Finally, we have finished another one interactive showcase, based on Alternativa3D 8 engine with Molehill 3D API support for Flash Player 11. It is Metro 2033 Online. The demo shows skeletal animation and normal map lighting. It also gives sage advice to avoid walking in the Moscow subway, because who knows what might await you there?

Metro 2033 Online is a full scale browser-based MMO-game based on the novel by famed Russian writer Dmitry Glukhovsky. It is a joint project from Open Games and AlternativaPlatform.

Want to stay informed and stay up-to-date on all the latest info concerning Alternativa3D? Check out wiki.alternativaplatform.com. It’s open and anyone can be an editor.

The site already contains plenty of useful articles for developers, designers and modelers. But what we really want is your help in creating the most complete resource for everything Alternativa 3D. We are counting on you. At the wiki you can add new details to published articles or create new ones yourself. We need assistance translating wiki articles into different languages and would appreciate any help you can offer. If you want to learn how to manage our wiki, check out this article (currently only in Russian).

And remember you can always discuss the wiki on the forum.

We have been dreaming about dynamic lighting in Alternativa3D for a long time, but different reasons have been distracting us from realizing this feature. Most of all we were afraid that lighting system in the engine’s architecture would decrease general performance.

And finally we’ve found effective solution! Now we have dynamic lighting in Alternativa3D. Also we made some upgrades and fixed a few bugs. You can download Alternativa3D 7.7.0 from the official site.

Changelog:

• Added light source classes: AmbientLight, DirectionalLight, OmniLight, SpotLight.
• Added materials with lighting support: VertexLightMaterial, FlatShadingMaterial, AverageLightMaterial, NormalMapMaterial.
• Added environmental reflection material: SphericalEnvironmentMaterial.
• Vertex: added properties normalX, normalY and normalZ.
• Mesh: added methods calculateVerticesNormals(). Method calculateNormals() has been renamed to calculateFacesNormals().
• Added light source debugging.
• Added method clone() for materials.
• Camera3D: added lookAt() method.
• RayIntersectionData: added toString() method.
• AnimationCouple: the type of left and right properties has been changed to AnimationNode.
• ParserCollada: added light source parsing support.
• Sprite3D: fixed bug in intersectRay() method.
• Skin: fixed bugs in methods clone() and attach().
• KDContainer: fixed tree building bug.

On Sunday, February 27, Adobe provided general access to the beta-version of Molehill 3D API and Flash Player 11. Molehill uses GPU for rendering, allowing developers to achieve modern graphics in browser applications. You can download public builds, documentation, and Flex SDK from AIR and Flash Player Incubator on labs.adobe.com.

But to see the true value of these new technologies you need showcases. We present MAX Racer demo, built on proprietory Alternativa3D 8 graphics engine. First the video of this showcase was shown at Adobe MAX 2010.

MAX Racer is a racing prototype set near Los Angeles Convention Center. The player controls a sports car with the keyboard, steering wheel, joystick, or gamepad. Another demo of Molehill, built on Alternativa3D 8, soon will be available in the Showcase section at alternativaplatform.com. It is Ostrova Online. Both mentioned projects show great potential of Molehill 3D API.

A beta version of the engine will go public in April 2011. Third-party developers can use Alternativa 3D 8 free of charge, but are required to put in a link to alternativaplatform.com.

Read more in press-release.

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.

Dear friends, our blog participates in «Runet Blog 2011» award. We ask to support us with your voices.

Vote!

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.

Holidays at last are almost over. Soon we will continue to talk about conferences, new technologies and other serious things. But first we offer a little post about something relaxing and entertaining… About a game!

Not so long ago we showed cool racing arcade built on Alternativa3D 7, and now we are going to show you original puzzle Roll the Ball. The name of this game from Turkish Flash developer Yagiz Gurgul is self-explanatory. You have blue ball you should roll around. The aim is to reach a red mark and it is not so easy. Your way lays through fantastic agglomerate of solid planes and unsteady boards. Due to realistic physics ball can easily roll down to the abyss so it’s a little bit tricky to reach the mark.

Well, a picture is worth thousand words. Play it!

Greetings, friends! In these last days of outgoing year Alternativa LLC sincerely wishes you a Happy New Year and wants to share a few interesting news with you .

We made it! Alternativa3D engine is already available in version 7.6.0 — before the New Year! We added EllipsoidCollider class for collision detection and new animation system with Tree Blending Animation in new version. We also added property useHandCursor to Object3D and autoSize to Sprite3D. Complete list of additions and innovations is published here in blog. You can download 7.6.0 upgrade for Alternativa3D from official site. In the next versions we are going to realize lightning. We will also complement future versions with physics library.

At the same time we extensively work on Alternativa3D 8 with hardware 3D API Molehill support for the next Flash player. It will be highly performative engine displaying 3 000 000 polygons with 60 FPS on modern graphics cards. It’ll also support pixel and vertex shaders, particle system, atmospheric effects (fog, dynamic sky, clouds) and posteffects (blur, luminescence etc.). The engine will be released with the start of the next Flash player open beta-test in Spring of 2011. Alternativa3D 8 will be complemented with an editor.

We hope that our work makes your professional life easier, richer, brighter and more interesting. And we wish you new achievements in technological front and a lot of interesting events. Always be on the high horse and among the pioneers on the undiscovered paths of IT-industry. Happy New Year, friends!

Lost Race — wonderful indie-game based on Alternativa3D

In our trip to FlashGAMM! Kyiv 2010 we not only presented our own projects but also checked others. And we were extremely proud that wonderful game Lost Race based on Alternativa3D 7 engine won «The most advanced indie game» nomination.

This project was created by an indie-developer Sergey Lazarev. He turned a simple idea to race down the road, strafing from other cars, into excellent attraction. Cool car crushes, sense of speed, passion, adrenalin! And all of these in the Flash game built, as Sergey told us, «during 3-4 weeks working on evenings and weekends».

Earlier he planned to write his own «pseudo 3D» and then tried a few engines, including Away3D. At last he chose Alternativa3D. «I checked a lot of different engines and could say Alternativa3D 7 is the most usable! It was enough to learn HelloAlternativa demo and its code to start the work. I just wrote to Support a couple of times», – Sergey made a compliment to us. We are looking forward for his new projects based on A3D.

You can try to survive in Lost Race yourself.