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.

The project will launch at the Big Bang Science Fair in early March and presents users with a familiar problem – re-assemble the mixed up parts to form the whole. This time the twist is that the puzzle takes a 3D dimensional form and interaction occurs with an AR marker via the webcam. The best bit? Dinosaurs are involved. Dan is very excited.

What better way to start a research project than with a real-life puzzle and a cup of coffee. Play Nicely laid down the gauntlet by assembling their dino-kit first, though we’re not entirely sure how anatomically correct their version is. Justin, in full 3D himself, will mastermind the modeling and Mr Adam Vernon will be developing the Flash interface.

We’ll be using a mixture of the FLARToolkit and papervision, though the current debate is how to get the smoothest effect for live 3D and a model that has over 3,000 polygons. We’ve even discussed creating a series of PNGs for increased verisimilitude at the expense of full 360 interactivity. Tests will be posted for comment if anyone out there is interested in our progress.

Over at Play Nicely, the boys are making leaps and bounds with their Total Immersion AR projects, but for this brief it was essential no 3rd party software was required beyond the usual Flash Player, which currently stands at 94% penetration throughout Europe…

Team Rubber and Thought Den have crafted loads of Flash games and successful Virals together for many many years, including to name a couple, the famous JVC Euro football and COI’s Fire Kills.

This week’s office mash-up will be an effort to keep the both ours and Team Rubber‘s staff in a closed environment for chiselling away at a major spooky project. It’ll be intense, but the results will be well worth it for the client.

It’ll be good to have you, Tea Bags are above the sink

Below is video 01 from our new Geek Club series, charting the Den’s trials, tribulations, banter and revelations. Think Blue Peter, without the bog roll tubes. Or HP Labs, but with less money and more sellotape.

Adam says :

“It makes use of the OSC protocol (likely eventual successor to MIDI), which is normally used to transmit musical and audio control data over UDP. The iPhone app, TouchOSC, is designed to be used as an OSC controller and also supports transmission of accelerometer data, indicating the orientation of the phone. The UDP packets are received by a Java flosc server, running on the PC, which retransmits the OSC data over Flash-friendly TCP. On receipt of a packet, Flash assigns the received orientation values to the rotationX and -Y properties of a cube made with the Flash10 3D API.”

Word on the street is that we’ve moved studio. An official (and thoroughly imaginative) announcement will follow forthwith. Isn’t it a shame that ‘real’ work gets in the way of devising these witty and clever ways to let you know we now stare at different coloured walls when Firefox crashes? Soon your inboxes will sing to the sound of Thought Den’s latest self-indulgent, digital distraction. Curious? You should be…

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

Record your own

BBC Blast, which tours the UK in a HUGE bus, has a fantastic mission; give young people an opportunity to experience and learn a few skills and in a fantastic environment.

We pitched a workshop, inspired by the Thought Den Industry Day, called Flash Games – Social Network Wigetry! An intro session aimed at getting creative minds thinking, explaining and ultimately using Flash to produce their own piece of work. Their own version of…

So the last few weekends we’ve been playing ice-breakers, brainstorming, inspiring creative photography, taking abuse and finally herding twitchy mouse fingers through the Flash interface.

It was an immense amount of fun, but ultimately, a lot of kids left feeling like they could confidently use flash to handle some of the more basic interface tools. Hurrah! The plan worked.

Big thanks to the amazing Holly Edwards from RIO who was running the shin-dig, Cathy the content lady, who taught me how to juggle in her lunch-break and to all the kids who weren’t a pain in the….

The Flash is having a great time and is more than happy to call Javascript with ExternalInterface when it wants. But when Javascript wants to chat back… beep beep. “Please leave a message”.

Flash appears to ignore the call, and leaves Javascipt in an error state and needing ice-cream.

To help you avoid that little relationship problem here’s the fix to the problem. Add the following to your code,

System.security.allowDomain(“*.msappspace.com”);
System.security.allowDomain(“*.yourdomain.co.uk”);

Flash’s Sandbox is set to divert all calls by default and blocks any chat. However as soon as you’ve added the allowDomain. Flash shouts, “HELLO!”, and it’s all back on again.

One big happy social networking family.

Here are our findings for any other Flash & MySpace Developers.

- ExternalInterface + SWFObject + iFrame will not work. Do not spend 4 hours refreshing your browser and re-testing. It will not work. There are also no tutorials to sort it out either.

- getURL is just plain dirty. Don’t do it.

The final solution we settled on is, don’t use SwfObject. Just have a plain Object/Embed tag. Then External Interface can talk to all the relevant parties.

Download our MySpace files (put into the Canvas Surface) and see what we’ve done.

However, not all is rosy. At the first step we’re presented with the choice, “Do you want to develop with OpenSocial or MySpaceID?”.

What? Which one do we choose! Surely like every other social platform, api or online do-hickey you just sign-up, ignore the instructions till it breaks then code like the wind?

It’s not even like the bullet points help you make a decision. Both offer their positives, but not weighted against each others.

To be honest why can’t we just have both? Surely, we could just use OpenSocial as a base and then add on any MySpaceID stuff as it goes?

Nope. One or t’other.