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jlkpro — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 14:07:12 CST

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Make a Game!

BrettRPrice — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 09:25:57 CST

So you're a little antsy and want to dive in. OK. Click here. The rest of this page will help explain what that template does if you need some help.

The Editor

When the editor first opens, you'll see that there is a little bit of text telling you how to save the game so that you have your own copy. Once you save it, you will be working in your own new game.

The "Click to Continue" Object

When creating games, it's very common that you want to keep track of whether or not the game is currently playing, or if it is in a "paused" state. The "Click to Continue" object controls this. When the player clicks on the world, this object will disappear, and the World's "playing" property will be set to true.

Defining Your Own Playing Logic

Typically you don't want to create game logic that runs when the game is in the "paused" state. To ensure this, when you are creating this type of logic, just use an "if" statement that checks whether or not the World's playing property is set to true. So first create a new behavior (for this example, I just made on on a key press) and choose the right event trigger for your behavior.

Click on the Logic tab. The "if" statement should be the first one. Drag it over to the right-hand panel:

Now click on the "actors" tab, and click on the "World" instance to get to the World properties:

Scroll down to the "playing" property and drag it into the "if" statement, where the "true" value currently is located:

Now any logic that you want to add should go into that if statement, and it will never run until the user clicks the mouse to start the game.

Adding Objects

You can either start by creating your own objects using the tools on the Builder menu, or you can search the community from the Explorer menu (on the right) and dragging actors into your world. Or, you can create your own objects and use the Sharendipity community to find images, behaviors, etc. for your object.

Setting the Score

Once you've figured out how to control your gameplay, you'll want to know how to set the score. It's pretty simple really. All we need to do is modify the world's score property.

You'll probably be adding to the score, so first click on the Logic tab, and then scroll down to the "add" statement. Drag that over into your right-hand panel. You can enter your own value into the add statement by dragging it into the location where the "1" is, or you can drag another property reference over there.

Now navigate to the World properties like you did for your game logic by first clicking on the actors tab, and then clicking on the World instance:

Now scroll down to score and drag it into the right-hand side of the "add" statement and you should end up with this:

Ending the Game

There is also a "lives" property on the World. Just create your own logic as before so that you can add -1 to the World's "lives" property when you want to. When that value reaches zero, an animated "Game Over" object will pop up.

The "Game Over" object takes care of using the World's "score" property to submit the player's score to the server. Then, after a second or two, the stock Sharendipity High Scores dialog will display signifying the end of the game. The player will be given the option to replay at that point. You don't need to deal with any of the logic!

Publish!

Be sure to publish your game so that everyone can see it! Just click on the Director menu, and click on Profile:

The following dialog will display with your application's information. Be sure to update the name and the description, and add an icon. Adding tags may help people find it easier too (is it a "shooter" style game? or a "puzzle" game?) Then check the box to make your application public and save it!

test

BrettRPrice — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 09:19:07 CST

Brett Price

Getting Started

greg.tracy — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 16:39:48 CDT

The Sharendipity platform is feature rich, but can be misunderstood the first time you venture into the creation mode. At the core of it, however, there are just a few basic concepts, that once understood, provide a platform for quickly and easily making some very fun content.

Workspace Basics

The Sharendipity creator workspace is used for creating new applications. It's interface is driven through the character set at the bottom of the screen.

Clicking on each of them reveals a set of menus to access Sharendipity's features...

The Director will help guide you through management of high-level application actions. This includes saving, sharing, and opening applications as well access to achievements and properties that are stored for the respective application.

The Astronaut provides access to all of your properties and behaviors for the active World being edited.

The Builder provides access to the basic building tools for creating actors in the World including circles, rectangles, and lines. It also provides access to the zoom and pan tools.

The Explorer acts as a gateway to the entire Sharendipity community. Using the explorer, you can search for reusable images, actors, behaviors, actions, and types. It also gives you access to specific objects you've created within your application that have not been shared out.

