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Solving Display Refresh/Redraw/Repaint Issues in Webkit Browsers

on Thu, 09/27/2012 - 14:39

So debugging on a phone is nowhere near as easy as debugging on a web application, if only because you can't use the Chrome developer tools or Firebug effectively on a three-inch screen. Fortunately (for Android developers) there is a tool called the Dalvik Debug Monitor, which comes packaged with the Android SDK. It listens to any logs coming from the phone, assuming the phone on which you are testing an app is plugged into your computer via USB cable. Works pretty well, once you get the quirks sorted out.

Anyway: on the recently completed project I came across a bug where, when updating the text content of an element on the screen, the interface refused to update until another event fired in a nearby (DOM-wise) element. Debugging was a pain, because all of the traces I had running told me that yes, all of my Javascript functions had fired, and yes, the content of the element was correct. But the screen itself still showed the old content. 

Turns out, this is a Known Issue for Webkit browsers (Chrome, Safari). Sometimes, when updating an inline element or style, the browser does not redraw/repaint the screen until a block-level change happens in the DOM. This bug  most often occurs when there is a lot going on in the page, and the browser seems to assume that, if the change is not happening at the block (which is to say, layout), level, then it is less important.

Fortunately, solving the issue is MUCH easier than diagnosing it. A simple, quick update to the offending element (or its parent) will force the browser to repaint the screen. Here are a few different ways to accomplish this:

/*	Silently append and remove a text node	
	This is the fix that worked for me in the Phonegap/Android application
	the setTimeout allows a 'tick' to happen in the browser refresh,
	giving the UI time to update
*/
var n = document.createTextNode(' ');
$('#myElement').append(n);
setTimeout(function(){n.parentNode.removeChild(n)}, 0);


/*	Hide and reshow the element	*/
document.getElementById('myElement').style.display='none';
document.getElementById('myElement').offsetHeight; // no need to store this anywhere, the reference is enough
document.getElementById('myElement').style.display='block';


/*	The same thing using jQuery	*/
$('#myElement').hide();
$('#myElement').get(0).offsetHeight; // no need to store this anywhere, the reference is enough
$('#myElement').show();


/*	Set the scale of the element to 1. 
	This doesn't actually change anything visually, 
	because by default everythign in the browser 
	is set to scale 1	*/

document.getElementById('myElement').style.webkitTransform = 'scale(1)';

The first one is the one I used. I was using jQuery so this simplified things just a bit. All of the other fixes are valid, but the one I used was the only one that actually worked for me in the PhoneGap application.

For further reference, here are the resources I used while tracking down and solving the bug:

Time Keeps On

on Thu, 09/20/2012 - 12:10

Over four months after my last entry here, I find time for another one.

Life got busy for me right at the beginning of May. Master Lee went on vacation, visiting his students in Vietnam and Australia, so class suddenly became much busier. This continued right up through Memorial Day and into the Festival of the Arts performance. I turned 43 on June 5, and took the next week off from work. Spent a few days exploring Traverse City, then suddenly started a new relationship with a beautiful, amazing woman. This led directly to me being involved in a summer solstice celebration, where I collaborate with some people to project Flash visuals (fire, water, evolving plants, snowflakes) on the side of a barn and silo. Right after that, a big project kicked off at work, and that has kept me pretty busy since then.

The work has been interesting. It is a PhoneGap project, using a lot of HTML5/CSS3/jQuery and associated technologies. We used an in-house MVC platform, which was a first for me (using MVC, that is), so I had to negotiate quite a learning curve. Also learned a tremendous amount about jQuery Deferreds, hardware-accelerated CSS animations, custom event listeners, and how the MVC stack keeps disparate parts of an app in synch. I discovered how frustrating it can be to debug mobile applications. The Dalvik Debug Monitor, as good as it is generally, does tend to crash with irritating frequency. Fortunately, 90% of debugging can be done in a desktop browser. But holy cow, can that last 10% be frustrating.

