Alternativa Platform blog

Sharing experiences at FlashGAMM 2012

Roman Epishin — Tue, 15 May 2012 15:50:17 +0000

On Thursday, May 17, in the “Cosmos” Moscow hotel is to be held the FlashGAMM Moscow 2012 conference. This annual event is dedicated to the publishers and developers of Flash-, mobile and social games. We have traditionally been the sponsor of the conference (visit our stand in the “platinum” zone) and are preparing two cognitive reports.

The producer of the “Tanki Online” project and CTO of AlternativaPlatform Anton Volkov in the session “Mistakes story of a successful project” will speak about the inevitable problems in the life of an ambitious online game and about experience we got of them. You are invited on May 17 at 12:00 in the “Vecherny Cosmos” Hall.

And on the same day at 16:00 in the “Galactica 1-2″ hall there will be the “Flash 3D on mobile? That’s easy!” report. In it, Software Engineer Andrey Andreev and AlternativaPlatform Training Center Manager Michael Sukhoterin will share their experiences on the use of Stage3D on mobile platforms.

See you at FlashGAMM!

Graphics acceleration using Flash Player 11

Mikhail Sukhoterin — Fri, 11 May 2012 09:13:58 +0000

In 2011 the Flash Player 11 was released with support graphics acceleration on the graphics card. Prior to that, all calculations were performed on the CPU, and developers had to put up with a restriction on the number of triangles, etc.The Tanki Online Game was developed on the Alternativa3D 7 engine under Flash Player 10 and the average FPS players have been 20-25. To speed up the schedule, we decided to make the game support Flash Player 11. And that’s what happened:

Without hardware acceleration:

With hardware acceleration:

To improve the graphics you need to install Adobe Flash Player 11, update the graphics driver and Flash Player settings to enable hardware acceleration.

Unfortunately, the Linux operating system does not support this functionality, so that is why it will not increase FPS.

Also on the Adobe website there is a list of video cards that do not currently support hardware acceleration of Flash Player.

AlternativaPlatform on TV

Roman Epishin — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 15:31:56 +0000

We got our 13 minutes of glory. The film crew of Russian educational TV project “Technopark” visited our office and discussed our achievements on air. We are grateful to everyone who is fascinated with our work. We appreciate your support!

AlternativaPlatform: Tanki Online (only in Russian, sorry)

AlternativaGUI 5.21.0 update

Roman Epishin — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 09:51:45 +0000

As we continue to improve the AlternativaGUI interface library, we released the 5.21.0 update. This version fixes bugs found earlier, and includes additional features. In particular, we have optimized the work of the interface and made it more user friendly by adding the flags for freezing the width and height of containers (freezeHeight and freezeWidth).

Major optimization was also undergone by classes GUIobject and TabPanel. In the last one we implemented such methods of the work with content of component as adding and deleting tabs with a content, receiving information about the number of tabs, upgrading components. The full list of changes and innovations can be found in the archive with the library.

Also please note that to simplify the interface, we removed the hint container from the initialization parameters. Now it is delivered through the setHintImaging method of the MouseManager class.

Download AlternativaGUI 5.21.0
Tutorials and documentation

New AlternativaPlayer features

Roman Epishin — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 06:02:06 +0000

AlternativaPlayer online 3D-models viewer has moved to a new version of the Alternativa3D 8.27.0 engine, geared with new features. The main innovation was the correct sorting of faces with transparency – they are drawn using alpha-test implemented in Alternativa3D 8.27.0. The benefits of correct sorting is clearly seen in the representation of trees. Listed below are the other innovations.

Increased the limit on the number of lights in the scene: 11 directional , 7 omni, and 5 spot for objects with vertex lighting and 12 directional, 8 omni and 6 spot for objects with the normal map.
Implemented importing animations from A3D format and export of animation into A3D format.

Launch AlternativaPlayer

Alternativa3D 8 is out in Open Source!

Roman Epishin — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 08:26:01 +0000

Friends, March 29, 2012 was an important event for the AlternativaPlatform company and, hopefully, for many of you too! After six years of close development an Alternativa3D 8 graphics Flash 3D engine is out in Open Source. The source code is published on the GitHub. With the opening of the source code in the history of Alternativa3D a new period begins. We hope that with the community support it will be developed faster and become more understandable and more accessible thanks to the growth of educational and analytical materials from different authors in different languages. By the way, such materials can be published in our Knowledge Base. For our part we will not stop developing and supporting the engine, meaning that ideas and suggestions are welcome – you can always leave them on our forum.

