Neash/NME first release

I am pleased to announce the initial version of neash 0.1, that works with the latest version on NME, 0.3.2.
Neash allows the same code to be compiled for both the flash virtual machine and the neko virtual machine. NME provides the advanced vector rendering routines to emulate the flash9 API. You can download each of these packages using “haxelib install nme” and “haxelib install neash”.

The image here shows the same code running the the flash player, as well as a native win32 window. The code is in the samples area, and is as follows:

import neash.display.Sprite;
import neash.display.Shape;
import neash.geom.Matrix;

import neash.Timer;

class Clock extends Sprite
{
   var mCx:Float;
   var mCy:Float;
   var mRad:Float;

   var mMinuteHand:Shape;
   var mSecondHand:Shape;
   var mHourHand:Shape;

   public function new(inCx:Float, inCy:Float, inRad:Float)
   {
      super();

      neash.Lib.current.addChild(this);

      mCx = inCx;
      mCy = inCy;
      mRad = inRad;

      var gfx = graphics;
      for(i in 0...12)
      {
          gfx.beginFill(0x603030);
          gfx.lineStyle(0x000000);
          var theta = i * Math.PI * 2.0 / 12.0;
          var cos1 = Math.cos(theta-0.01);
          var sin1 = Math.sin(theta-0.01);
          var cos2 = Math.cos(theta+0.01);
          var sin2 = Math.sin(theta+0.01);

          gfx.moveTo( mCx + cos1*mRad,     mCy + sin1*mRad );
          gfx.lineTo( mCx + cos2*mRad,     mCy + sin2*mRad );
          gfx.lineTo( mCx + cos2*mRad*1.1, mCy + sin2*mRad*1.1 );
          gfx.lineTo( mCx + cos1*mRad*1.1, mCy + sin1*mRad*1.1 );
          gfx.lineTo( mCx + cos1*mRad,     mCy + sin1*mRad );
          gfx.endFill();
      }

      mSecondHand = CreateHand(mRad*0.02,mRad);
      mMinuteHand = CreateHand(mRad*0.05,mRad*0.75);
      mHourHand = CreateHand(mRad*0.1,mRad*0.5);

      var timer = new Timer(1000);
      var me = this;
      timer.run = function() { me.SetHandPositions(); }
      SetHandPositions();
   }

   function SetHandPositions()
   {
      var date = Date.now();

      var hour = date.getHours() % 12;
      var minute = date.getMinutes();
      var seconds = date.getSeconds();

      mSecondHand.rotation = seconds *360/60;
      mMinuteHand.rotation = (minute + seconds/60.0)  * 360/60;
      mHourHand.rotation =   (hour + minute/60.0 + seconds/3600.0) * 360/12;
   }

   function CreateHand(inWidth:Float, inLength:Float) : Shape
   {
      var result = new Shape();
      addChild(result);

      var gfx = result.graphics;

      gfx.beginFill(0x303060);
      gfx.moveTo(0,0);
      gfx.lineTo(-inWidth/2,-inWidth);
      gfx.lineTo(0,-inLength);
      gfx.lineTo(inWidth/2,-inWidth);
      gfx.lineTo(0,0);

      result.x = mCx;
      result.y = mCy;

      return result;
   }

   static public function main()
   {
      neash.Lib.Init("Clock",640,480);
      neash.Lib.SetBackgroundColour(0xffffff);

      new Clock(320,240,200);

      neash.Lib.Run();
   }
}

Porting this from a pure flash program involves:

1. Changing the “import” commands to replace “flash” with “neash”
2. Also changing from the “haxe.Timer” to the “neash.Timer”, which supports additional options.
3. The “main” routine must call “neash.Lib.Init( )” very early and at some point must call “neash.Lib.Run()”.
4. That’s it!

I’m looking at ways to remove point 1 using some compiler options, but this may not happen. Also note that the command-line for compiling requires “-lib neash” and, on the native platform, also requires “-lib nme”.

The clock example is really just to show timers working. NME runs the game loop as fast as it can at the moment, so timers are a bit pointless to some extent. This may change in the future.

The flash9 api coverage is a little thin at the moment. I have concentrated on flash.display.Graphics, including linear and radial gradients, bitmaps and line styles. However, some supporting things such as events and TextFields, are not well covered. Also note that some things (so far using a colour-alpha as a 32-bit int, eg #ffffffff) are not supported under neko.

Neash is currently only for flash9/neko compiling. Flash8 and JavaScript will only be supported if there is big need for it (basically if someone else wants to do it).

Neash does not have a binary component, so it works on platforms currently supported by NME. Namely windows and linux. Mac support will follow when NME is ported.

Neash was designed initally for games, and so is quite graphics-oriented. Here is an example showing the neash port of the “plotex” haxe module (you can get it with “haxelib install plotex”) running on windows.
I’m not sure if this necessarily useful, but it is fun in a dorky sort of a way. One of the porting problems was due to the fact that plotex already supports 3 out of the 4 haxe platforms, so it contains conditional compiles. As a rule of thumb, use neash where you would use flash9. So “#if flash9” becomes “#if (flash9||neko)”. Another issue was parameters passed from the html to the swf object. These are emulated in neash using command-line arguements.
The source code changes can be found here. Note:copyright retained by original author, see [plotex website](http://code.google.com/p/plotex/) for more details.