So, I've been working with Ruby on Rails lately -- which is another discussion entirely -- and I've come to the point where I want to figure out how to embed SWF games into a page.  This research led me to a great little article called "Embedding SWF content with Ruby on Rails " at EleventyTen (which is just a cool name, btw.)

I'm posting here as usual to give myself a future-note on the topic, but also to share a bit.  SWFObject is really sweet and is a MUCH nicer way to handle the ridiculous mess that is the embed-vs-object "thing" for putting SWF movies in your files.

So, consider this an introduction to SWF embeding in Rails, as well as a heads-up on SWFObject since you'll probably want to use that sucker no matter what you're using on the site dev backend!

You're welcome. 

"A performance so scrumtrilescent, I can barely move."  -- Will Ferrell as James Lipton

This post has nothing to do with that quote, or that made-up word, for that matter.  However, it is my shallow attempt at humor so there you have it.  :P

Point is, I've been working on implementing Scrum and Agile software development goodies and I'm very much liking what I'm seeing. I have a lot to learn -- mostly through practice -- but I'm both inspired and motivated by this change in my processes.  It's a typical story heard amongst people getting into Scrum officially, where I'm sure I've done all this stuff before.  That's said to be due to the "common sense" nature of so much of this.

At any rate, I just had to post this note to get me thinking about posting more here about how my process is improving.  I'll work on documenting a lot of the core stuff I'm learning later, but I've gotta bail.  It's really late for me and sleep looms.

Cryptic (the folks behind City of Heroes and City of Villains) have released a pretty sweet tool for animation junkies.. the Cryptic AR (Cryptic Animation Rig) for 3D Studio Max 8 or higher. Their stated goal for doing this is to provide "the animation community with the ability to use professional quality animation tools free of charge. The rig's flexibility and ease of use allows users of all experience levels to create professional video game animations."

They've also put up a Cryptic AR community forum for new & experienced animators to discuss their craft, as well as getting tips about using the Cryptic AR.

I'm not much of an animator, but I'll have to give this puppy a run and see how it flies. Good Stuff, Cryptic! This is pretty cool.

I've been in a long-running quest to get more organized in my development process. I'm not the greatest at juggling everything I have to do for my projects, but since I've historically done so much of the work by myself, the problem has been solely my own issue. Lately (the past few years), I've taken on others who like me, need direction and prodding to figure out what to do next for project completion.

I've never really fancied myself a "Producer" for games, but I really need to work on those mad skilz since I've basically filled that role on projects for many years. (I'll have to remember not to point anyone to this post if I am applying to a Producer gig in the future... this could kill the deal real quick-like, eh?) Well, I just wanted to quickly point you folks towards some online project manager tools I've been checking out. There's some great stuff out there that I thought you might want to know about.

[hit the "read more" link to get the rest of the story...]

Google has a sweet new search engine feature thingo called Google Code Search . If you didn't guess from the name, they've turned up the search mojo a bit to delve deeper into source code available on the 'net. I haven't played around with it too much yet, but it's really interesting. I'm sure there are plenty of coders out there who will love this feature for doing various research for sample code and such.

I'm a sample code glutton, so me likey mucho. Muy mucho. I just need to run into a problem or two and pull up Code Search instead of turning to the usual sources (books, known websites, Google proper, etc.) and see how it goes!

I've got a bit of research left before I get fully underway, but I've been reading through info about the AMFPHP open source Flash Remoting gateway . Cool beans. I don't want to pay for Flash Remoting stuff from Macrodobe since I'm generally not cash-filled and FR is huge-o expensivo to implement from what I've seen.

I have much research about other options that are less expensive than the real thing, but I'm not getting into that. This is my journal, after all, and I'm only up to AMFPHP right now. I'll get the others posted when I get to them, eh?

Here's a clip from their home page, in case you need more info before leaving here:

It’s fast, reliable, 100% free and open-source. Flash Remoting is a technology built into the Flash player core that enables sending data between the server and the client seemlessly. If you've built XML-based RIAs you know how much of a pain it can be to serialize the data, debug, and integrate into your application.With Flash Remoting, you can call remote methods from the Flash client and the arguments will end up in the native remote language, and will come back to Flash correctly typed, so there's no messing with serialization at all.

You also get to use the wonderful NetConnection debugger, which shows you exactly what's being sent between the client and server. Remoting uses AMF, a very lightweight binary format that cuts the bulk out of packets, meaning data exchange is a lot faster than with XML. All in all, Remoting is the way to go if you're looking to build robust, fast and secure Rich Internet Applications.

AMFPHP is a complete implementation of Remoting for PHP with tons of features built-in to make creating Remoting apps a whole lot simpler.

Here's a tutorial that I'm going through along with a few other docs and some books I already own with Remoting info in them:

• Connecting Macromedia Flash and PHP

 

I'm not a Mac-head, so I'm currently not able to play with this puppy, but it looks very, very nice. Unity 3D is a "Cross-Platform 3D Authoring" tool, but that's cross-plat. delivery, not development. Just be sure you get that part, since there's often confusion up-front for some. It's a Mac tool, but you can deliver the apps for Windows, Mac or Web browser. Nice, eh?

This puppy really looks fantastic, especially at the new 1.5 level. I'd been considering it (at least playing with it) recently, but just haven't had the time or the project for it. To be quick about it, it's basically a 3D application creation tool. There are a great deal of Macromedia Director users eying Unity 3D as a viable alternative to Shockwave 3D... I'm one of them, honestly. Of course, I'm still hoping Garage Games will turn out a browser plugin for Torque engines.. but I don't know if that's in the pipeline or not (I know about some possibilities, but this isn't the time to post about that.)