Okay; enough of this for now. When I have time I will post a list of the specific issues I came across, and how I solved them.

Kohonen Map in Actionscript 3

on Tue, 05/01/2012 - 21:52

Kohonen Map in Actionscript 3

This image is the output of a Kohonen Map, also called a self-organizing map, which is a type of simple neural network, mostly used for sorting and grouping large data sets. I am fairly happy with the results.

This is something I have wanted to do for about four years, starting with a project I worked on back in 2008. Click the image to launch the app. Once launched, click "PLAY/PAUSE" to begin; click "RESET" to restart the sorting process, and change the value in the "grid size" input field to change the dimensions of the color grid. Be careful; anything above 100 (e.g., 10,000 squares) will begin to run slowly.

To create the app, I started with Processing source code I found at jjguy.com. Translating the code to Actionscript 3 took about four hours, and another four to tweak and test and modify to accommodate Flash-specific functionality. All in all, it was surprisingly easy.

The code follows. There are three parts; Main.as, which is contains the UI, global variables, and initialization code; SOM.as, which is the code for the map, and Node.as, which contains the code for the individual blocks of color.

All of the source code, including compiled .swf, can be downloaded here.

 

Main.as

package {
    import flash.display.Sprite;
	import flash.display.StageAlign;
	import flash.display.StageScaleMode;
    import flash.events.Event;
	import flash.events.MouseEvent;
	import flash.events.TimerEvent;
	import flash.text.TextField;
	import flash.text.TextFieldType;
	import flash.text.TextFormat;
	import flash.utils.Timer;
    [SWF(width=720,height=480,frameRate=32,backgroundColor=0x000000)]
    public class Main extends Sprite {
		[Embed(
			source='C:/WINDOWS/Fonts/ARIAL.TTF', 
			fontName='ArialEmbed', 
			unicodeRange='U+0020-U+002F,U+0030-U+0039,U+003A-U+0040,U+0041-U+005A,U+005B-U+0060,U+0061-U+007A,U+007B-U+007E', 
			mimeType="application/x-font-truetype", embedAsCFF="false"
		)]
		private static var _arialEmbed:Class;
		
		internal var _timer:Timer;

		private var isPlaying:Boolean = false;
		
		private var btnPlayPause:Sprite;
		private var btnReset:Sprite;
		private var txtIterations:TextField;
		private var txtGridSize:TextField;
		private var colorTextBG:int = 0xcccccc;
		private var btnTextFormat:TextFormat = new TextFormat("ArialEmbed",12,0x333333,null,null,null,null,null,"center");
		private var labelTextFormat:TextFormat = new TextFormat("ArialEmbed",12,0xededed,null,null,null,null,null,"right");
		private var inputTextFormat:TextFormat = new TextFormat("ArialEmbed",12,0x000000,null,null,null,null,null,"left");

		private var som:SOM;
		private var iter:int;
		private var maxIters:int = 4000;
		public var screenW:int=480;
		public var screenH:int=480;
		private var gridSize:int = 40;

		private var rgb:Array = [
			[1,1,1],
			[0,0,0],
			[1,0,1],
			[1,0,0],
			[0,1,0],
			[0,0,1],
			[1,1,0],
			[0,1,1],
			[1,.4,.4],
			[.25,.25,.25]
		];
		
        public function Main():void {
            addEventListener(Event.ADDED_TO_STAGE,onAddedToStage);
        }
        private function onAddedToStage(e:Event):void {
            removeEventListener(Event.ADDED_TO_STAGE,onAddedToStage);
			stage.scaleMode = StageScaleMode.NO_SCALE;
			stage.align = StageAlign.TOP_LEFT;
            init();
        }
        private function init():void {
			_timer = new Timer(10);
			_timer.addEventListener(TimerEvent.TIMER,onTimer);
			initInterface();
			initMap();
			_timer.start();
        }
		
