Progress with my Isometric Engine has been slow to static, seeing how I only ever seem to spend a day every six months or so on it (damn you paid work). But every time I play with it I come up with something cool to share, so now, if you have five minutes to kill, you can have a play with my isometric world builder.
Within the cube you create your own isometric spaces and structures, and rotate and zoom around them. Click on the image to launch, and have a play around.
There will, inevitably, be a game built with this thing one day soon, so this will be the level editor. If you come up with anything cool-looking feel free to email the XML to me, or post it below. With any luck, if the credit crunch starts biting and the work dries up, I may find a day free to finish the physics sometime in the next year. Don’t hold your breath though.
It’s been six months at least since I’ve had the spare time for any ‘leisure’ coding but I finally found a few hours to get back into my Flash isometric 3D engine this week. And I’m really chuffed with what I’ve achieved.
You can move the ball with keys QAOP (once you’ve clicked on the movie) but the really interesting bit is the sliders. Thanks to AS3’s speed, I can now redraw the isometric space at runtime, so it is a “true” 3D engine.
Considering we have only been using them for 10-15 years, we have already become very attached to our visual metaphors – documents, desktops, folders etc… But as the technology advances more sophisticated options have become available to us. We don’t necessarily have to navigate between documents any more, instead we can explore environments.
3D is Flash has been a long time coming, but it has arrived in style courtesy of the open source PaperVision project, which demonstrates that Flash 9 is now capable of PlayStation 1 level graphics. So far most of the recent Flash 3D projects I have seen have been game oriented, including my own isometric 3D engine, but I was very impressed to see that Outsmart Labs a thinking a little bigger. They have created a demo 3D environment that allows you to walk between information panels; Flex components as wall mounted screens, rather than laid out flat on a surface.
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