View Full Version : Engine advice
I'm trying to figure out the smartest route for a project. Well the smartest route would be outsourcing it to a flash game dev company, but that's not my call.
I need to build a "game" for HP that trains people how to perform certain routines within some sort of server farm setup. What they want it a 3d representation of the facility, wherein the user ambles about performing certain tasks and is as such rewarded. I do that sort of thing all the time, just not in game format. I code e-learning stuff.
My first thought was Papervision, then I asked a friend who'd made something similar for Adobe and he says it took 2 coders, 2 artists and 6 months to do. So that's not really an option. Unless it's very simplified. Other than that I'm thinking an isometric tile engine. With cutesy stylised DS RPG type characters.
Any suggestions? Info about isometric engines etc. I've vaguely played around with basic top down tile engines, using 3 dimensional arrays, but that's about it.
FuzzYspo0N
20-10-2008, 09:58 AM
Well i think most important things needed would be a few things up front ;
Platform (web,cd rom, application etc)
Scale (as in time frame versus workload)
Available skillsets
For the last two thats not necessary for us, but for you. The first one is quite important before i can make any suggestions on an engine...
It's probably browser based. So Flash is my preferred option. I've found an interesting opensource engine and am currently trying to figure out it's viability. Obviously not creating the engine from scratch is going to help with time. I'm not sure what the time line looks like, I have to give an estimated dev time to the clients.
It'll be myself and another person working on this. I'll be coding and creating graphics, she'll be helping out with some code and graphics.
I'm quite looking forward to it because I've been meaning to dev a little game with AS but never had the time. Once I get this all done I can use the project as a basis for my own games.
FuzzYspo0N
20-10-2008, 10:37 AM
yea it sounds like a great opportunity. Let me call in afflict on this, he has been toying with 3d flash a lot lately. *whistles
ShadowMaster
20-10-2008, 03:19 PM
cYn: If you don't mind me asking, what flash engine did you find? I want to get into flash dev at some point in the future.
cYn: If you don't mind me asking, what flash engine did you find? I want to get into flash dev at some point in the future.
FFilmation. I'm a little apprehensive because it's newish and well it's just one guy. So I doubt it's had extensive bug testing. But it looks so good. I wish some one could give me feed back on it, but I don't think many people have used it.
http://www.ffilmation.org/
If I don't use it I'll just crank out and simple isometric tile engine.
dislekcia
20-10-2008, 03:44 PM
I recommend the isometric route. Especially if you've never really done 3D dev before. Even with a fully-featured engine (which you probably won't find in Flash) there's a ton of maths and conceptual understanding you need to figure out on the fly to get 3D doing what you want it to do.
Also, check out the various Flash tutorials in the latest editions of Dev.Mag (and the one coming next week) Nandrew's been hitting the Flash dev hard!
Afflict
20-10-2008, 04:43 PM
When I get home I'll get to you guys on this one ;)
Ok with flash you really have three routes when it comes to 3d.
Away3d (http://away3d.com/)
Which has pretty sweet demos and tutorials.
And then of course Papervision (http://www.papervision3d.org/)
http://blog.alternativaplatform.com/en/
This is an awesome engine if you go through the demos make sure to check out the bunker demo, its sorta like a 3d shooter with amazing fps and very impressive since its all in flash playing through the browser.
This is by far the most impressive engine, however if I remember correctly its a commercial product.
Anyway, getting to your question. I would too suggest not going 3d on this project go with Isometric. Messing with a huge 3d project now will probably slow production down immensly and if there is a time line or deadline on this your going to stress yourself out for no good reason.
Goodluck and have fun.
Well I'm a bit nervous about using the FFilmation isometric engine as it's newish and unproven. I'd want to build a simple isometric engine. Do you think I could build then engine itself in a month? I'll just use AS2.