		/*	create and populate the UI elements	*/
		private function initInterface():void {
			var txtIterationsLabel:TextField = getTextField("Iterations",10,160,80,20,labelTextFormat);
			addChild(txtIterationsLabel);
			
			txtIterations = getTextField("0",100,160,50,20,labelTextFormat);
			txtIterations.selectable = false;
			addChild(txtIterations);
			
			var txtGridSizeLabel:TextField = getTextField("GRID SIZE",10,200,80,20,labelTextFormat);
			addChild(txtGridSizeLabel);
			
			txtGridSize = getTextField(gridSize.toString(),100,200,80,20,inputTextFormat);
			txtGridSize.background = true;
			txtGridSize.backgroundColor = 0xffffff;
			txtGridSize.border = true;
			txtGridSize.borderColor=0xcccccc;
			txtGridSize.type = TextFieldType.INPUT;
			txtGridSize.restrict = "0-9";
			addChild(txtGridSize);
			
			var playPauseButton:Sprite = getTextButton("PLAY/PAUSE",20,300,80,20);
			playPauseButton.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK,function(e:Event):void {
				isPlaying = !isPlaying;
			});
			addChild(playPauseButton);
			
			var resetButton:Sprite = getTextButton("RESET",120,300,80,20);
			resetButton.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK,function(e:Event):void {
				iter=1;
				gridSize = parseInt(txtGridSize.text);
				maxIters = gridSize*100;
				som.init(maxIters,gridSize,gridSize);
				updateMap();
			});
			addChild(resetButton);
		
		}
		
		/*	create and initialize an instance of the map 	*/
		private function initMap():void {
			som = new SOM(gridSize,gridSize, 3,screenW,screenH);
			som.x = 240;
			som.y = 0;
			addChild(som);
			iter = 1;	
			som.init(maxIters,gridSize,gridSize);
			updateMap();
		}
		
		/*	called on every tick of the timer	*/
		private function onTimer(e:TimerEvent):void {
			if(isPlaying) updateMap();
			e.updateAfterEvent();
		}
		
		/*	tell the map to make another iterations through the data, then render it to the screen	*/
		private function updateMap():void {
			var t:int = Math.floor(Math.random()*rgb.length);
			if (iter < maxIters){
				som.train(iter, rgb[t]);
				som.render();
				txtIterations.text = iter.toString();
				iter++;
			}
		}
		
		/*	functions for building interface elements	*/
		private function getTextField(txt:String,x:int,y:int,w:int,h:int,format:TextFormat):TextField {
			var tf:TextField = new TextField();
			tf.x = x;
			tf.y = y;
			tf.width = w;
			tf.height = h;
			tf.embedFonts = true;
			tf.text = txt;
			tf.setTextFormat(format);
			tf.defaultTextFormat = format;
			return tf;
		}
		private function getTextButton(txt:String,x:int,y:int,w:int,h:int):Sprite {
			var s:Sprite = new Sprite();
			s.x = x;
			s.y = y;
			s.graphics.lineStyle(1,0x808080,1,true);
			s.graphics.beginFill(colorTextBG,1);
			s.graphics.drawRect(0,0,w,h);
			s.graphics.endFill();
			s.buttonMode=true;
			s.mouseChildren = false;
			s.useHandCursor=true;
			var t:TextField = new TextField();
			t.width=w;
			t.height=h;
			t.selectable = false;
			t.embedFonts = true;
			t.text = txt;
			t.setTextFormat(btnTextFormat);
			t.defaultTextFormat = btnTextFormat;
			t.wordWrap = false;
			t.multiline=false;
			s.addChild(t);
			return s;
		}
    }
}

 

SOM.as

package {
	import flash.display.Bitmap;
	import flash.display.BitmapData;
	import flash.display.Sprite;
	import flash.geom.Point;
	import flash.geom.Rectangle;
	public class SOM extends Sprite {
		public var mapWidth:int;
		public var mapHeight:int;
		public var nodes:Array;
		public var radius:Number;
		public var timeConstant:Number;
		public var learnRate:Number = 0.05;
		public var inputDimension:int;
		private var pixPerNodeW:Number;
		private var pixPerNodeH:Number;
		
		private var canvasWidth:int;
		private var canvasHeight:int;
		private var canvasData:BitmapData;
		private var canvas:Bitmap;
		
		public var learnDecay:Number;
		public var radiusDecay:Number;
		
