Monday, June 15, 2009

Progress on Sugar activities with SWF content

Following the work I did some months ago, Rob Savoye has been kind enough to update the rpm spec of Gnash to also produce rpms for the SDK and for the python bindings for embedding the player.

This will allow us to run activities that use Flash content in the next release of Sugar, 0.86. Rob has also updated the .deb control files so this work is well under its way to be in the next releases of all the major distros.

If you want to try it today, you can install some rpms in the Fedora 11-based Sugar on a Stick and run EatBoom, a sample activity that contains a flash game developed by Innovations for Learning. It is a simple game for practising additions that is part of their TeacherMate product. IFL has released this activity as GPL and I hope they will find value in releasing more of their work so it can be used by children in Sugar or in other platforms.

Step 1: download the last SoaS snapshot from here.

Step 2: install it to a USB stick following this instructions and boot it in your computer.

Step 3: start the terminal activity and run the commands below:

su -
curl -O http://shell.sugarlabs.org/~tomeu/gnash/gnash-0.8.5-4.20090615bzr11113.fc11.i586.rpm
curl -O http://shell.sugarlabs.org/~tomeu/gnash/gnash-plugin-0.8.5-4.20090615bzr11113.fc11.i586.rpm
curl -O http://shell.sugarlabs.org/~tomeu/gnash/gnash-widget-0.8.5-4.20090615bzr11113.fc11.i586.rpm
rpm -U *.rpm

Step 4: start Browse and type the following URL: http://shell.sugarlabs.org/~tomeu/EatBoom-1.xo The EatBoom activity will be downloaded and installed.

Step 5: Run EatBoom!




Here you have the source for the activity, which can be changed to load a different SWF movie by changing just a single line of code: http://git.sugarlabs.org/projects/eatboom
at

6 comments:

  1. UnknownJune 16, 2009 at 6:03 AM

    Seems very interesting!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. skierpageJune 17, 2009 at 5:35 AM

    Neat, but why not just visit http://translate.sugarlabs.org/tomeu/EatBoom.swf and run that or save it locally to run later? What would an activity do beyond an HTML page embedding the same .swf ?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Tomeu VizosoJune 19, 2009 at 1:31 PM

    > Neat, but why not just visit http://translate.sugarlabs.org/tomeu/EatBoom.swf and run that or save it locally to run later? What would an activity do beyond an HTML page embedding the same .swf ?

    Gnash allows you to easily add extensions that SWF movies can use.

    So EatBoom could interact with the journal, use collaboration, etc

    ReplyDelete
  4. Dennis DanielsAugust 17, 2009 at 5:29 PM

    Ease eatboom available as an .xo? Is the gnash component built in to .85x? Could you update your wiki page on this new component? What's the current status? Is it easier to install now?

    ReplyDelete
  5. cwithersMarch 1, 2010 at 7:03 AM

    Hi Tomeu, I'm getting this error when I followed your instructions:
    [root@localhost ~]# rpm -U *.rpm
    error: Failed dependencies:
    libboost_date_time-mt.so.4 is needed by gnash-0.8.5-4.20090615bzr11113.fc11.i586
    libboost_thread-mt.so.4 is needed by gnash-0.8.5-4.20090615bzr11113.fc11.i586
    libboost_date_time-mt.so.4 is needed by gnash-widget-0.8.5-4.20090615bzr11113.fc11.i586
    libboost_thread-mt.so.4 is needed by gnash-widget-0.8.5-4.20090615bzr11113.fc11.i586

    Please advice. Thank you!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Tomeu VizosoMarch 2, 2010 at 12:40 PM

    cwithers, these instructions are now obsolete, best would be to use the Gnash packages now in Fedora:

    # yum install python-gnash

    ReplyDelete