Creation/Editing Workflow

Keep in mind that the workspace is ''alive'' by default. That is, application construction can happen while it is being executed. There is no compilation step! This can lead to lots of fun and even a few serendipitous moments. But it can lead to some confusion as well. If you'd like to get out of (or into) play mode, toggle the play/pause control located just above the Director character in the lower left-hand corner.

Everything is accessible regardless of the mode. For instance:

You can draw new objects using the Builder's drawing tools while other objects are bouncing around.
You can modify an object's properties as it is bouncing around.
You can change the World's gravity, background color, or apply a background image
You can drag in objects from the search results and they immediately interact with the objects around them.

Some of the important properties that will affect all objects in the workspace are the gravity and boundary rules. These (and others) can be found in the World->Properties... menu within the Astronaut.

Physics properties determine the gravity in the World. You can control whether gravity is on or off, its direction, and its strength. (the latter two are controlled by the single vector property,Gravity. The default (0,-981) points down.
World Boundaries controls the behavior of objects when they reach the perimeter of the world. By default, object are destroyed.

Community Explorer

The Explorer character in the lower right-hand corner is the primary interface to the assets shared throughout the Sharendipity community. Use this gallery to search for game characters, graphics, sounds, behaviors, and action sets. If you'd like to open an Application, use the Director menu.

Use the horizontal tabs to apply filters to the search results. This will help narrow down the results by type. You can also search for particular terms as well. The search will use names, descriptions and tags to find the assets you are searching for. Just remember that the "type" filter is always being applied when you are searching. You need to drag and drop the results out of the explorer window to use them in your application.

Use the "Local" tab to access the assets that are local to your application. Note that this tab will also list remote assets that have been loaded as well. And if you edit them, you will be editing the remote copy - NOT the local copy.

Any asset within your Sharendiptiy creation (objects, behaviors, images, functions, etc.) can be shared back using the share option on the respective asset's menu. If a complete application is saved, it too will be available in the community gallery for others to access. In all cases, you control the public visibility at the time you save your work.

Sharendipity Home

90boy — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 22:32:50 CST

I Want To Make A Game!!! (jump right in!).

Check it out! If you are creating behaviors for the first time, perhaps the best resource after the tutorials is the object referencing page. You'll learn all about creating and modifying objects, and the most efficient way to do so.

Getting Started

Our Getting Started guide introduces you to some of the basics of our unique casual game creator.

Resources and Tutorials

Learn more about the Sharendipity tools through these tutorials and videos, or find the answer to your question on our FAQ page.

Documentation

Details on how to use the Sharendipity creation tools to build great content. We talk about all of the basic building blocks of the Sharendipity creation tool including the definition of object properties, behaviors of objects, and integrating web services.

Game Elements

Curious how to add scoring to your game? This page documents scoring and other common elements that go into the creation of a game.

Copyright Information

Copyrights and credits for some of the components used in building Sharendipity.

Sharendipity Website

Featured Video

image carousel

anclux — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 13:12:31 CST

There is no abstract available for this page revision.

Video Tutorials

mr.orr — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 14:53:51 CDT

This page contains several video tutorials to help you make your own games in Sharendipity.

Create a Space Shooter in Less than 10 Minutes

This video shows the creation of a simple space shooter game. You can even edit the saved game here.

Creating a Flickr Photo Stream

This video shows in fast motion how a Flickr Stream was created. It uses a combination of homemade components as well as the re-use of some Flickr web services. You can find the fully customizable version of this application here.

Creating a Customizable Application

This video shows in fast motion how the above Flickr app was converted into a customizable application.

User Components

emanz3 — Sat, 15 May 2010 15:19:20 CDT

1

Guitarman77897 — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 08:40:10 CDT

<<GAME TITLE>> WEAPONS

CLICK THE EASYEDIT BUTTON ABOVE TO ADD YOUR FAVORITE WEAPON TO THE LIST!