FuzzYspo0N
21-10-2008, 10:30 AM
i think the ffilmation looks awesome, if that fits the game style. i think the only hindering factor per se is the learning curve. Though the demos seem solid and the engine looks good... There is also this which looks pretty cool, as a learning point
http://actionscripter.co.uk/blog/?page_id=76
dislekcia
21-10-2008, 12:50 PM
Well I'm a bit nervous about using the FFilmation isometric engine as it's newish and unproven. I'd want to build a simple isometric engine. Do you think I could build then engine itself in a month? I'll just use AS2.
AS3. It's much, much better.
Building an isometric engine shouldn't be too hard, just make sure you know exactly what functionality you need. If you do your map layout via the timeline instead of programmatically you'll also have an easier time of it.
Afflict
21-10-2008, 03:54 PM
AS3 is way better agreed, however if it's a new learning curve for him it might not be the viable option at the moment.
There is another engine I found the link to this morning from your initial link cYn.
http://www.openspace-engine.com/
Outside Of Society (http://oos.moxiecode.com/) was pretty sweet way back when, then linked to TonyPa (http://www.tonypa.pri.ee/tbw/) which is a pretty sweet tutorial on the matter.
I have some old stuff I messed with in terms of ISO and I recently planned on getting back into it too so if I build anything I'll let you know.
Cool thanks. I think the tricky part will be incorporating the game elements, like an inventory of items to use and some sort of stat sheet that keeps records of the user's actions.
FuzzYspo0N
22-10-2008, 10:34 AM
in terms of? making the " components"? or implementing the gameplay elements using a file format system/ xml? Dont forget you can always ask here, theres a good number of us who use flash a lot :)
It's a gameplay element. The user needs to walk around a server farm taking readings. They need to be stored and be referenced when needed.
I'm going with AS2 because I'm working with another person who only knows AS2. I'm seeing a lot of tuts and examples of engines, but very few complete projects using isometric tile engines. I've read up about performance issues, depth finding etc, but I suppose I'll just have to get started and deal with those issues as I get to them.
I'm also trying to come up with an easy way to generate the character sprite and it's animations. I need to be slightly more slick than pixel art as these guys aren't familiar with the concept. I found a pretty cool utility, it's tied into some cheesey avatar creation social network crap. But it has a hidden service that cranks out your avatar in character sheet format... probably copyright issues with that.
http://img227.imageshack.us/img227/4909/charsheetsw8.th.jpg (http://img227.imageshack.us/my.php?image=charsheetsw8.jpg)http://img227.imageshack.us/images/thpix.gif (http://g.imageshack.us/thpix.php)
Otherwise I found this pixel art avatar generator, which I won't use but maybe you guys can.
http://charas-project.net/charas2/index.php
dislekcia
22-10-2008, 01:51 PM
It's a gameplay element. The user needs to walk around a server farm taking readings. They need to be stored and be referenced when needed.
I'd build that as a custom movie object that you'd make visible when the player opened their inventory. That way it's not placed anywhere on the timeline, but you can use it store values and variables.
I'm also trying to come up with an easy way to generate the character sprite and it's animations. I need to be slightly more slick than pixel art as these guys aren't familiar with the concept. I found a pretty cool utility, it's tied into some cheesey avatar creation social network crap. But it has a hidden service that cranks out your avatar in character sheet format... probably copyright issues with that.
http://img227.imageshack.us/img227/4909/charsheetsw8.th.jpg (http://img227.imageshack.us/my.php?image=charsheetsw8.jpg)http://img227.imageshack.us/images/thpix.gif (http://g.imageshack.us/thpix.php)
OMG! Please share that! That's amazing... So many people will instantly stop worrying about character graphics...
Here is a nice isometric engine put to use:
http://www.nabboproject.com/projectmontecasino/
Okay from what I can tell the Meez guys created this thing as a java applet to promote their social networking avatar site. It was for a competition, I'm not sure it's for public consumption.
www.meez.com - create an account, get some free credits, build an avatar, spend credits on customisation
http://partner.meez.com/avatar-ws/partner/index.jsp - use your account name, use x as your auth key. Export as png sequence. fgplatformer01 and fgplatformer02 in the pose/animation field will select the animations. There are other animations too. If you google the url you'll find a pdf with more info/options.
Let me know if you figure out the camera rotation... you know for an isometric view.
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