2D AS3 Tile Engine with physics

[rje]

I'm working on a 2D Tile Engine with the following capabilities:

• 100% AS3 - can be built and extended with open source tools
• Physics System
• Particle System
• Very large scrolling level support > 1000x1000 tiles
• Enemy AI tool kit
• Projectile/Weapon system
• Very efficient CPU/Memory usage

It is, in part, based on a number of projects and articles available to everybody:

• Collision detection - The metanet N tutorials
• Physics - Ideas from APE: Alec Coves Actionsctipt Physics Engine
• Various blogs (Andre Michelle, Michael Baczynski etc)
• Wikipedia :-)

I'm building it as generic as possible - if anybody wants to help out (theres lots to do) then let me know.

You can find the demo & source here: http://yaa-blog.blogspot.com/

[EvilKris]

Good work, friend.

Your engine could be used for a sweet 'Exile' remake..

[renderhjs]

nice engine,
though personally I prefer tutorials instead of fix kits. Are you planning on breaking some elements apart from it like Sandy did with their distorsion class? or explaining in depth how some things were approached?

[rje]

Good work, friend.

Your engine could be used for a sweet 'Exile' remake..

Thanks, well spotted - That is exactly why I'm writing it....

Now I just need somebody who has the original map generation algorithm....

[rje]

nice engine,
though personally I prefer tutorials instead of fix kits. Are you planning on breaking some elements apart from it like Sandy did with their distorsion class? or explaining in depth how some things were approached?

Well, it is in part based on other tutorials. I really wanted an engine to recreate a game (see previous post). I noticed a lack of 2D game engines that had the features I needed to I wrote this as functional engine rather than tutorial.

The trouble I find this physics engine/kits is that they are trying to solve a general case - that can be expensive in terms of CPU. I found that with APE and Fisix (2 AS3 physics toolkits), not much CPU left to implement all the things I need.

[Sauceofallevils]

Wow this is really neat rje! I really like what you have done, this is similar to what I was planning on doing for my games battle mode. Good work man!

[OpethRockr55]

Excellent work, rje! I like to see some new up and coming Flash engines, even though I'm through with all that. Are you planning on physically simulating the boxes (i.e. implementing rotation) and if so how? It was a pain in the butt to get one of my projects to resolve collisions correctly, but I think it was because of the way I simulated the boxes.

[EvilKris]

Thanks, well spotted - That is exactly why I'm writing it....

Original map algorithm? Ever tried writing to the original creators? You'd be suprised at how responsive they can be sometimes. I wrote to Archer Maclean (IK+) about 10 years ago just for a little advice about a game and he was a nice guy, we swapped mails for a while.

[rje]

Are you planning on physically simulating the boxes (i.e. implementing rotation) and if so how? It was a pain in the butt to get one of my projects to resolve collisions correctly, but I think it was because of the way I simulated the boxes.

I've been thinking about that for a while. At the moment the collision code is all based on axis aligned boxes. The benefit is that its fast, very fast (see the N tutorials). If I wanted to rotate things then I'd have to recalculate my projections all the the time. Nice but that's gona eat up cpu. At the moment I can dump >100 boxes into the level and it handles it without any slowdown.

The other thing I was thinking about is do I need rotations? Whilst its more accurate, it makes the environment more difficult to interact with. I'm writing this engine to recreate Exile - that was great to play, the physics part was fun and there were no rotations.

[mr_malee]

I'm keeping a close eye on motor physics, by the guy at polygonal labs

http://lab.polygonal.de/2007/07/16/updates-2/

Yours looks very nice too. Is this supposed to be an Engine which others will use? or just for exile?

[rje]

I've been doing the same. Also APE (Actionscript Physics Engine) is actually understandable (the source is very well structured).

Its going to be an engine as well, I'll try and maintain the core as a separate project. The source (not up to date) is actually on that page somewhere.

If anybody wants to help out, let me know, there is plenty to do. One BIG thig to do is a level editor. I think something quite functional could be created on a week or so....

[Squize]

That's as sweet as you like, nice work mate ( And looking at it now, I can see why Exile sprung to mind for Kris ).

Squize.

[random10122]

Just wanted to say, nice work - i was thinking of doing something similar sometime this year but now i don't have to :-) There are a lot of middleware solutions in the console industry but very few for flash..


The trick will be to make sure that the documentation is good enough that people will actually use it rather than creating their own..

[charlie_says]

Ha, that's very nice!

Although, not flash, there's an exile remake in the offing...

http://exile.ovine.net

[rje]

Just wanted to say, nice work - i was thinking of doing something similar sometime this year but now i don't have to :-) There are a lot of middleware solutions in the console industry but very few for flash..


The trick will be to make sure that the documentation is good enough that people will actually use it rather than creating their own..

Thanks, hopefully I'll release the latest source this weekend, with some comments. Documentation will be later (without help)....

[rje]

Ha, that's very nice!

Although, not flash, there's an exile remake in the offing...

http://exile.ovine.net

I didn't realize so many people were familiar with Exile... Does the exile in you homepage mean anything? I went there but go nothing but a black screen...

[programicks]

Very nice physics there. I am still yet to even touch AS3 but I can see what the buzz is all about.

I see that latest update of the flash beta is mentioned on your blog. This blog then, and flash kit, I will be looking out for mention of the latest full version of the next flash player.

[charlie_says]

Just to let everyone know.
The exile remake is now available for download here

[EvilKris]

Well well, excellent work. Wonder if that's still AS3. Seems to run at a good fps even though it's full screen.

[charlie_says]

no, I don't think it was done in Flash, I was really just pointing it out in case anyone was interested.