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One main problem with an fps in flash would be that you only have mouse coordinates to work with, not mouse movement. So if the mouse hits the edges of the screen, movement in that direction stops.
I do like the look of this though. If Flash 10 comes with native 3d that is a bit faster than this engine (and doesn't require as much programming to get something going), some neat stuff will come out for sure.
to MikeMD: yes :)
and you could even do realtime 3D with more free roaming feel but then it would be better to go for a stylized look and something where you can get away with rendering less objects and/or a smaller game area/game world.
One comment of Squize made me wonder before, that´s where he talked about how nicely and almost instantly that 3D demo loaded. Well, you could achieve a similar seamless loading phase with unity and no matter if its flash or unity the loading phase would be way longer once your game level/world is made up of more than a very small area and no objects moving around.
to FallX: yeah, there are lots of other problems with flash when its about doing fps games.
Like you can´t freely use the right mouse button, on various keyboards its not well detected when one presses certain keys at the same time etc etc.
On the flash 10 note: I´ve heard of various things that will go into the next version and some of those could lead to better performance when its about handling graphical stuff but yeah, none of them was any close to full on native 3D support, so don´t expect a revolution there until Adobe changes its mind.
As pointed out by lesli, I think Flash is more suited to a 2.5D game rather than full on 3D at the moment ( In terms of tech and development time ).
Tom, people mistaking Director / Unity games for Flash is part of my point. Browser based games come under the banner of Flash now, even when they're not, it's almost become a generic term.
The larger portals have over 60 million + visitors a month. That's 60 million people who get what Flash can do to some extent. Yeah, they may not realise the limitations fully, but they know roughly what the current bar is as they see all the latest and best games.
I think the prevalent game developers view was that 3D in Flash is just a gimmick. Something reallly clever, and sometimes looks pretty cool, but it'll never be as good as on a console and that's what people will compare it against.
It's like the old view of everyone wanting to do a Zelda game, what's the point because it will never be as good, and by making it so similar you're holding it up for comparison, and that's just going to hurt it even more.
Now I think players' expectations have changed. Miniclip isn't the only place to find good Flash games anymore. More and more people are playing Flash games, the indy industry is growing up, albeit slowly.
Players know a fps in Flash isn't going to compare to Halo, they don't expect it [ Anymore ]. Which means making a 3D game in Flash is now a valid proposition, in that the target audience won't just compare it to Crysis and dismiss it as being lame, they will view it as a game and play it on the merits of it's gameplay.
Although saying it's a valid genre to tackle in Flash now from the players point of view, is a million miles away from actually developing it. The time and cost with making it may make it even more expensive than using something like Unity, and with lower overal performance / visuals.
The point I'm trying to make is that, seeing that demo has made me think it's realistic to make a good quality 3D game in Flash for the first time, and that I think the audience is mature enough now to accept it as a game, and not just dated 3D. Just because something is possible doesn't mean that it should be done though.
This is a field worth watching, the tech. is slowly catching up with the hype from a couple of years ago and in the next year or two there will be a breakthrough hit done in Papervision / whatever and then that will really start the 3D flood gates. I think it's important not to just write it off as a fad, 'cause then we run the risk of being left behind.
Squize.
that´s where i disagree with you really. I think the majority of gamers would not get why your browser game looks and runs worse than doom1 while on that other site they run Quake and Battlefield Heroes that in comparison looks and plays way closer to "the real deal".Quote:
Originally Posted by Squize
That many people use the term flash game as general term for browser games shows the brand force of the flash platform but yeah, on the other hand such generalisation by the audience also means you should be up for competing with other browser games if you go at it, no matter if made with flash or something else.
And even if some people get the "why it doesn´t run as nice in flash" part then there´s still the "why should i care, i´ll just play the nicer one made with technology i don´t care about" part.
yeah, again, i don´t think so :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Squize
Good quality 3D game only if you watch out a lot what type of game you do and many other things, as general statement i feel there´s still a long way to get there.
Unless the thing can compete with battlefiel heroes or quake arena,both also browser games then yes, i don´t think the majority of the browser gamers would get why this fps is so much worse than what can be played on that other domain.
exactly. You know what? After some internal debate i finally ordered a mac to be able to do unity games in my free time in my home office and although i have quite some initial investment in hardware/software and then also time to get into it propperly i´ll probably still make up for that with a single game i bring out made with it and then have that developed with way less pain and way nicer result than possible with flash.Quote:
Originally Posted by Squize
I don´t say at all don´t use flash anymore or don´t attempt nice stuff with it,only make quick cheap rubish ****, i just say make with it what it can handle nicely and where the result is appealing to everyone,not just us flash geeks here :)
For everything else i feel like one´s time,money and energy is better spent using some other technology.
yeah, i totally agree. I´d just right now either not do realtime 3D stuff running in the browser or if i do it then choose a technology that can compete now.Quote:
Originally Posted by Squize
If in the future flash gets beefed up enough so that it can compete with unity and maybe even the custom plugins of instant action etc that´d be great, more power to us :)
I´d rather use flash,too than spending bucketloads of time and money to get into yet another tech/platform, its just the state of flash right now that makes me decide so right now.
Squize: I think to have a really successful 3d hit, you're gonna have to innovate in another way, the 3d will be necessary for the game dynamic, but won't be what sells it to people. My money's on a driving game, but it could be something far more original than that.
2.5 works on so many levels - 3d graphics will sell it, 2d gameplay will sell it, 2d dev time will make it possible, and let's not forget the small matter of flash physics still being only workable in 2d.