The Unity 3D graphic rendering engine looks freakin' fantastic, I'll just say, and is one of the biggest features pointed out by those potential Director defectors I mentioned. They also use [a subset of] the Ageia PhysX physics API to handle the fun rigid-body physics stuff people wanna play with.

I'll add myself to the list of folks looking seriously at buying a Mac just to develop games with Unity... I'll borrow my friend's 'puter first to try it out, but if I like it and can come up with projects to use it for, I'm steering that way, for sure... especially if word doesn't come from Adobe real soon about major upgrades to Director & Shockwave 3D! Honestly, there are plenty of people looking this way instead of VirTools, even... I'll do an overview of these engines as soon as I can and I'll talk more lengthily (?) about that then.

I put it in my Research Journal for future reference, but otherwise, I'm not going to talk any more about it right now. If you want to check it out, go give the Unity 3D feature list a whirl! Really, really nice product they have there.

I need to get back to other work, but I wanted to post a quick follow-up about the whole 3D architecture/building content creation tool "problem" I'm having. I noted that Garage Games' Torque Constructor was getting nearer to reality -- as it's gone into beta -- which pushed me ever so slightly further into researching other tools available to create interiors for 3D games (notably for Torque since I'm playing with that these days.)

I've used the aforementioned QuArK most recently, but I honestly didn't get too far into it. At the time I was furthest into this stuff, I was lacking a project to keep me focussed. Right now, I'm in "research mode" so I will be trying to find as many tools as I can... in this case, for creating "levels" and/or buildings and interiors for levels. I won't go into the distinction of terms right now, sorry. :P

So... I'm wanting to point out another tool that I hadn't pointed out in my post: Cartography Shop appears to do much (all?) of what is needed for creating architecture for 3D game levels. It's pretty inexpensive, but I'm not personally going to commit until I find out more about Constructor's pricing/availability.

It also appears (from posts by Garage Games employees) that these guys aren't working directly with GG on specific Torque integration or whatever. That doesn't make it less of a worthy product (I haven't tried it yet, but there is a demo,) but it does affect my decisions if I end up going with Torque for future development. In fact, just to give you more to read if you're looking in the same direction, I'm seeing the Torque Pipeline for Cartography Shop as a possible resource for using CS for TGE. Again, this isn't an endorsement, nor have I found all the options in this space... this is just where my research landed so far. Fun, isn't it? Please add comments about other options if you know of them... please? :)

If you're doing non-TGE stuff, or if you need a something besides the other free tools now, you might find this sucker to be what you need/want. Heck, you might find this program to be excellent... in which case, you should be posting comments here so the rest of us know how it is!! :)

Here's a blurb from the Torque Pipeline page that sums up basically why I'm on this journey to discover alternatives:

If you tried to use QuArK and found it to be difficult to setup much less use for mapping on a daily basis, the Cartography Shop + Torque Pipeline combo is what you need. Yes QuArK is free and we can't beat that price, but is your time really free? Can you afford to battle the tools while you try to build that next complex building for you game? Torque Pipeline fully supports all the major capabilities of the DIF format in a simple to use package that won't frustrate you or hamper your creativity.

Okay, my brain is swimming in too much information right now... I wanted to post something about this bit of research, but I've still got a lot of reading to do before a solid, discussable perspective coagulates. For now, you might just want to start some research alongside mine and see where it takes you. I'll talk more about what I'm seeing later. Here's the deal real quick:

Garage Games has announced that their Constructor project has hit the beta phase. Torque Constructor is a ".map (as in the .map file format) editing and .dif (the Torque interior file format) producing program" for creating 3D content for the Torque 3D engine. It might also work for creating content for anything that uses .map, but I'm not sure yet -- like I said, I'm still underway on this voyage. If you've been using Valve's Hammer, GtkRadiant or maybe QuArK to do some level editing, you might be right on board, too... if you don't know what any of those are, you have more research to do! :P

If that's enough to pique your interest, you really ought to shoot over and start reading. Great stuff! There's a great batch of links on that post that will get you well on the way to understanding more about Constructor.

Also, that blog post serves as a fantastic introduction to concave vs. convex models, specifically how they are treated in Torque, but it's a great read for any 3D game artist, I think.

SketchUp is a 3D content creation tool that is promoted as "3D for Everyone." It's touted as very easy to learn, yet powerful... I don't yet know if this is true since I'm still not getting around to trying it. Soon, I hope. I need to see what this sucker is like. Anyway... they've announced the release of a SketchUp plugin for Google Earth that has me very, very interested.

I posted an article on another site of mine about the Metaverse Roadmap Project and I brought up a few concepts floating around about the potential of Google's acquisition (recently) of SketchUp as possibly being the first steps toward a virtually navigable Google Earth with 3D content. I'm not too sure how close this gets us to actual avatar-centric navigation of Google Earth, but this obviously (to me) proves the concept is well underway... in some form.

If you don't get what I'm talking about -- especially since I'm not really explaining anything too well -- go snag Google Earth and check out the example links on the SketchUp announcement page linked above. I think it's pretty stinkin' cool! Add a bit of gravity and WASD controls and you could be walking around in these environments! Neat.

So, let's look at this from a game dev research perspective:

Maybe there's some potential in a company like Google working with someone like Virtools, Adobe (ie: Macromedia's Shockwave tech) or one of the many other web 3D technology companies to create an API or toolset for generating online virtual spaces using the Google Earth data.

Maybe I'm just dreaming?

I've played around with projects like the now-defunct Adobe Atmosphere project (random review and community site link) and it seems like a really interesting technology to harness in the creation of at least simple virtual spaces based on real-world locations.

Well... I'm mostly tagging this info here since it is my personal research blog. I'm done talking about this right now. If you want to think more about it or discuss it, please do so. For now, I need to get back to real work. I'll look into this some other day. :)