3Point Shootout / more wmode nonsense

[MikeMD]

http://www.deusx.com/basketball/3pt.html

Somebody at adobe has been screwing with newer players and wmode.

Been using it since it's been available and never had problems in mouse only games. This is not a major one, but you will see that player sometimes disappears for a split second when you click on him right after a release.
Doesn't happen if wmode is not used.

I think I figured out why it does it, will report after a test, but it doesn't make any sense. It's definitelly a bug in adobe's player.

[renderhjs]

only IE-suckers get the xtra- fps gain- others get frustration because controls do not work as they are intended to be.
Imo. w-mode is as bad as browser detection- its crippeling standards to the benefit for the poor internet users

[Squize]

"IE-suckers"

What, over 80% of everyone using the net ?

Our target audience is Joe Public, not people with FF or Opera or whatever the hell else there is.
I don't like excluding possible users, it goes against what I believe the net to be, but on the other hand if by using something like wmode ( And you have an alternative for non-IE users ) you're improving the experience for 80% of your users, then it would be just standards snobbery not to do so.

Squize.

[8bitjeff]

At work, when I look at the browser stats for the Barbie and Hotwheels sites, we always have 80+% IE usage. That ls because kids who play online games usually have a hand-me-down computer (XP with IE 6.0). Even though more Macs are being sold and FF has a huge installed base, the kiddie game players are mostly IE on XP.

But on my personal site it is closer to 60% Firefox and 40% IE. Not too many kids come to read tutorials on BitmapData and articles on old geezers playing Amiga/ST games.

That being said, I use FF exclusively, but make sure to test everything in IE 7 and FF 2.

[MikeMD]

only IE-suckers get the xtra- fps gain- others get frustration because controls do not work as they are intended to be.

Others get frustration because they choose to use inferior browsers ( when it comes to dealing with flash )

wmode has existed before firefox, opera or safari, so to not use it just because newer browsers can't deal with it would be ridiculous ( it's their own fault ). Anyway, I've been using it for almost 10 years without problems. You simply use it as default and then give people who do not want to use IE an alternative link. Firefox should play this game just fine, no need for a non-wmode page.

IE-suckers get the xtra- fps gain

wmode doesn't give you fps gain. It plays at same frame rate as the game would play in a standalone player. That is exactly the way it should be.

About this game. Has anybody noticed player disapperaing occasionally?
I narrowed it down to a combination of slowdown with wmode ( slower pcs ).

It's already been fixed, and if anybody is interested, because you may run into it, this is how:
Glitch happens when you use onMouseDown, but it doesn't happen if you replace this with a regular button and use on ( release ) to trigger same actionscript.

It's not a bug in the game, player clip does not use visibility or anything like that, all of the frames contain player image, and there is just no way he should disappear even for a nanosecond. It's just one of those flash things,and it's relatively new. This is the first time in almost 10 years I've noticed occasional glitches when using wmode with mouse controlled games.
Flash player just fails to draw the player on screen ( occasionally, and it looks just like a quick flash ) when on MouseDown is triggered. Not sure what other factors are in play ( because other games use it just fine even with wmode ), but that is what it is here, and the easy fix is to use a button instead.

If anybody wants to report speed of the game on their machine, or anything else, feel free. It's heavy on animation, but plays at full 30 fps on a few machine I tested ( all around 2ghz ).

[mr_malee]

everybody should move to AS3 and flash player 9, wmode bug seems to be gone (in my tests anyway)

[tomsamson]

nay,there are still various issues with wmode,different ones with different browsers. for example even several IE versions have the bug,too that when you embed it with wmode transparent/opaque setting and the page is lengthy enough to show a scrollbar then the flash content never gets focus in the way that it doesn´t scroll the page anymore when you press the arrow keys.
Then there are various issues with various browser types where key detection doesn´t work anymore as dicussed here often (both just as example for various focus related bugs),then there are several ones where everything seems as usual,including the performance,you don´t get the expected performance boost.
So yeah,all in all its of course awesome to have something which gives one the same performance in the browser as in standalone player, sadly the browser creators still aren´t up to it to deliver a fully working solution, so yeah,unless you only support one specific browser type/version or write lots of embedding code for lots of browser types its just no good to use wmode.

[tomsamson]

to MikeMD: btw, i just tried it with your game and yup, the bug where even if i click the flash window to give it focus still the scrollbar of the browser scrolls when i press arrow keys bug happens with your game/embed code in my latest IE,too. Now of course that´s no biggy with your game as it doesn´t rely heavily on arrow keys and your page layout is made so that for most people,unless they resize the browser window or have a really low resolution they wouldn´t get scrollbars in the browser,but yeah,it shows that there are sadly various issues with wmode even with IE (not pointing IE out there as its so awesome,just pointing it out because its meant to have least issues with wmode).

[MikeMD]

everybody should move to AS3 and flash player 9, wmode bug seems to be gone (in my tests anyway)

Which bug?

The problem is that it's very unpredictable depending on player version, browser, and time of day you play ( and seems like other factors as well ) .

Since I always try to go for mouse control only, it's still fine ( when you have to use keys it's a different story ). But, as I said this is the first time in almost 10 years that I've noticed weird things ( twice in the past couple of months ) with mouse only control. In both cases figured out a way around it, but, it just makes no sense that it should behave as it did.