■ HOT TIPS: LEARN HOW TO ADD IMAGES TO THIS PAGE

	<<WEAPON NAME>>
	Description: --
	Stats: --
	Pros: --	Cons: --
	Level: --
	Fan review: --

	<<WEAPON NAME>>
	Description: --
	Stats: --
	Pros: --	Cons: --
	Level: --
	Fan review: --

	<<WEAPON NAME>>
	Description: --
	Stats: --
	Pros: --	Cons: --
	Level: --
	Fan review: --

	<<WEAPON NAME>>
	Description: --
	Stats: --
	Pros: --	Cons: --
	Level: --
	Fan review: --

	<<WEAPON NAME>>
	Description: --
	Stats: --
	Pros: --	Cons: --
	Level: --
	Fan review: --

	<<WEAPON NAME>>
	Description: --
	Stats: --
	Pros: --	Cons: --
	Level: --
	Fan review: --

	<<WEAPON NAME>>
	Description: --
	Stats: --
	Pros: --	Cons: --
	Level: --
	Fan review: --

	<<WEAPON NAME>>
	Description: --
	Stats: --
	Pros: --	Cons: --
	Level: --
	Fan review: --

	<<WEAPON NAME>>
	Description: --
	Stats: --
	Pros: --	Cons: --
	Level: --
	Fan review: --

	<<WEAPON NAME>>
	Description: --
	Stats: --
	Pros: --	Cons: --
	Level: --
	Fan review: --

	<<WEAPON NAME>>
	Description: --
	Stats: --
	Pros: --	Cons: --
	Level: --
	Fan review: --

Resources and Tutorials

triptych — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 13:21:58 CDT

Video Tutorials

These video tutorials provide great visual aids demonstrating the construction tools within Sharendipity.

Links

Google group for sharendipity developers.

FAQ

greg.tracy — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 15:14:47 CDT

This page is an on-going effort to collect the answers to frequently-asked questions about Sharendipity. If you can't find an answer to your question, please send us a note at alpha@sharendipity.com

Creation Tools

Can I access the mouse location inside a behavior?

You can if you are operating inside a behavior that was triggered by a mouse event filter. Inside the behavior/method builder, go to the Values tab and select other. This provides access to the details of the event including x/y position. Just click on the Event button to get at the details. See the image below.

More details to the event filter page

Why does every box and circle I draw fall to the ground?

Sharendipity has a built-in physics engine. The physics engine helps you with all kinds of interaction events including the management of collisions between objects, friction, elasticity, velocity, etc. One of the physics properties is gravity. You can turn it on/off as well as control the magnitude and direction of gravity (for instance, you could have some fun by flipping gravity upside down).

There are two ways you can control how objects behave relative to gravity.

1. You can choose to disable gravity for the entire World. You'll find this property by clicking on the astronaut character and selection "Properties..."

2. You can choose to have individual objects ignore gravity as well. To do this, open the properties for the respective object(s) and toggle the 'ignore gravity' flag.

What does the rewind button do? OR How do I restart my application?
The rewind button, located above the Director menu, will cause the application to reset to its initial state. Any object's that were created dynamically will be removed and all properties will be reset to their initial values.

Where do I define global variables?
You can either add them to your Application by opening its class editor. Click the Director menu and choose "Edit Class...". Then add new properties on the property tab.

An alternative is to add the property to your World. The process is the same except you access your World class by clicking on the Astronaut.

How do I import sound into my game?
When you use the "play sound" action, double-click the argument box (that specifies the sound to play). This will launch the Explorer window. You can select "New..." in the lower right-hand corner to upload a new sound or select a sound in the community.

What sound formats do you support?
We support WAV and MP3 formats. We don't recommend using files larger than 256k in your applications because they will have a negative impact on your user's experience.

How do I add high scores to my game?
There is a special action, "set high score", available in the behavior and method builders. You can pass in the integer value representing the score you'd like to save and it will be persisted to the server for your game. Check out the Game Elements page for more information on how to track scores, display them, and set high scores.

Why don't my high scores get saved when I'm creating my game?
Out of convenience and as a deterrent against cheating, we don't save any high scores that come from editor.

How do I change the position of an object that is created within my behavior?
When you've created a new object, always use reference displayed (in orange) on the right hand side of the action. That reference provides access to every property and method for the new object. Simply click on it once and the values panel will refresh with that object's details. Learn more about object referencing on our guidelines page.