		/*	constructor	*/
		public function SOM(w:int,h:int,n:int,mapW:int,mapH:int):void {
			mapWidth = w;
			mapHeight = h;
			radius = (h + w) / 2;
			inputDimension = n;
			canvasWidth = mapW;
			canvasHeight = mapH;
			canvasData = new BitmapData(canvasWidth,canvasHeight,false,0x000000);
			canvas = new Bitmap(canvasData);
			addChild(canvas);
			
		}
		/*	initialize the map	*/
		public function init(iterations:int,w:int,h:int):void {
			mapWidth = w;
			mapHeight = h;
			radius = (h + w) / 2;
			pixPerNodeW = canvasWidth/mapWidth;
			pixPerNodeH = canvasHeight/mapHeight;
			nodes = [];
			for(var i:int = 0; i < mapHeight; i++){
				nodes[i] = [];
				for(var j:int = 0; j < mapWidth; j++) {
					nodes[i][j] = new Node(inputDimension, mapHeight, mapWidth);
					nodes[i][j].x = i;
					nodes[i][j].y = j;
				}//for j
			}//for i
			timeConstant = iterations/Math.log(radius);
			learnDecay = learnRate;
			radiusDecay = (mapWidth + mapHeight) / 2;
		}
		/*	iterate through and update the weights of each node	*/
		public function train(i:int,w:Array):void {  
			radiusDecay = radius*Math.exp(-(i/timeConstant));
			learnDecay = learnRate*Math.exp(-(i/timeConstant));
			//get best matching unit
			var ndxComposite:int = bestMatch(w);
			var x:int = ndxComposite >> 16;
			var y:int = ndxComposite & 0x0000FFFF;
			//scale best match and neighbors...
			for(var a:int = 0; a < mapHeight; a++) {
				for(var b:int = 0; b < mapWidth; b++) {
					var d:Number = dist(nodes[x][y].x, nodes[x][y].y, nodes[a][b].x, nodes[a][b].y);
					var influence:Number = Math.exp((-1 * Math.pow(d,2)) / (2*radiusDecay*i));
					if (d < radiusDecay) {      
						for(var k:int = 0; k < inputDimension; k++) {
							nodes[a][b].w[k] += influence * learnDecay * (w[k] - nodes[a][b].w[k]);
						}//for k
					}	//if d
				} //for j
			} // for i
		} // train()
		
		
		/*	functions used by training method, for calculating node weights and distances	*/
		public function dist(x1:Number,y1:Number,x2:Number,y2:Number):Number {
			return Math.sqrt( Math.pow(x2 - x1,2) + Math.pow(y2 - y1,2) );
		}
		public function distance(node1:Node, node2:Node):Number {
			return Math.sqrt( Math.pow(node2.x - node1.x,2) + Math.pow(node2.y - node1.y,2) );	
		}
		public function bestMatch(w:Array):int {
			var minDist:Number = Math.sqrt(inputDimension);
			var minIndex:int = 0;
			for (var i:int = 0; i < mapHeight; i++) {
				for (var j:int = 0; j < mapWidth; j++) {
				var tmp:Number = weight_distance(nodes[i][j].w, w);
					if (tmp < minDist) {
						minDist = tmp;
						minIndex = (i << 16) + j;
					}  //if
				} //for j
			} //for i
			return minIndex;
		}
		public function weight_distance(x:Array, y:Array):Number {
			if (x.length != y.length) {
				//	trace("Error in SOM::distance(): array lengths don't match");
			}
			var tmp:Number = 0.0;
			for(var i:int = 0; i < x.length; i++) {
				tmp += Math.pow( (x[i] - y[i]),2);
			}
			tmp = Math.sqrt(tmp);
			return tmp;
		}
		
		/*	render node information to the screen	*/
		public function render():void {
			for(var i:int = 0; i < mapWidth; i++) {
				for(var j:int = 0; j < mapHeight; j++) {
					var r:Number = (nodes[i][j].w[0]*255);
					var g:Number = (nodes[i][j].w[1]*255);
					var b:Number = (nodes[i][j].w[2]*255);
					var c:Number = r << 16 ^ g << 8 ^ b;
					canvasData.fillRect(new Rectangle(i*pixPerNodeW, j*pixPerNodeH, pixPerNodeW, pixPerNodeH),c);
				} // for j
			} // for i
		} // render()
	}
}

 

Node.as

package {
	public class Node {
		public var x:int;
		public var y:int;
		public var weightCount:int;
		public var w:Array;
		public function Node(n:int,X:int,Y:int):void {
			x = X;
			y = Y;
			weightCount = n;
			w = [];
			for(var i:int = 0;i<weightCount;i++) {
				w.push(Math.random()*.5+.25);
			}
		}
	}
}

 

Styling Raphael.js Elements With CSS

on Mon, 04/16/2012 - 14:36

Recently finished up a project in which one of the major requirements was that everything be re-skinnable. This meant that every interface element needed to be styled through the style sheet. Swap out a single file to completely change the look of the site.

In theory, this shouldn't be a problem; that is the raison d'etre for Cascading Style Sheets. Where things got  little complicated, however, was in the many, many charts created using Raphael.js. Even the colors used therein needed to be accessible from the .css files.

Raphael produces SVG elements, which are added dynamically to the DOM. I found that the easiest way to style them was to, at the point of creating the individual elements, use Javascript (jQuery, in this case) to add class names. And that simply, everything works! See an example here. Reload the page to re-render the elements. Code follows:

<!doctype html>
<html>
	<head>
		<title>Styling Raphael.js Elements with CSS</title>
		<script type="text/javascript" src="jquery-1.7.1.min_.js"></script>
		<script type="text/javascript" src="raphael-min.js"></script>
		<script type="text/javascript">
			var r1,r2,i
			$(document).ready(function(){
				r1 = new Raphael('raph1',320,320);
				for(i=0;i<50;i++) {
					var s1 = Math.round(Math.random()*300)+10;
					var s2 = Math.round(Math.random()*300)+10;
					var e1 = Math.round(Math.random()*300)+10;
					var e2 = Math.round(Math.random()*300)+10;
					var s = Math.round(Math.random()*5);
					var c = Math.round(Math.random()*5);
					var p = "M"+s1+","+s2+"L"+e1+","+e2;
					var out = r1.path(p).attr({"stroke-width":s});
					$(out.node).attr('class','c'+c);
				}
				r2 = new Raphael('raph2',320,320);
				for(i=0;i<50;i++) {
					var x = Math.round(Math.random()*320);
					var y = Math.round(Math.random()*320);
					var r = Math.round(Math.random()*32);
					var s = Math.round(Math.random()*5);
					var c = Math.round(Math.random()*5);
					var f = Math.round(Math.random()*5);
					var out = r2.circle(x,y,r).attr({"stroke-width":s});
					$(out.node).attr('class','c'+c + ' f'+f);
				}
			});
		</script>
		<style type="text/css">
			* {margin:0;padding:0;}
			h4 {margin:20px 20px 0 20px;}
			.demo {width:320px;height:320px;margin:5px 20px 20px 20px;border:1px solid #cccccc;}
			.c0 {stroke:#ff0000;}
			.c1 {stroke:#00ff00;}
			.c2 {stroke:#0000ff;}
			.c3 {stroke:#ffff00;}
			.c4 {stroke:#ff00ff;}
			.c5 {stroke:#00ffff;}
			
			.f0 {fill:#222222;}
			.f1 {fill:#444444;}
			.f2 {fill:#666666;}
			.f3 {fill:#888888;}
			.f4 {fill:#aaaaaa;}
			.f5 {fill:#cccccc;}
		</style>
	</head>
	<body>
		<h4>Styling stroke color</h4>
		<div class="demo" id="raph1"></div>
		<h4>Styling stroke color and fill color</h4>
		<div class="demo" id="raph2"></div>
	</body>
</html>

and so forth. CSS classes and IDs work the same for SVG elements as they do for HTML elements. The big difference is that SVG styles which mimic HTML styles use different key words. Where you would set a background color on a HTML element using background-color:#cccccc, in SVG you would use fill:#cccccc. Stroke is the SVG version of border.

