Load and display Quake 2′s Maps in Flash 10
The Quake-series is really awesome. Not only in terms of gameplay but also technically. Quake 1, 2 and 3 are especially impressive. No wonder why Quake's graphics engine, maps or models file formats have been reused in many many games such as Half Life, Call of Duty or Medal of Honnor! So why not in your own Flash 10 game?
There are so many reasons why loading Quake 2 files inside the Flash player would be considered as just "impossible". Performance would be the first and main one. One would just consider that Flash is not fast enough to display complex 3D graphics, not even those of a game as old as Quake 2 (published in 1996!). But using Flash 10 latests features such as the Vector and GraphicsTrianglePath classes, it is actually quite doable!
Details, pictures and a demo application right after the jump!
Promethe’s Blog on FlashBookmarks!
My blog is now available on FlashBookmarks in the "blogs" category.
Thank you FlashBookmarks!
Flex Ajax Bridge (FABridge) Library
The Flex-Ajax Bridge (or FABridge) is a very cool features. It enables you to automagicaly create a "bridge" between your Flex application and the JavaScript code embed in your web page. This way you can call methods of your Flex application directly in your JavaScript code, and the other way around.
There are several solutions to use the FABridge in your Flex project. Those are the most common:
- In Flex Builder 3, right click on your project, select "Create Ajax Bridge.." and follow the wizard.
- Follow the Flex 3 documentation: Integrating with the Flex Ajax Bridge.
Both solutions have issues. The first one is the fastest, no doubt, but it creates a LOT of JavaScript code that you might not need at all. But you will still have to deploy and maintain that JavaScript code in order to get the FABridge working properly. The second one is a bit more complicated and create no useless JavaScript code. Nonetheless, you'll have to add an external source directory to your Flex project and this reference might come to be broken (if someone else download the sources for example).
After the jump, discover the ONE solution that has it all...
Cubic Panorama in Flash 10
Here is my latest DirectFlex experiment: a cubic panorama, also called a "skybox".
Cubic Panorama on DirectFlex Labs
I was inspired by makc, who first did this experiment using Alternativa3D.
Full code after the jump...
Five Futuristic Interfaces At SIGGRAPH
Because human interaction with a machine has always been a big deal, discover five furisitic but yet already functional interfaces:
Five Futuristic Interfaces on Display at SIGGRAPH via TechnologyReview.com
Flex for PHP developers
Mihai CORLAN just posted an interesting post about 'Flex for PHP developers'. This blog post introduces Flex and how to make it work with a PHP backend using WebServices or even AMF.
The article is light but covers the main notions of Flex such as MXML and ActionScript 3 and of course data access using PHP.
Follow me on Twitter
Here is my Twitter page:
Follow me to see how interesting my life work is can be!
Oh and yes... Merry Christmas! 
Display Half Life 3D models with Flash 10
UPDATE: you can find a newer version on the DirectFlex Blog.
It's been a while since the last post. But I'm back and I decided to release the first DirectFlex demo ever
This demo is quite simple and features a 3D model extracted from the famous Half Life 1 add on Counter-Strike 1.6. The model is made of "only" 740 polygons, which is not much compared to what DirectFlex can do. Still, being able to display Half Life 1 models inside of Flash with a decent framerate brings hope for future developments. Anyway it is a good proof that DirectFlex is (way) faster than any other Flash 3D "engine" out there... but hey! live demo first and then technical stuff... (Flash 10 required!)
Display Nintendo Wii 3D models in Flash!
A few posts ago, I wrote about the fact that DirectFlex was able to load and display Nintendo 64 3d models. You can found this post and a few screenshots here. This experiment was made using the Flash 9 version of DirectFlex, and a lot of things have changed since then. Here we are, with a brand new version of DirectFlex specially designed to take advantage of the new features of Flash 10.
DirectFlex new features and Wii 3D models rendering
The new Flash 10 version of DirectFlex comes with a lot of new features such as:
- New architecture
- Improved performances
- Texture coordinates support
- 3DS files support
- Embed assets (textures and 3D models) support
- Pre-made camera classes
A good example of those new features is the fact that DirectFlex is now able to load and display Nintendo Wii 3D models. To make this new experiment I downloaded "Zelda : Twillight Princess" 3D models. Those models have been ripped from the original Wii game and are easily available on google. Because a picture is worth a thousand words, here are a few screenhots:
