Thread: RR 03-01-09 ... Couple more things..

I've been writing some flash components found here:

http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/rr-s...3-15-09-a.html

for general purpose skin building, but I am starting to encounter some performance issues.

For instance , my media control button swf files get reloaded for each skin file, which is a waste of resources, as they are identical. I've tried to use 'discardable' in the skin files but this seems to be broken.

Ideally I would like rr to have a flag like 'reuse' for any swf file so that the next skin file could check if that particular swf file is already running to reuse it, possibly just chanhing it's position and size.

e.g. in my menu.skin

for my next track button I load the swf file thus:

F,621,540,58,58,"RFB1_Next_xx_NEXT_xx_xx_xx.swf"

the flag I wish to have would be:

F,621,540,58,58,"RFB1_Next_xx_NEXT_xx_xx_xx.swf",R EUSE

That way when I load my audio_player skin with:

F,621,540,58,58,"RFB1_Next_xx_NEXT_xx_xx_xx.swf"

rr would detect it already loaded and reuse it as opposed to opening a new instance of it.

Is this possible MitchJS, Guino, Sonic?

Originally Posted by pcpete

I've been writing some flash components found here:

http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/rr-s...3-15-09-a.html

for general purpose skin building, but I am starting to encounter some performance issues.

For instance , my media control button swf files get reloaded for each skin file, which is a waste of resources, as they are identical. I've tried to use 'discardable' in the skin files but this seems to be broken.

Ideally I would like rr to have a flag like 'reuse' for any swf file so that the next skin file could check if that particular swf file is already running to reuse it, possibly just chanhing it's position and size.

e.g. in my menu.skin

for my next track button I load the swf file thus:

F,621,540,58,58,"RFB1_Next_xx_NEXT_xx_xx_xx.swf"

the flag I wish to have would be:

F,621,540,58,58,"RFB1_Next_xx_NEXT_xx_xx_xx.swf",R EUSE

That way when I load my audio_player skin with:

F,621,540,58,58,"RFB1_Next_xx_NEXT_xx_xx_xx.swf"

rr would detect it already loaded and reuse it as opposed to opening a new instance of it.

Is this possible MitchJS, Guino, Sonic?

not possible as far as i know. Its going to be reloaded for each skin file opened. There's a lot that could be implemented to improve on flash concepts in RR.. its probably just not worth it now. I started months ago to tinker with RR's drawing of flash in order to reduce overhead and optimize some things but when you're working with an outdated source and run into problems you dont know if its your code thats the problem or flash version compatibility.

Thx Sonic, not the answer I was hoping for

So you've looked at the source, did you try to implement something like I was talking about?

Actually, the default for loading swf should be to reuse the file if it's already loaded.

If we worked on this could we submit the code to Mitch/Guino to update the more current rr code?

I think a flash component based skin has a lot of potential, but the performance has to be improved....what do you think?

Originally Posted by pcpete

Thx Sonic, not the answer I was hoping for

So you've looked at the source, did you try to implement something like I was talking about?

Actually, the default for loading swf should be to reuse the file if it's already loaded.

If we worked on this could we submit the code to Mitch/Guino to update the more current rr code?

I think a flash component based skin has a lot of potential, but the performance has to be improved....what do you think?

I think it has tremendous potential and i award you for trying this new path. Unfortunately i didnt get as far as to check out how/why rr loads each .swf with each skin load.. i got as far as attempting to get rr to not redraw flash unless it was instructed before i got frustrated. Like i said this was several months back. Now i dont even have a copy of the 2007 source. Guess i'm not as vested in the project as i once was.

Ok, hopefully mitch or guino will chime in and let us know how viable this may be.

Mitch , Guino, (Mitchino ) is what I'm suggesting crazy or is it doable?

I can work on the source code if I can get my hands on it....

a skin is just a bunch of graphics on a windows form
a flash item, is a flash object embedded on the form
when a skin is loaded, each flash item is a OBJECT, that is created and loaded
the more objects, the more resources being used
so much, that i bet it slows a pc way down
each form(skin) has its own FLASH object array...
so a object on from a is not the same object on from b
even if they use the same movie

i dont know, if u say loaded a bunch of objects up, and just copied them from form to form, if that would even be possible

meaning, have a global set of flash objects, that are avail to ALL forms(skins)
that are already loaded with movies...

this might be possible

PC, im open to the conversation, i am not up to speed on flash
we can go 1 on 1 with this...

im not very skilled on the skin stuff in RR, im much better at the CORE stuff
gunio, could toss 2cents in here

And where do I insert my $.02???

@mitch... Thats what I was thinking...then might be able to just point to the global array if "resue" was defined? Sounds doable..but IDK!

i expect a bit more then 2cents from you!
but i figured you know about what i know about the graphic engine in rr
which is little to nothing....
i have some other things i want to fix up... i will look at this
i will need some flash skins, i got nothin

For this your probably going to want a skin thats contains flash pieces, not a complete flash skin(ie sonics)

Oh, think that I know or at least understand more than you think...