Here is a short list of helpful links for styling SVG with CSS:

SVG and CSS

Style reference at Mozilla Developer Network

3D Langton's Ant, in Actionscript 3 Using Away3d

on Thu, 04/12/2012 - 17:23

Fast on the heels of the 3D Langton's Ants in Javascript  using Three.js, here is a version done in Actionscript 3 using Away3d. This will look better on faster computers. Click the image to launch the experiment.

Other than some additional rotation around the main axis, it is identical to the Javascript version, including a glitch that kicks in somewhere around 1200 cubes. In the Javascript version, Chrome would crash at around 700 cubes. In this version, it starts to get a little glitchy at 1600, then progressively more glitchy until it eventually stops updating the screen completely. Oddly, the script continues to run; you will be able to see the number of cubes increment in the upper left corner. I am not sure if this is a hard limit built into Away3d, or the Flash 3D API, or if there is a memory limit of some kind being reached. I suspect - based on the occasional warnings which popped up during development - that it is a hard-coded polygon limit within Away3d. There is probably some way around it, but I don't (yet) have the know-how to go in and fix it.

Anyway, here is the code for the experiment. Comment out any lines which use the "org.eccesignum.*" files; they assume you have the code for my custom InfoPanel in your library path.

package {
	import away3d.cameras.Camera3D;
	import away3d.containers.ObjectContainer3D;
	import away3d.containers.Scene3D;
	import away3d.containers.View3D;
	import away3d.entities.Mesh;
	import away3d.lights.DirectionalLight;
	import away3d.lights.PointLight;
	import away3d.materials.ColorMaterial;
	import away3d.materials.lightpickers.*;
	import away3d.primitives.SphereGeometry;
	import away3d.primitives.CubeGeometry;
	
	import flash.display.Sprite;
	import flash.display.StageAlign;
	import flash.display.StageScaleMode;
	import flash.events.Event;
	import flash.events.MouseEvent;
	import flash.events.TimerEvent;
	import flash.geom.Vector3D;
	import flash.utils.Timer;
	
	import org.eccesignum.utilities.InfoPanel;
	
	[SWF(width=640,height=480,frameRate=32,backgroundColor=0x000000)]
	
	public class Main extends Sprite {
		internal var _info:InfoPanel;
		private var view:View3D;
		private var cubeContainer:ObjectContainer3D;
		private var scene:Scene3D;
		private var camera:Camera3D;
		private var directionalLight:DirectionalLight;
		private var lightPicker:StaticLightPicker
		private var cMaterial:ColorMaterial;
		private var antX:Number = 32,
			antY:Number = 32,
			antZ:Number = 32,
			nextX:Number,
			nextY:Number,
			nextZ:Number,
			cellsX:int = 64,
			cellsY:int = 64,
			cellsZ:int = 64,
			cellWidth:int = 8,
			cellHeight:int = 8,
			cellDepth:int = 8,
			antSize:int = 7,
			maxDirections:Number = 8,
			colorMultiplier:Number = Math.round(256/cellsX),
			xOff:Number = cellsX/2*cellWidth,
			yOff:Number = cellsY/2*cellHeight,
			zOff:Number = cellsZ/2*cellDepth,
			objects:Array,
			antDirection:Number = 1,
			filledCells:int = 0;
		
