Tyler-Egeto Flash-Blog ActionScript-Blog Programming development PHP

I’ll be doing some more posts in the future about this project, but I wanted to put up a quick note about it. Titanium Chef is an Flash Based role playing game that we (mod7) have been developing with the BC Dairy Foundation. The game will run 6-10 hours in length, features fantastic artwork, an engaging story, awesome sound, and subtle humour that spanes across a wide range of ages.

On both a technical and production quality level, this game is impressive. It breaks the notion that Flash based games need to be quick, simple, “casual” experinces.

I highly encourage you to check it out at titaniumchef.ca

Here are a couple in game screens:

Recently I have come across an issue in Papervision that pops up if you are using smoothing. The issue only occurs when a smoothed material is viewed at an extreme angle where it is only a couple of pixels wide on the screen. This can cause Flash to take a major performance hit, or even lock up at times. luckily there is a simple and easy fix. If you set smoothing to true, be sure that you also set tiling to true, and this wont be an issue.

Hello everyone, just quick post to point you towards my portfolio site I just launched. It highlights some of my favorite project that I have worked on throughout the past year, both individually and with the help of some awesome designers. Check it out here.

note: some older computers may have a hard time running it.

Ever since I put up my previous camera orbit code I have been unhappy with it, and working on the math to improve it. It had problems at both the polar axis, when it reached either extreme it would flip the image 180 degrees. This new code solves that problem. The changes are very small, simple a re-organization of what was already there. Some of the problem lies in the fact that Papervision3d uses a different axis system where the y and z axis are reversed. Other programs such as Adobe After Effects and Maxon Cinema 4D also use the same axis.

Here it is in action:

and the new source code:

theta = mouseY*Math.PI/18;
phi = mouseX*Math.PI/180;

camera.x = distance * Math.cos(theta) * Math.sin(phi);
camera.y = distance * Math.sin(theta) * Math.sin(phi);
camera.z = distance * Math.cos(phi);

A question that comes up often in the papervision3D community is how do you make a camera that will can orbit around a point on all axis, while maintaining a constant distance. Well with a little math we can do this. Here is a quick demonstration of a camera that does this. And just for fun, and because papervision is cool, the light is also rotating around the cubes in this example, so it will be changing also.

and the how:

//on your loop

//update theta and phi based on your mouse positions, then update the camera position
theta = mouseX*Math.PI/180;
phi = mouseY*Math.PI/180;

camera.x = distance * Math.cos(theta) * Math.sin(phi)
camera.z = distance * Math.sin(theta) * Math.sin(phi)
camera.y = distance * Math.cos(phi);
and thats it!