Fall_X, Tom: Flash 10 is supposed to have native perspective skewing (and with correct perspective too, allegedly) Everyone's guessing this will speed up existing engines. If it does what it's supposed to, it'll save a huge amount of resources to do other things. Hopefully this will be quicker than doing it the old way, and not just a coding shortcut like the Matrix Transform that came with flash 8.
Makes me think they have access to F10. Also, they wont be releasing anything other then demos before F10.Quote:
Besides that, Alternativa3D engine is already adapted for coming Flash Player 10. Texture correction and lighting will work faster.
I'm just about finished in the office for the day, so I've not got time for a well thought out reply now ( Or even one of my usual quick rubbish ones ), but let me just throw this idea out.
Time Crisis. That could be done with existing 3D engines, use 2D sprites for the baddies, look really good and be popular ( Even "normal" average "fps" ( Operation Wolf clones rather than Quake ) do well ).
As to driving games, http://www.sprintenterprise.com/burnandbrag/ Mr Doob has done some pretty sweet stuff there.
Squize.
Slow, sluggish and it feels like I could outrun that car. Proves why this flash 3d just does not work.Quote:
As to driving games, http://www.sprintenterprise.com/burnandbrag/ Mr Doob has done some pretty sweet stuff there.
I prefer Mr. Blink's ( was it him ) 4-5 year old Flash Karts with fake 3D any day.
I never understood what was so good about that nascar demo. It's in 3D and that's it. It not much fun for me to drive in such a small space.
Thats interesting over these years how they make ActionScript 'evolve' to attract Java coders and in the end what happens is they make easyer for advanced users to leave flash for better (game related) stuffQuote:
Originally Posted by tomsamsom
I will admit that I found that bunker demo extremely impressive.
its all impressive because it was done with flash,- not because it was 3d. Sometimes people mix that up esspecially with hyped topics like papervision. It´s also impressive because it is not easy to pull off and because they created stuff others haven´t archived yet or in that way- like the nice dynamic lighting system - or the texture material.
to Incrue:
I´m glad more people get my point of view now :)
When flash turns closer and closer to Java/C# language and workflow that doesn´t make flash way more appealing to me, it instead makes the other stuff way more appealing to me than flash, mostly because that other stuff is 10 years and more ahead of flash in various fields.
So yeah, once i have the mac and unity and doodled around for some days i can talk some about my experiences with it :)
Maybe it totally bums me out for reasons i don´t know yet or i totally fall in love with it, who knows :)
With flash its always been the optimizing as much as possible when doing highend stuff in the current version and then always hoping for a better next version then, now i just think instead of waiting for the next flash version i rather use some other stuff that can handle what i want to do now :)
such as market penetration, maybe?Quote:
Originally Posted by tomsamson
But when cames to 3d the penetration statistics does not count how many of those 97% has brand new fast computersQuote:
Originally Posted by realMakc
yeah,incrue is right and i stressed that point before,too, better market penetration doesn´t bring much if in return you limit your audience to people with a) only the latest player b) people with high end cpus c) people with more than usual ram amounts.
And you do that when you go for realtime 3d in flash, whereas with other technologies that run supporting gpu handling even a way lower end 5 year old box would lead to way better results than anything possible in flash.
Besides all those things market penetration of the plugin isn´t the most important factor when you do games, portal site game players are more eager to upgrade a plugin and with things like unity you could aswell do download/standalone games or ones for other platforms.
These are great demos!
Some thoughts on the 3D discussion: ;)
Flash's 3D capability looks to be on the level of PlayStation and there are a ton of wonderful PlayStation games that simply couldn't have been executed on previous hardware. We're making great *NEW* games in Flash, but technically most is nothing superior than what was possible with hardware in the 80s.
As Squize said, making a game 3D doesn't automatically make it amazing. If anything it makes it more difficult to make a fun game.
Resources can be an issue. 3D games will take a lot more resources (art & programming) if you're aiming to be Quake, as in Bunker demo. It's costly to maintain that level of detail throughout an entire game.
Maybe some people need a reminder to think outside the box? Why would you automatically assume that just because it's 3d you want to make something as graphically intense as Gears of War? There's so many abstract stylized things you could do with 3D. As Squize also mentioned, there's most definitely value in mixing 2D and 3D.
Not every gameplay mechanic has been explored yet. There are games still out there waiting to be made! Despite what you may think by seeing all of the unimaginative games out there.
A plus is that 3D can be more cost effective when doing games when you don't have to worry about redoing animations for every movement direction and for every character, for example. You can easily reuse assets between games.
As long as people place limitations on what's possible without actually attempting anything, nothing worthwhile is ever gonna surface. It may not be until the 3D equivalent of Alien Hominid pops up that everyone will realize what's possible with 3D in Flash.
The beauty of Flash is that you don't have to worry about whether people have the plug-in installed.
Surely you mean 90's.. The amiga wasn't released until '87, the playstation didn't come out until '95.Quote:
Originally Posted by Son of Bryce
although it generally makes few sense to compare a console´s technical capabilities with the ones of flash because there are too many not comparable other factors going on,if at all i´d say flash´s capabilities are most comparable to those of a snes with super fx chip, you know,the chip used in cartridges like starfox, stunt race etc. Its quite far behind behind being able to handle polycounts or other things like that close to what the ps1 could handle.
With flash one can handle way more colors and it also has less restrictions with transparency and it has nice blendmode and filters built in next to anti aliasing and other things but regarding performance its still most comparable with what one could get running smoothly on snes.
Also the snes featured built in hardware side perspective distortion of bitmaps so that´s what we get with flash 10 if things go well ;)
They have posted this morning that they will hopefully be releasing SWCs for non commercial (commercial with license) use by the end of May...
Good times.