Running Sharendipity

What browsers are supported?
We do know that Sharendipity runs well in both Firefox (2+) and Internet Explorer.

Saving Applications

Can other users see and edit my work?
When you save your creations, you have the choice to mark the object as "publicly visible." Choose this option if you want other people, including your friends, to be able to see what you've made. If another user with editing rights opens your creation, they will be able to save a copy of your object if they modify it. Otherwise, no, your creations can not be overwritten by other users. Long term, there will be much finer granularity for creation and editing.

Filter Definitions

greg.tracy — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 15:08:43 CDT

Define when a behavior's actions are executed.

Object Created
Object Destroyed
Key Event Filter
Timer
Collision Event
Object Modified
And/Or Filter
Mouse Event Filter

Mouse Event Filter

When you use a mouse event filter - "when the mouse is [pressed on] []" - you will have access to the position of the mouse when it was clicked. This true for the other mouse event types as well.

To access the position, choose the "other" menu inside the Values tab. The other menu always contains the details of the event.

Mouse event details include...

The actor under the mouse at the time the event fired
Whether or not the control key was pressed
Whether or not the shift key was pressed
The position vector in this World
The x position position
The y position

Properties

greg.tracy — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 10:27:23 CDT

There are two distinct views of your object properties and it's important to understand the distinguishing factors. Each actor in your World is an instance of a particular class, and there are different sets of properties depending on whether or not you are editing the instance in the World or the class definition itself (which affects all of the instances).

You can edit the instance's properties on the actor's primary menu.
You can edit the class's properties by selecting the "Edit Class..." option found on the instance menu or by accessing the class directly via the Explorer dialog.

Note that most changes you make to the classes' properties will affect every instance in the World. However, it will not affect any instance properties that have been modified. For example, the position property is always unique for an instance and will not change when modified in the class editor.

Properties Overview

Custom Properties

Custom properties are the unique, custom attributes that you can define for any object in the system. Each new property has a type associated with it as well as an initial value (the value the property takes each time the application is rewound or loaded).

Note: Any time you change a property's value by hand via the dialog (as opposed via a behavior), the value becomes the new initial state for the object.

Appearance

The appearance properties control general physical appearance as well as the object's visibility relative to other objects in the World.

draw_border - A boolean value that determines whether or not the border of the object is visible. This property overrides the actual color defined by line_color.
true : draw the object's border (default)
false : do not draw the border

fill_color - An RGBA value describing the color used to fill the object. The value can be entered by hand using the text field, or the color chooser can be clicked to choose a color visually.
the last number represents the transparencey of the color (the alpha)

filled - A boolean value that determines whether or not the object's fill color is applied.. This property overrides the actual color defined by fill_color.
true : draw the object's border (default)
false : do not draw the border

layer - An integer to describe the absolute positioning for the "painting" of an object. Object's with higher layers are show to be "on top of" of other objects.
By default, all object's have a layer of zero.

line_color - An RGBA value describing the color used to outline the object. The value can be entered by hand using the text field, or the color chooser can be clicked to choose a color visually.
the last number represents the transparencey of the color (the alpha)

text_color - An RGBA value describing the color used to outline the object. The value can be entered by hand using the text field, or the color chooser can be clicked to choose a color visually.

the last number represents the transparencey of the color (the alpha)

visible - A boolean describing whether or not the object is visible at all. Note that you can still select non-visible objects with the mouse.
This property is nice to use from a behavior when you want to temporarily hide the object without destroying it.

Position

The position property controls the location and direction of the object within the World. The best way to understand the coordinates is to simply experiment with locations.

orientation - The direction the object is pointed.
The default is zero degrees which points straight right.
You can use positive and negative numbers. Positive degrees will rotate the object counter-clockwise...
90 degrees points up
180 degrees points left
270 degrees points down
360 degrees points right

position - The location of the object in the World represented by an x and y vector coordinate system.
The center of the World always has a position of 0,0!

