A new Geek Club video for you all to enjoy this Friday…

This is a demo of some of the capabilities of the upcoming Flash Player 11, using the alpha Molehill APIs, and a pre-release version of Flare3D. It uses the Spinosaurus model from the AR project we did for the BBC (SpinARsaurus Challenge), and highlights the vast difference in graphical capabilities between previous versions of Flash (up to version 10) and the next release.

The model itself contains 10,000 polygons, which left the CPU working very hard even at 25 FPS, using Papervision3D and software rendering. Now with 60 instances of the same model, it renders extremely smoothly even at 120 FPS. Molehill and Flare3D – along with a number of other up and coming FP11 3D engines (Away3D, Alternativa3D, Unity3D) – also open up further possibilities with full support for complex shaders. In the demo, we went for a shiny, cel-shaded appearance. All the danger of a raptor, plus a backful of spines and twice as slippery. (This is also why they don’t need to move their legs to get around. No friction.)

The animation comprises a red vs. green game, starting with one red (zombie) dino, and 59 green (uninfected) victims. When a red catches a green, they join the bad side. And if they hit the edge of the square, or each other, they bounce off, dazed, before resuming the chase/escape. Just like how scientists predicted spinosaurs behaved in the wild, centuries ago.

Dan too, and here’s his plan to fix it. This coming Thursday (8th April), Thought Den are hosting a mini flash game code-a-thon and we’re inviting other AS2 coders to come along.

Flash AS3 day

The day will see us all coding our own games, but we all have to do it in AS3. Painful? No, because we’ll all be in the same room, we’ve all coded in AS2 before, we’ll have the internet and most importantly we can share as we go. A bit like crowd-sourcing from clever individuals.

Thought Den provide.

breakfast, coffees & lunch
prize for the best game at the end of the day!

You provide.

computer with Flash installed
a game idea
openness to help your fellow man

Mail me, dan at thoughtden dot co dot uk for an invite.

—— DETAILS ——-
The plan.
Code a game in AS3.

Prize for best game.
A book! yup. “The Art of Game Design: A book of lenses: A Book of Lenses” (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Art-Game-Design-lenses-Lenses/dp/0123694965/)

Who’s it for?
AS2 coders / coders, looking to start coding games in AS3

The place.
Pervasive Media Studio
Leadworks,
Anchor Square,
Harbourside
Bristol
BS1 5DB
some details are here – http://www.pmstudio.co.uk/open-studio-friday

The time.
Thursday 8th April. 8 till 5.30.

Places.
Mail dan@thoughtden.co.uk