Within two days, on the 10th and 11th of December 2011, in Kiev hotel “Rus” will take place the next annual conference of Flash GAMM! Kyiv. It has become a good tradition that the AlternativaPlatform company serves as the platinum sponsor of the event and willingly shares its experiences with the participants.

On Saturday, December 10, at 15:00, our programmer Dmitry Sergeyev will report “AlternativaPhysics: physics simulation on Flash is easy”. Dmitry will talk about the abilities of the engine AlternativaPhysics and conduct a master class on its use. And on Sunday, December 11 at 16:00 there will be the second master-class - “Flash games: transition to the third dimension”. Lead Alternativa3D programmer Andrey Kopysov and leading illustrator Pavel Gorbunov in an hour will make a prototype 3D-flash-game, showing how to translate social game in the third dimension.

At the conference one will also have a chance to communicate with the Chief Technical Officer (CTO) Anton Volkov, the Art Director Ivan Zykov and the Training Center Manage Mikhail Suhoterin.

More about Flash GAMM! Kyiv 2011

Adobe MAX 2011 conference takes place in Los-Angels from the 1st to the 5th October 2011. We are the gold sponsor of this event and present there our latest technologies for displaying hardware accelerated 3D graphics in Flash Player environment. As part of the “Amazing new possibilities in Flash with Alternativa3D” session CEO Alexander Karpovich and art-director Ivan Zykov told about the prominent features of the graphics engine Alternativa3D 8.

Developing and launching projects on Alternativa3D 8 is possible today as far as public version of the Flash Player 11 was successfully released. This marked the beginning of the next phase in the history of browser-based games and applications. To demonstrate the capabilities of the new Flash Player in an official presentation at Adobe MAX 2011, Adobe has used the browser-based online game “Tanki Online 2.0″ - one of our key projects.

For several years we have been working with Adobe Systems, acting as a regular participant of prerelease groups and as a successful developer of browser-based next-generation games. We are confident that in the near future major game projects move into browsers, as the boundary between the platforms will be erased. With graphics technology Alternativa3D and server side AlternativaCore you can create a common game space where users come from different browsers, operating systems, social networks and with different devices, whether compact notebook or bulky computer at home. It is for this principle the “Tanki Online 2.0.” game was developed.

Along with the graphics engine and server-side, we are developing our own online editor AlternativaEditor. Already, you can use it as a free tool for publishing 3D-models. After loading the model at editor.alternativaplatform.com user gets a link and code for embedding an object into his blog or website. Subsequently AlternativaEditor will also be available to our partners as a complete tool for changing the game parameters and moving objects in real time directly from inside the game.

You can see some of our technologies in action in an interactive demonstration of “Tanki Online 2.0″ on the maps “Arena” and “Crash” as well as in a promotional game MAX Racer, created at the request of Adobe Systems to demonstrate the Stage3D (Molehill 3D APIs) at Adobe MAX 2010.

The Annual Game Developers Conference Europe will be in Cologne, Germany, from 15th to 17th of August. AlternativaPlatform is a GDC Europe 2011 silver sponsor and will demonstrate its own technologies for MMO real-time browser-based games development at this year’s event.

Also on the August 17th at 12:40, AlternativaPlatform’s CEO, Alexandr Karpovich, and CTO, Anton Volkov, will deliver a report «AlternativaPlatform and Molehill - wind of changes in browser-based games».

Our technologies will be on display and available for use at booth #138. As an example of browser-based real-time MMO-action Tanki Oline 2.0 will show the rich possibilities Alternativa3D graphics engine, server side AlternativaCore and worldbuilder AlternativaEditor offer. The worldbuilder AlternativaEditor allows one to change gameworld parameters and move objects in real-time from inside the game. It simplifies development process while making it more vivid.

Along with Alexandr and Anton, you can meet AlternativaPlatform’s art-director Ivan Zykov and CMO Roman Epishin at the booth. The team is ready to discuss all kind of questions: from technological nuances to strategic partnership to marketing proposals.

Better late than never! Check out our report about trip to E3 2011.