According to the updated license, any organization or individual is free to use the technology to their advantage. It is not necessary to put logos and other references to the AlternativaPlatform as the developer of Alternativa3D. Nevertheless, we are grateful if mentioned.

Go to the source code
Discuss on the forum

“Dead Zone” – realtime MMORPG on Alternativa3D 8

maltsev — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 04:25:29 +0000

We would like to present another project being developed using the graphics engine Alternativa3D 8. This is a multiplayer online role-playing game “Last Stand Dead Zone”. Game developer is the Con Artist Games (official site, the group in facebook) company. Currently the game is running in the Facebook as a continuation of a series of Last Stand. The project is developed by a team of three people (a programmer, game designer and artist).

The action of Last Stand Dead Zone occurs in the post-apocalyptic world after the epidemic virus that turned people into zombies. Those who are not infected, try to survive, using all available means. This includes three types of resources – wood, metal and fabric, as well as fuel (fuel), which serves as a virtual currency. It, in fact, the monetization of the project – the unit of fuel sold for real money.

Gameplay is based on the construction, the exploration of the world and, of course, battles with the Dead. You can manage your own game space and develop it. Building food and resource stocks, building domestic infrastructure, fences, etc. Exploring the surrounding areas, looking at their resources, artifacts and adventure – the zombies are not asleep. The characters, as usual, with time become stronger and also develop.

Interestingly, the game map shows the area of other users of Facebook, including your friends. You can help your friends or attack them.

The game is in beta version stage, and a number of features are not yet available. Nevertheless, it looks good already and deserves a “like”.

The server part is implemented by means of the Player.IO service. Visualization is supported by Alternativa3D 8 engine.

AlternativaPhysics 2.3.1 update: bugs are fixed, bodies are frozen

Roman Epishin — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 09:44:04 +0000

We’ve released a new version of the AlternativaPhysics library. In the version 2.3.1 you’ll find new function of bodies freezing. This increases performance in the scenes with a great amount of resting bodies. Also we fixed a few bugs from previous releases. You’ll find the most important additions below and a full change log in the archive with the library.

Realised automated freezing of resting bodies and their contacts.
Added the capability to freeze all scene objects.
Realised automated inertia tensor calculation for CollisionComposite.
Added new application functions.
Fixed bugs in functions.

Download AlternativaPhysics 2.3.1
Discuss on the forum
See tutorials
Launch interactive demo

Alternativa3D 8.27.0 with shadows and alpha-test

Roman Epishin — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 12:47:32 +0000

Continuing this week’s long-awaited release of the new version of the engine Alternativa3D. It implements the shadow of the directional light needed, for example, to correct image shadows in the sunlight. We also added the ability to draw using the alpha-test technology, and the two-pass alpha-test. This solves the problem of sorting when rendering translucent objects such as leaves of trees.

In Alternativa3D 8.27.0 a total of more than thirty amendments were introduced. Their complete list is in the archive with the library, and the TOP-5 innovations are presented below.

Added the DirectionalLightShadow class to calculate shadows from the directional lighting source.
The material adds the ability to draw using alpha-test technology, and two-pass alpha-test.
Implemented the EnvironmentMaterial – a material with simulated reflection of the cubic texture.
In the material StandardMaterial was added the ability to use texture light map with a dynamic light.
Implemented importing animation from the binary A3D format.

Along with the engine has been updated plug-ins for 3DS Max 2010, 3DS Max 2011 and 3DS Max 2012.

Click on the picture to start the demonstration (Flash Player 11 required)

Download Alternativa3D 8.27.0
Discuss on the forum

AlternativaGUI 5.20.0 update

Roman Epishin — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 11:38:44 +0000

We have updated the interface library AlternativaGUI to version 5.20.0 . The changes relate primarily to the elimination of previously reported bugs and improving usability of our technology. For example, if previously you could only use embedded fonts, now even the system ones. Working with fonts is described in detail in the lesson “Creating a text label“. Read more for full change list.

We added the embedFonts method for the component LabelTF. This method is responsible for the use of embedded or system fonts.
Added the method (enabled) to enable or disable LayoutManager, MouseManager and KeyboardManager.
Fixed a bug with the “locking” of the NumericStepper component and also added functionality of value changing when dragging.
Implemented AlternativaGUI class, which has the version of the library.

In connection with the above changes minor changes were also made to the component NumericStepper and button NumericButton in the skinned library AlternativaGUIDefaultTheme 1.5.0.

Please note that the documentation and AlternativaGUI lessons are published in our “Knowledge Base“.

Download AlternativaGUI 5.20.0
Discuss on the forum