Amazing 3D Goodness

The latest away3d demo is brilliant - check it out here:
http://away3d.com/away3d-temple-version-194-released

Bring on the actual games!

I'm surprised there hasn't been any Doom games made in flash. I remember when mode-7 became possible, everyone made a Mario Kart game.

As many people have said already having an engine capable of a game and actually producing a full game are two very different things.

Few indie teams have time and budgets available for the sort of level design and and asset creation needed for a First person Shooter.

Chris

spotted it earlier today @
http://www.closier.nl/blog/index.php

regarding FPS: most flash developments are 1man shows- or made by very smal teams. Developing a FPS alone is pretty time consuming I think and rather requires a team of skilled members. Most of shooter games we know from the past took some years to develop- with flash it wont be that faster.

Problem with large time consuming projects with Flash is that once you are near finishing the game, new Flash version comes out, providing new exciting methods or simply being faster. Investing years into 3D game atm feels pretty pointless since F10 will be released meanwhile.

When will flash 10 be released?

@tonypa
What about that pseudo 3d rally game written in AS2 that was posted by mesmerize a while ago? Apparently that took years to fully finish and wasn't released until well into the life of AS3. I wouldn't say all of that AS2 investment was pointless...

Flash 10 most probably won't be released until next year (we'll at the very best see a 8.5 esque beta this year). It took over a year for Flash 9 to permeate the web and the same might hold true for Flash 10...

i´m pretty sure flash 10 will be released this year, but yeah, i agree that if one works long on something which is technologically cutting edge it won´t be automatically outdated just because a new flash version comes out (it would be outdated once someone maxes out the new version´s features and creates something way more impressive ;) )
That said i see no sense in doing a fps game in flash unless a client pays one a good bunch extra for the lots of extra miles one has to go to get something halfway nice running halfway nice on average boxes.

Not to mention that even this demo runs at unacceptably slow frame rate, and there are no enemies or anything other than walking ( felt more like floating ) around going on.

although its nice, rachil's engine beats the hell out of it, in terms of frame rate.

pretty lame imo.

Director blew the doors of this demo like 5 years ago

When we gonna learn to pick the right tool for the job.

director also blew its appeal 5 years ago.

some good points brought up here.
yeah,i agree, that demo runs at unacceptable framerate. we as flash developers have to get out of our flash world view and think about how the end user perceives what we do. For a non flash enthusiast something that chokes noticably at 10-12 fps on an average box is indiscussable.
Its nice and all there are all those 3d engines for flash now but yeah, if you´re not purely blinded by the hype right now only very few game types make sense to do in real realtime textured polygon 3d in flash.
sure,you can build ages on your engine for the day a new flash player will somehow make that run way nicer, you could aswell spend your time doing a game in flash its more capable of now or do the highend game in way less time and running way nicer in some other technology.
i think the time for big 3d for flash will come, but yeah,its not there in a form yet where you can use it for just about anything without constantly having to fight for every frame.
as said by malee "fake" 3d engines kick the b of a realtime textured poly thing in flash right now,there´s just a huge difference in performance,resolution and effects you can do with a fake 3d effect that won´t run smooth in a textured poly 3d attempt.
and yup, i agree that director blew it for the biggest part of the developers ages ago and yeah, they won´t get all those guys or equally many new guys back with a half assed update. maybe with the next propper one..
and besides all that tech blabla think about your game first: does it (for someone not having the hyped by anything flash can do glasses on) profit from beeing in fake 3d or in textured poly 3d?
i like to work on kickass stuff but yeah, i wonder whom is helped when you create a textured poly 3d game in flash now that runs on 10-15 fps on most boxes.

Someday computers wil have double the power they have today,that day, engines like that will run almost as Director games from 2, 3 years ago, ( and games for real 3d plugins will be away ahead of that but thats no the point)but what makes you think that just because its flash the 3d boreaucracy will be less complicated tham what it is in Director, or Java, or Unity, of any of the many others?People gets so exited with those engines until they realize what really takes to make a 3d game, and where are the frantics for it? For the plugins that are being used for what they were designed to be used, there are many

little quote I found today
http://director-online.com/forums/read.php?3,29136

Quote:

---

The only advantage Director has over Flash is 3D and considering that it doesn't do too well with 3D, it's a pretty fragile advantage.

---

anyway been playing with AS3 again myself and from my current impression I really think that at some point adobe will help and simplify some of the textur- mapping or shading algorithms or even push some stuff onto the GFX card. At least they will try to increase performance there.

this time next year we'll be in 3D heaven.

quote me, cause I know I is right. :D

I think the problem is that the 3D that is possible in flash now is ugly. The wolfenstein 3D is retro, and mode-7 can be beautiful, because its prerendered. But the current 3D is too low polygon to look good. Maybe in a few years we will enjoy it, but not today. But a doom engine would be cool, and has been demonstrated to work in flash already.

Really pretty water. I think you could do a fun little resident evil clone with that, partitioning your mansion into little rooms to keep the poly count low (the first room is what reminds me of RE - I think it must be the door).

I think a real problem with getting games out is that the big teams making 3D engines (thinking of Away3D, papervision, sandy) are putting a lot of effort into making their codes reusable and flexible to different types of 3D apps/scenes (user A wants to make a carousel browser, user B wants a 3D xwing standing in empty space, and user C wants a first person shooter). These codes aim to do all of these things, at once, and performance is taking a bit of a backseat to that desire for flexibility. This is the exact opposite of all the games people want to see cloned (wolf3D, doom, quake). All those games had visibility and rasterization algorithms that were perfectly matched to their map structures and the degrees of freedom built into their camera. Another real problem is asset creation, which CEP already mentioned.

It's so fascinating to work on though!

i like your engine way more though, it just runs and looks way nicer on current boxes with the current player :)

yeah, when there will be an update?

p.s. I can not reproduce that thing with drawing vertical strips taking more time. do you have an example isolated from the rest of your code?