Image

Images can be applied directly to core components such as rectangles and circles by simply dragging them onto the object from your desktop. Images can also be dragged directly into the application gallery and they can be set and modified using behavior actions.

The property dialog provides a browse button so you can search your file system for the image to be applied. The thumbnail preview window also acts as a drop target so images can be dragged directly into this property dialog.

image_scaling_mode - Describes how the image is scaled within the object

fit : will force the image to fit as best as possible without changing its aspect ratio (default)
stretch : will force the image size to be equal to the size of the object independent of aspect ratio

fit_width : will force the image's width to be equal to that of the object regardless of the aspect ratio
fit_height : will force the image's height to be equal to that of the object regardless of the aspect ratio

hold_on_frame - Will freeze an animated image on a particular frame. If no frame is specified (the default), the animation will be active.

flip_horizontally - Rotates the image 180 degrees left to right.
false : no rotation applied (default)
true : apply rotation

flip_vertically - Rotates the image 180 degrees top to bottom.

false : no rotation applied (default)

true : apply rotation

image_anchor - Controls the location of the center of the image.

center : vertical/horizontal center of object (default)
north : top of object
south : bottom of object
east : left hand side of object
west : right hand side of object
northeast : top right hand corner of object
northwest : top left hand corner of object
southeast : bottom right hand corner of object
southwest : bottom left hand corner of object

Text

The text properties allow you to modify text being displayed inside the object. Note that if you'd like to use specific fonts, it is best to use graphic images since the specified font property may not be available on an end-user's machine.

This is a nice tool for testing, however. You can put all kinds of information in the text field to help explain how your application is running!

font - The font used to display the characters in the object's text field. Format is:
<font name> , <weight>, <font size>

text - Text field that contains the text to be displayed. It defaults to empty.

text_alignment - Alignment of the text relative to the object's width. The property editor provides the following options. Note, however, that if you are dynamically changing the anchor from within a behavior or method, you need to assign the numerical value (shown in parens).
center : horizontaly aligned in the center. (2)
left : left edge aligned. (0)
right : right edge aligned. (1)

text_anchor - Describes where the text starts within the object. The property editor provides the following options. Note, however, that if you are dynamically changing the anchor from within a behavior or method, you need to assign the numerical value (shown in parens).
center : vertical/horizontal center of object (1)
north : top of object (2)
south : bottom of object (3)
east : left hand side of object (4)
west : right hand side of object (5)
northeast : top right hand corner of object (6)
northwest : top left hand corner of object (7)
southeast : bottom right hand corner of object (8)
southwest : bottom left hand corner of object (9)

wrap_text - boolean value describing whether or not the text will wrap and stayed contained within the object itself.
true : wrap the text (default)
false : donot wrap the text

Physics

These properties control the physical properties of the underlying object. Modifying these properties will have an effect on how the object interacts with other objects in the World.

elasticity - determines the flexibility of the object when it collides with other objects.
defaults to 0.8
1.0 has perfect elasticity
0.0 has no elasticity

friction - the surface resistence for the object.
defaults to 0.8
1.0 has absolute friction
0.0 has no friction

ignore_collisions - determines whether or not the object will interact in a physical way to other objects in the World.
false : the object bounces off any other objectthat also has this property set to false (default).
true : the object will not collide with any other object in the system (it appears to pass right through it).

mass - the weight of the object.

motion_constraint - a vector that controls the direction an object is allowed to move. the first value is the horizontal constraint, and the second value controls the vertical constraint.
1.0, 1.0 means the object can move in any direction.
0.0, 1.0 means the object can only move in the vertical plane.
1.0, 0.0 means the object can only move in the horizontal plane.
0.0, 0.0 is equivalent to having the object pinned.

orientation_constraint - a boolean flag the controls whether or not the object can rotate when it collides with other objects.
false : freely rotate (default)
true : no rotation

pinned - a boolean flag the controls wither or not the object can move at all. For instance, if you don't want an object to fall when gravity is enabled, "pin it" in place.
false : position will be affected by colliding objects and the force of gravity (default).
true : object is stationary regardless of external forces.

rotational speed - determines how fast an object is rotating. A positive value indicates a counter-clockwise motion (as the angle increases as you move counter-clocwise away from 0), and a negative value indivates a clockwise motion.

speed - determines how fast an object is moving. the direction is always in line with the orientation of the object.

velocity - the vector describing the direction and magnitude of the speed.
Changing the speed will implictly change its velocity.
Changing the velocity willnot implicitly change its speed.

