I just couldn’t leave it alone, but those pesky typographic creatures made from the titles of the posts on this site are back having been completely rewritten in ActionScript 3!
Each creature is made up from the letters from the title of each post, and the speed is dependant on their age - younger = quicker. They also become more blurry the older they are and the letters grow in size dependant on the amount of comments a post gets.
In this version I completely rewrote Jared Tarbel’s original creature code in AS3 as the old version sent the CPU through the roof when there was a lot of posts. While that still happens to some extent, there’s now only one onEnterFrame for the entire thing which updates the movement of each letter, whereas before each letter had it’s own loop attached. Now your computer’s fan can work a bit less harder!
I’ve also added in a “tame” button which displays the creatures in a more uniform way for easier navigation.
Wow. This looks so amazing!
Alex Placito / 15/01/2008