At the E3 2011 conference in Los Angeles we stood out by not organizing a large and anonymous exhibition, but instead by putting together a down-home and cozy booth. There we demonstrated Tanki Online 2.0’s early build as an example of the power and possibilities our technologies offer developers and players. We had six PCs and a local Tanki server. Our colleagues from Perm regularly updated the build, sending us SMS, such as «prepare to restart».

The entire demonstration ran on a browser, a fact which we had to continually remind visitors. People just couldn’t believe what we had actually accomplished and would call Flash Player menu to check. Then we blew away all the doubters with demonstrations launched on Android.

This year we are taking every opportunity to inform the gaming community about Flash Player possibilities and the advantages our technologies offer game developers. We know our presentation at E3 was a success. Our 3D engine and server technology caught the interest of the big game companies and we are continuing to discuss new ways of cooperation with them. Cool!

We’ve become a frequent visitor to the US. The star trio of Volkov, Zykov and Karpovich departed to the E3 2011 conference in June, while earlier our programmer Mikhail Okunev visited Orlando. Misha, acting as coach, and his team participated in the final tour of the international programming tournament among students at ACM ICPC.

About 8,000 teams had registered for the first tour of ACM ICPC, but only 100 made it to the World Finals. The Perm State University team of Pavel Ponomarev, Dmitry Sergeev, Andrey Serovikov and coach Mikhail Okunev took 27th place! Our guys left in the dust some pretty serious competition, including Princeton University, the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology at Zurich and many others.

Participation in the World Finals required a deep knowledge in combinatorics, graph theory, probability theory, complexity, computational string theory, number theory, etc. Check out a couple of these tasks to get a feel for what we’re talking about.

1) You have a polygon with N vertices. Your task is to compute the smallest hole width through which a given polygon can pass. N <=100.

2) There are N mummies on the infinite grid. Each mummy tries to get a human and every turn will take one step in that human’s direction. Your placement and the placement of all the mummies are known. Create a program, which could calculate how long it takes for the mummies to reach the human. N <=100,000. The time limit for the program execution is about 2 seconds and straightforward simulation won’t count as a solution.

Of course we don’t want to lose out on such promising young programmers who can with ease solve difficult tasks. So Pavel Ponomarev will soon join our team. He will develop AlternativaPhysics technology together with Mikhail Okunev.

While we are preparing report about our business trip to E3, we offer you to vote for Alternativa3D at E3 Bright Idea Awards.

Since June 7 till June 9 Alex Karpovich, Anton Volkov and Ivan Zykov will be defending pride and honor of AlternativaPlatform at E3 2011 conference in L.A. This time event is held in B2B format. At the conference we will represent Alternativa3D 8 engine, using browser-based MMO 3D-action Tanki Online 2.0 to demonstrate all the benefits of the technology. You can visit booth #2647 at South Hall to see everything with your eyes.

We are back from KRI 2011 conference. The summary of our trip is the Best Technology of KRI 2011 award for Alternativa3D 8 engine. Dynamic lighting, shadows and high-poly models in Flash Player were appreciated.

Best Technology of KRI 2011 award in the hands of engine programmer Vladimir Babushkin

The endless snow fall is slowing down life in Perm, but programmer Anton Bragin and designer Mikhail Yarusov are not afraid of February weather. They are going to RAFPUG in Yekaterinburg.

This meeting of Flash-developers, animators and game-designers will be held on the 5th of February. Mikhail and Anton will make a report about AlternativaGUI. Check full event program and the list of speakers here.

Everybody can attend RAFPUG without any entry fee, but registration is required.

In the last weekend of January (29-30) there will be indie-developers conference Indi Snow 2011. It will take place at Abzakovo ski resort near Magnitogorsk (Chelyabinsk Region, South Ural). Alternativa LLC acts as a sponsor of this event. Besides, Alternativa team members will make a presentation at the conference.

Anton Bragin and Michail Yarusov will speak about difficulties and problem solving in GUI development. And of course they won’t miss a chance to ski and try other leisure activities. To read conference program, to register for participating and to learn other details, visit Indie Snow official site.