Geometry

Simple geometry of the underlying object. The actual properties available depend on the object type. All numbers are of type float, and use the global coordinate system of the World (for example, the default width of the World is 47.5).

Circle

radius - The radius of the circle (there is no current support for ellipses).

Rectangle

height - The height - in global coordinates - of the rectangle.

width - The width - in global coordinates - of the rectangle.

Line

height - Ignored.

jointLine - Ignored.

width - The length of the line.

Interaction

This only includes one field at the moment - grabbable - wich is a boolean and describes whether or not the user can select it with the mouse.

This is useful if when you are creating game content that you do not want your players moving around with the mouse. It can also be useful when you are editing and have overlapping objects. It's nice to make objects ungrabbable so you don't pick them up by accident.

Important caveats about this field... The property is currently applying itself to other mouse events in the editor that you may not expect. For example:

If an object is NOT grabbable, behaviors that filter mouse clicks on the object will beignored.
If an object is NOT grabbable, you cannot drop things on it. For example, you cannot drop images or behaviors from the search results like you normally would. You will have to use their specific editors to perform those actions.

Web Service How-to

greg.tracy — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 10:38:24 CDT

Several web service interfaces have been built and shared within the Sharendipity community including services for Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Posterous, and Google Docs. Using these components you can quickly and easily access the data from these sites/services.
But what happens if you can’t find the service you’re looking for? Or if you want to improve on one of the existing services and make a better one yourself? This post is here to help. We’ll walk you through some of the basic elements for building a new component that interfaces with an external web service. To get started, first launch the Sharendipity editor.

Create new object type

Creating a new type provides you with the ability to define custom assets that perform a particular job or store specific data. They don’t necessarily have to be a displayable actor inside your World. The definitions for these new assets are entirely up to you.
In the case of a web service, you’ll define the location of the service, describe inputs, and then define custom actions that let the users of your service interact with it.

Open the Explorer dialog and select New from the Types tab.
Name your new type. For example, “Twitter Service – public timeline”
Declare that your new type “is a REST Web Service” by clicking the + sign next to its name, and selecting the is a button. You can find the REST Web Service type by selecting Other… and navigating to the Local->Types tab in the Explorer that is launched. The following diagram highlights this navigation.

Default properties

Once you have the REST Web Service type defined, you must specify the details of your web service by initializing a couple of parameters.

URL : This property defines the location of the web service. You will need to consult the API documentation for the respective web service to find the URL for your respective web service type.
- For example, Twitter’s public timeline is: http://twitter.com/statuses/public_timeline.xml
proxied : This property defines whether or not your web service calls will be routed through the Sharendipity server. You are required to turn this on for any web service that hasn’t granted domain access for your application. This is part of Flash’s security model, and you’ll find that some services like Flickr’s allow access, but others like Twitter do not.
result : This property is not intended to be initialized. When the web service is called, the data returned from the call will be placed in this property.

Custom properties

Many web services have optional and required parameters. For instance, the Posterous API lets you specify the subdomain of the site you are reading from. In order to define parameters, you must define custom properties in your type that are of type REST Input.
Each REST Input has a name and value pair. The name value should be the parameter name as defined by the web service API you are trying to access. In the Posterous example, the name field is ‘hostname’. The value field carries your parameter value. When the web service is invoked, each REST Input is automatically appended to the end of the URL property.
If you were to look at the full URL when the service is invoked, you’d see something like the following:
http://posterous.com/api/readposts?hostname=gregtracy
As you are making calls to the web service, you can simply manipulate the value parameter of the REST Input to change your query to the respective web service.

Web service actions

By default, there is a single method defined for all web service types called invoke web service. This is the mechanism by which you initiate a call to your web service. It can be called internally as well as externally by users of your component.
Just like other objects in the system, you can create your own behaviors, methods, and properties for your new type. For instance, you may want to create your own invoke method which takes parameters that are passed to the web service. For example, passing in a user ID to a Facebook web service to specify the user whose profile you would like to access.

Referencing the service

Once you’ve defined your web service type, you can share it with the rest of the community with the Save option found in the object builder. Otherwise, the web service will be saved along with the application you’ve defined it in. Whether or not you share it, the new type can now be accessed from anywhere else in the application.

If you drag it into your World and drop it, you will be prompted to create a new custom property for the World.
You can drag it into a behavior or method and drop it to create a local variable inside your logic.
It will also be accessible from the Other tab when you define new properties anywhere within your application.

Just remember that if you don’t save the service by itself, you can only access is from the Local tab of the Explorer within the current application. If you do save it, it will appear in the Types tab for everyone.

Tips for better reuse

Creating an abstraction of the web services call is a nice feature by itself. However, it becomes most useful when you provide really easy access to the data that is returned. For instance, rather than simply providing the invoke web service call and letting the callers parse the data returned, try creating methods that do that parsing for them.

The Twitter service has a method that returns an array of Twitter Status types.
The Posterous service has a method that returns an array of Posterous Blog Post types.
The Facebook User service has a method that returns an array of Facebook User types.

Each of these services define new methods that call the invoke web service method internally and parse the return data automatically. This way, users of the services don’t have to worry about how any of the data is formatted.

Web Services

greg.tracy — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 10:27:27 CDT

Sharendipity is a great platform for visualizing third-party data, and it can be done via our REST web services.. This provides an opportunity to access data from an outside source and include it within your application. For example, you can display photographs from your Flickr account, access your Facebook account, or access weather and stock data.

Example Applications

Here are some of the existing examples...

Flickr Photo Slideshow Template (Flickr) : A customizable web widget that streams photos from Flickr based on a username and/or photo tags.
Flickr Scramble (Flickr) : A customizable puzzle game that uses a Flickr photo as the input to the puzzle.
Facebook Photo Browser (Facebook) : An application that lets you browse all of the photos in you entire Facebook social graph.
Facebook Photo Scramble (Facebook) : Like the Flickr example, this is a puzzle game except it uses a photo from your Facebook friends as the input to the puzzle.
Who Be Me? (Facebook) : This quiz game asks you to pair up random facts about your friends with the correct friend.
Facebook Photo Demo (Facebook) : A demo application that explains some of the integration points for the Facebook web services.
Posterous Photo Stream (Posterous) : A customizable web widget that streams photos from your Posterous blog.
All City Food Drive (Google Docs) : A widget that displays data stored in a Google spreadsheet.

Documented Examples

Facebook API : details on the specific bindings between Sharendipity and Facebook
Google Docs : example components used to access Google spreadsheet data

Creating your own web service interface

Interested in using web services yourself? You have one of two options...

Reuse and existing web service component created by other users. You'll find examples from Facebook, Flickr, Google, Twitter, Posterous, and others. The above example applications are great starting points to learn how some of these are being used today.
Create your own interface to your favorite web service. For step-by-step instructions, check out this how-to page.

Passing Parameters to an Application

dale.beermann — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 11:30:30 CDT

One of the really cool ways that you can integrate Sharendipity into your own web applications is by passing arguments into the Sharendipity player. This functionality allows you to incorporate data such as user session IDs or anything else managed by your own server into a running Sharendipity app.

