tester for the particle engine I mentioned, using the alphabet. So it’s educational as well as fun; if you’re 2 years old and have eyes fast enough to follow the letters that is.

You will see in the source code that certain features are there in parts, but have not been properly implemented. It’s work in progress though (no collision yet for example), but I felt like sharing it in its current state.

Related posts:

1. AS3 Webcam Motion Tracking
2. Flipping you the Boid
3. Perlin Noise Flow Field

Look at them go! Stupid primates.
Click ‘Spawn Platforms’ for a new layout, or play with the Platform and APE count steppers!

I finally found some time to play around with the AS3 physics engine, APE; something I have been meaning to do for a while now.

This is a pretty simple demo, and by no means pushes APE’s capabilities; however it should help introduce you to the API, as well as explaining how to create custom Classes which subclass the Group class in APE. This is a very useful method, as it means that you can build, for example, Classes for bridges, bone structures, Pinball style paddles (as I have done here) and use these to create scenes. Essentially, this is just a particle engine with bouncing particles and collision detection.

Though APE seems to lend itself very well to game development, I am no game developer. However, I do find the possibilities that APE holds very exciting. Here, I have used some basic artwork and added physics and collisions to it, something that could add a dimension to interactive experiments and even website interfaces. For example, it is extremely easy to use custom Sprites or MovieClips as ‘particles’ with collision, so interface buttons or images can become elements in a scene with their own mass, friction and elasticity! Cool.

I use FlashDevelop for Actionscript editing nowadays (which I highly recommend), so have included the project file in the source code. You will also find the Platform Class in there, which will show you how to build your own groups of objects using the APE API. The document Class will show you the basics of creating particles, assigning custom sprites to them and giving them properties which are used when they interact with the environment.

If I have a moment, I will go back and add more functionality, but I hope this demo will at least give an outline as to the potential of APE from a more artistic than mathematical point of view. If you want to know more, you can read the docs here, and download the APE engine here, but be sure to visit the creator’s site and send them some fanmail.

Have fun with it, but go easy on the Gorillas; they’re very irritable…

Related posts:

1. Alphabet Particles AS3
2. 2D Cellular Automata
3. 3D Ribbons in Papervision