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ok....so not a massive game, but more of a proof of concept demo for myself.
I wanted to see how well Flash / PV performed using a 2D game engine, but rendering it all with 3D sprites, and it has worked swimmingly.
So with out further a-do I present Space Cubes!
http://www.errorware.co.uk/games/spaceCubes/
All feedback welcome, and do remember I have spent...oooh whole hours on this , so be kind ;)
Chris Error x
Can't load it. Are you using a key code of '1' for the mouse-click? Only works in the Windows Flash Player.
that's odd, there is no preloader or anyhting I know, but it has loaded and run fine on windows, mac and linux across all browsers tested.
What setup do you have vengence?
Chris error
Worked for me. Was not much impressed as a game but as experiment it looked ok. It did slow down once there was lots of small pieces around.
Slow with many cubes...
So, thats the limit of a 3d engine+game engine...to me the conclusion is still the same, not doable.
looks good. i think i had the same problem as vengeance. i reloaded the page and it worked.
is that the box2d engine you're talkin about?
Interesting, and given how quickly it was put together, pretty impressive.
Incrue, I don't think this is exactly the most optimised engine, though it's interesting to note how limited PV is in terms of objects on screen.
There are ways to speed it up. The limited focal length means you could make an isometric version that would look almost the same and play much faster. Another way would be to cache asteroid animation and replay it from a bitmap data sequence.
If you were to make it pre calculated you can make it even with AS2 and copyPixels
Inst the goal just to see how many 3d polygons AS3 can handle together with a game engine?
I just wanterd to see if a 2D game could easiyl and quickly be written to use 3D models as sprites. I think I could get it runner lots faster if I just optimised the textures and such like, as the overall poly count is count low. Will try it out today and see what happens,
Chris
The goal is to make a visually rich 2D game.
Caching 3d animation can be done in may ways, but mixing a live 3d engine with a caching engine can produce some amazing results that don't kill the processor or use heavy file sizes.
ok, in response to your feedback I have been slaving away over Space Cubes for a whole 20 minutes...I hoep you all appreciate this hard work.
http://errorware.co.uk/games/spaceCubes/
see if that's any faster, I have optimised all the textures and it seems faster to me,
Chris Error x
nice work
if your interested, here's a texture that might define the shape of the blocks a little better.
if you want i could do a little spaceship model and export it in collada format.
20 goddamn minutes, you're too kind to us.
It seems much faster, care to share what you did so we don't have to go through the same hellish 20 minutes of development pain?
Blink, you are too kind, I would love a little spaceship exported as collada, and as soon as I am back in the studio later this morning I will try my nice new Asteroid texture. (then me and you sell the game to kongregate for $1 million yeah?)
Lesli, I was going to break out the text editor and start a bit of pure byte code editing to see if I could optimise the PV engine anywhere, then I remembered I am a deeply lazy man, who also can't understand bytecode, so I just shrank all the textures in Photoshop and re-imported them.
chris Error x
something like this would be awesome
http://boards.polycount.net/showpost...&postcount=835
Now I've realized why they call it papervision.
All these low poly models look like paper.
render I get most nervous when you look at any of my 3D work :) Yeah I agree a little ship like that would be most awesome.Blink..I have my biggest puppy dog eyes at the moment, and am looking longingly at such ships ;)
I've been chatting to clients about this stuff (which was the main reason for doing the feasibility study) and there really seems to be some enthusiasm for some light weight 3D flash games. Just hope some of that enthusiasm turns into a real world project.
Thanks for the nice feedback and textures y'all, FK Games CAN be a good community when it deems fit :)
Chris Error x
yeah they would look great too.
i would worry that those spindly bits would get lost at very low resolution though.
i thought a wipeout style might be nice;
http://i93.photobucket.com/albums/l75/blinkok/ship.gif (67 polys, could prolly be a lot less though)
the green glow would pulse every time you shot.
It takes a lot more thrust to turn left.
BlinkOK how did you do that? What program does one use to make something like that?
i made it with swift3d but you could use any 3d proggy for somethin like that
It idnd't work for me, once it's loaded, i click 10 times and nothing happens. Vista flash v115
hey Blink thats amazing, I was also thinking a wipeout style ship would be great. Will have to dig around to see how to control colladda animations but I'm sure it can't be too hard.
Sietjp, I'm really sorry I don't know what is causing this occasionaly bug, I have only been able to replicate it once, and then once I refrshed the page it worked fine. I'm placing a eventListener on the stage for a Mouse Up, which then just calls a simple startGame function. I can't think what would be causing this.
If don't reply for a few days on this thread it's just cos I'm off to Barcelona and I think my ladyfriend would not be best pleased if I use the hotel's PC to start checking my threads on FK :)
Chris Error x
can you export collada from swift 3d?,- also can you even edit UV´s in swift3d?
yes you can export to collada from swift3d.
you can't "unwrap" from swift but in this case it's not necessary, it's just a planner projection.
if you want to unwrap you can export to .3ds and unwrap in say ultimate unwrap
i'll sort out the assest in the next couple days and mail them to chris. i figure he's gonna want a more organic space rock as well.
that´s cool,- must be a newer feature the one with collada support. If you need something unwrapped for the models,- call me otherwise.
I´ve never imagined swift3d beeing so powerfull- do you use it also for modeling - or do you sometimes switch to something different?
i use it for everything. i should get something more powerful but it's just so easy to use and i'm way too lazy.
thanks for the unwrap offer
if you use max they have a plugin for it that should do all the vector/collada exporting if you need it. not sure about maya though
hi guys, I return from sunny Barcelona (if any of you Fkers are looking for somewhere to go on hols I couldn't recommend it enough.)
Blink thanks for the 3D models you have sent me, I have some boring work to finish this morning but then my plan is to play with Space Cubes all afternoon.
Will post new version with collada based models as soon as I can,
Chris
http://www.errorware.co.uk/experiments/spaceCubes/
right....above link now has Collada space ship (non animated).
The rocks are going to take a bit longer, as the collision detection (very basic) was based on the size primitive I was creating as opposed to what scale I am rendering a model at.
looks good chris.
EDIT: [ it would be nice if the ship "rolled" a bit when it turned (it would show off the 3d a bit more i think). ] just noticed you stated it was non-animated
i also think the rotation increment is a bit big. sometimes i couldn't line up the rocks because i would end up aiming either side of them.
imo it needs some yaw or pitch while turning or accelerating- right now it could be as well a planar sprite.
Maybe even like 1942 (game) somme loop or special move thingy that will show more of the 3d body.
i think that's what chris means when he says "non animated"
nowt too exciting but have had time to today to quickly add a slight tilt to the ship as he flys around
http://www.errorware.co.uk/experiments/spaceCubes/
(collision with cubes is currently off so you can just fly around and around)
render, I agree a 1942 style loop would be amazing :) I'll see what I can do.
Chris
The ship handles unintuitively right now.
Accelerate to top speed, stop accelerating, turn sharply.
The ship right now will change its movement vector as it rotates, even when not thrusting. For a space based game I would expect that ship to continue in the direction it was going before I turned. Basically some momentum.
Right now you seem to be just calculating thrust speed, checking angle, and applying movement along that angle.
Instead I think it would be more realistic to have the movement vectors separate from the direction of the vehicle, and just add any thrust of the vehicle to the movement vector. You can still incorporate a max speed, and dampening, but then you would get some drifting.
Control is a 'taste' thing really. Space just feels like it needs some drift/momentum to me.
I know you have all be enthralled by the on going development of SpaceCubes and it's PS3 beating 3D graphics...well...after another 20 minutes of tinkering around yesterday (I had to finally learn how to make an Ik chain thingy) I give you SnakeCubes!
http://www.errorware.co.uk/experiments/pv/snakeCubes/
UP to move LEFT / RIGHT to turn
and yeah...thats all it does...not sure if anyone cares :)
Chris Error x