FFilmation 1.3 released ! ( Sun 21 Sep 2008 )

This is a big release: It includes stuff I was planning to have so long ago and also a new internal structure, cleaner and easier to understand and extend, that was very much needed. I have updated everything: examples, the ffilmation basepack, the docs and the demo downloads.

Enjoy !

Here are some highlights.

  • New internal structure for the engine (99% backwards compatible ).
  • Internal methods are reorganized per functionality. No longer the element classes have collision methods, visibility methods, etc, etc. Now elements only contain their properties and you have a collisionSolver, a visibilitySolver, etc etc. It makes the engine easier to extend, as you don’t add more lines to an already overbloated file. It also means files easier to understand and modify.
  • New extendable render engine interface, separated from logical calculations such as collisions. In the future, this will allow writing an specific flash 10 renderer or a papervision renderer, for example.
  • PathFinding now uses an fEnginePathFindCriteria interface, so users can write their custom pathFind behaviours.
  • Implemented scene.removeCharacter()
  • Significant shadow rendering optimizations. Quality settings other than BEST now perform almost as if there were no shadows at all.
  • Added character-character collision.
  • Only the displayed scene has its graphical assets created. The other scenes are active but are nothing but some variables and objects, and take very little resources. You could have several scenes running at the same time, keeping consistency with a server, with characters moving from one scene to the other. If the scene the character enters is the one being displayed, the character’s graphics assets are created. In the meantime it stays as a bunch of variables.
  • Occlusion is a property of characters, not cameras, and has a new render method. I wasn’t sattisfied with the old one and besides it was very cpu-consuming.
  • Line of sight: is Point A is visible from point B ? What is within my range of vision ?
  • Bullets. Yep, finally. You create them and simple listen to SHOOT events in your elements.
  • Bullet ricochets
  • Added a simple performance profiler. You can use it to see how the engine performs and also use it to profile your own code.

6 Responses to “FFilmation 1.3 released !”

  1. Christmas Time! Downloading now…

  2. very nice !

  3. Hi, there seems to be files missing from the mynameisponcho download, I can’t see the Poncho character xml anywhere

  4. Looking good!

    FYI, example 4 gaks when exiting the second room.

  5. [...] > FFilmation » Blog Archive » FFilmation 1.3 released ! [...]

  6. This engine is awesome. Good work.

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