Accessing Application Parameters

Accessing the parameters to your application is actually really simple. There is a method on the Application called "Get Application Parameter." Access the Application object by clicking on the "Actors" tab in the Values section of the Behavior or Method Builder. Click on the object called "Application" and scroll down to the section where the methods are listed. Just drag the method into the right-hand panel and enter the name of the parameter that you want to access:

Setting up the Embed Code

Now that you have your application set up, you just need to pass the application parameter to the embed code. For example, this is the embed code that is being used for the application we're working on here:
<object width="300" height="200" data="http://static.sharendipity.com/player.swf?aid=3371&appParam=Sharendipity%20Rocks!!!" type="application/x-shockwave-flash">
<param name="src" value="http://static.sharendipity.com/player.swf?aid=3371&appParam=Sharendipity%20Rocks!!!" />
</object>

When you publish your application, an embed code similar to the above one will be given to you so that you can put your application on your own site. The only difference between the code I would have been given and the code above is this section: "&appParam=Sharendipity%20Rocks!!!"
You can see that we're already passing the application ID to the Sharendipity player ("aid=3371" in this case). All we're doing is passing the Flash application another parameter as part of the querystring that can be accessed inside Sharendipity. This is the value that is pulled out when the "Get Application Parameter" method is called with "appParam" as the name of the parameter we want. If you're running a web server, you can set up your pages to dynamically write whatever value you want into the embed code.
If you want to play around with the application, you can edit it and save your own here: http://games.sharendipity.com/create/?aid=3371.

Documentation

dale.beermann — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 15:18:14 CDT

Applications

Make something great today in Sharendipity! Whether it's a game, a slide show, or ... ? You're only limited by your creativity. Use this section to learn more about saving and distributing your next great application.

Behaviors

Want to make an object move? Want to keep track of your game score? Behaviors define the actions that take place during well defined events in your application. Read on to learn more.

Properties

Do you want to change the appearance of your object? Properties define the default and custom attributes of objects in your application.This includes attributes that define an object's appearance as well as physical properties like friction and mass. Check this section for help understanding what's available to you as a creator.

Toolbox

At their most basic level, every object in the world is a simple drawing object. A rectangle, circle, or line. Many times they have images, behaviors, and unique properties, but underneath, they're a simple shape. If you're creating from scratch, all of the tools can be found by clicking on the Builder character.

Web Services

If you'd like to integrate information from other sources into your application, use our web services feature to access it. We've made it easy to access a wide variety of information from your Facebook network and other web services.

Achievements

Interested in adding custom achievements to your application? This sections shows you how to engage your user in fun new ways, by creating secondary goals for application usage.

Developer Tools

Sharendipity provides a few advanced features for developers, including a Problem Viewer as well as debugging and performance tools.

Configuration

Configuration is broken out into two separate sections:

Developer Tools

dale.beermann — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 15:17:35 CDT

This page highlights the advanced developer tools that help make it easier to create and debug applications in Sharendipity.

Console Viewer and Trace Statements

The Console Viewer provides a dialog that the developer can write to in his or her application for debugging purposes.

Problem Viewer

The Problem Viewer provides a rundown of the errors that are preventing parts of an application from running.

Performance Measurement

The Profiler provides low-level access to performance data for a running behavior or method in an application.

Breakpoints

Breakpoints provide a way to halt execution of a behavior or method to analyze property values.

Breakpoints

dale.beermann — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 15:14:57 CDT

Like most debugging tools, Sharendipity also offers a way to halt execution of a thread to examine the current variable data. The current implementation uses a "Breakpoint" statement. Under the hood, this throws an exception that will show up in the Problem Viewer, preventing following statements in the behavior or method from running. Opening the problem viewer and double-clicking on the Breakpoint exception will bring you to the Behavior or Method where the breakpoint was hit. The really handy part is that now you can mouse over variables in the Method Builder or Behavior Builder to see their values:

Performance Measurement

dale.beermann — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 15:13:12 CDT

The Sharendipity editor also includes some new functionality that lets you analyze which parts of your application are taking longer to execute. Similar to the Console Window, the profiler can be accessed from the Director menu:

Clicking on the Performance... item in the director menu will bring up the Performance Management dialog, which looks like this:

In this view, Profiling has already been enabled and data is being collected in the running application. From the menu you can view the current profiling data, and you can also clear the profiling data. Viewing the profiling data will give you a view similar to this:

Similar to the Problem Viewer, double-clicking on one of the rows in the Profiler will allow you to see exactly which calls are taking all of the time, including breakdowns by constructs such as "if" statements:

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