		public function Main():void {
			addEventListener(Event.ADDED_TO_STAGE,onAddedToStage);
		}
		private function onAddedToStage(e:Event):void {
			removeEventListener(Event.ADDED_TO_STAGE,onAddedToStage);
			stage.scaleMode = StageScaleMode.NO_SCALE;
			stage.align = StageAlign.TOP_LEFT;
			init();
		}
		private function init():void {
			_info = new InfoPanel(this,100,50);
			scene = new Scene3D();
			camera = new Camera3D();
			view = new View3D(null,camera);
			view.antiAlias = 2;
			camera.x = 0;
			camera.z = 150;
			camera.y = -300;
			cubeContainer = new ObjectContainer3D();
			cubeContainer.rotationY=0;
			cubeContainer.rotationZ=45;
			
			directionalLight = new DirectionalLight(0,150,-300);
			directionalLight.diffuse = 1;
			directionalLight.specular = 0.3;
			directionalLight.color=0xffffff;
			scene.addChild(directionalLight);
			lightPicker = new StaticLightPicker([directionalLight]);
			
			cMaterial = new ColorMaterial(0x999999);
			cMaterial.lightPicker  = lightPicker;
			
			scene.addChild(cubeContainer);
			camera.lookAt(new Vector3D(0,0,0));
			view.scene = scene;
			addChild(view);

			objects = new Array(cellsX);
			for(var i:int=0;i<objects.length;i++) {
				objects[i] = new Array(cellsY);
				for(var j:int=0;j<objects[i].length;j++) {
					objects[i][j] = new Array(cellsZ);
				}
			}
			view.render();
			addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME,onEnterFrame);
		}
		private function onEnterFrame(e:Event):void {
			if(!objects[antX][antY][antZ]) {
				antDirection++;
				if(antDirection == maxDirections) antDirection = 0;
				addObject(antX,antY,antZ);
			} else {
				removeObject(antX,antY,antZ);
				antDirection--;
				if(antDirection == -1) antDirection = maxDirections-1;
			}
			switch(antDirection) {
				case 0:
					antZ--;
					break;
				case 1:
					antX++;
					break;
				case 2:
					antY++;
					break;
				case 3:
					antX--;
					break;
				case 4:
					antZ++;
					break;
				case 5:
					antX++;
					break;
				case 6:
					antY--;
					break;
				case 7:
					antX--;
					break;
				default:
					break;
			}
			if(antY < 0) antY += cellsY;
			if(antY >= cellsY) antY -= cellsY;
			if(antX < 0) antX += cellsX;
			if(antX >= cellsX) antX -= cellsX;
			if(antZ < 0) antZ += cellsZ;
			if(antZ >= cellsZ) antZ -= cellsZ;

			cubeContainer.rotationZ+=.5;
			cubeContainer.rotationY+=.5;
			cubeContainer.rotationX+=.5;
			_info.update(filledCells.toString(),true);
			view.render();
		}
		private function addObject(x:int,y:int,z:int):void {
			var cGeometry:CubeGeometry = new CubeGeometry();
				cGeometry.width = antSize;
				cGeometry.height = antSize;
				cGeometry.depth = antSize;
			var cMesh:Mesh = new Mesh(cGeometry,cMaterial);
				cMesh.x = x*cellWidth-xOff;
				cMesh.y = y*cellHeight-yOff;
				cMesh.z = z*cellDepth-zOff;
			cubeContainer.addChild(cMesh);
			objects[x][y][z] = cMesh;
			filledCells++;
		}
		private function removeObject(x:int,y:int,z:int):void {
			cubeContainer.removeChild(objects[x][y][z]);
			objects[x][y][z].material.dispose();
			objects[x][y][z].dispose();
			objects[x][y][z] = null;
			filledCells--;
		}
		private function getRGB(r:int,g:int,b:int):int {
			var rgb:int = parseInt((r*colorMultiplier).toString(16) + (g*colorMultiplier).toString(16) + (b*colorMultiplier).toString(16),16);
			return rgb;
		}
			
	}
}

Feel free to use and modify the code to your heart's content. If you come up with anything nifty, post a link to it in the comments.

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