The first pieces of code are online

OK, the first scripts are online! It's still a bit of a mess and in need of a good tidy. I'll get round to that in the next couple of days.

I've come across a couple of interesting issues already. The code has been tested in the Flash CS3 IDE and with Powerflasher FDT plugin for Eclipse, and shocking, the Flash IDE's compile and run performance is far greater. I don't know if my FDT configuration is correct, so I'll have to look in to that before I go any further. Running the .swf got really slow when I used the 80Mb CD data files. Which brings up the point of performance when playing these games online. But that's an issue for another post.

I was correct about the sandbox issues.

In the book Essential Actionscript 3, Moock (2007, p. 428) states:

"...Flash's authoring tool's Test Movie-mode Player automatically trusts all local-realm .swf files it opens or loads."

It appears this stretches to ALL local-realm files. So, the Flash IDE ignores security violations while in the development environment, while FDT forces you to deal with the issue from the start. To do this in FDT, manually set -use-network=false in the compiler arguments. This will allow you to test offline without security warnings.

The next step will be to tidy everything up a little and creating some of the methods I'll need to deal with binary files. Flash doesn't much like dealing with 16 bit and 24 bit numbers. Hopefully the Actionscript ByteArray won't be a hindrance and bit-shifting will be easy enough.

Day 2 - Some code

I've almost got everything set up now. The Google Code page is up, the Discussion Group, and the Blog. Do I need anything else? Oh yeah, some code would be good.

First of all I'll try and get a basic working program in to the subversion tree.
I'm trying to put all the files in some sort of logical order that's similar to the SCUMMVM structure. At the moment I'm working with the floppy version of the Beneath a Steel Sky data files, and I can correctly read the version. So once it's in some sort of order I'll put it online.

The project is setup using Eclipse, FDT, and the Flex SDK (NOT the Flex Builder!), so there will be a .project file in there to help anyone who's interested get it set up.

Right now, all I'm trying to do is read the data from the data files, so I'm just tracing out the results I get. Nothing gets displayed, so you need the debug version of Flash Player in order to see anything.

I'm aware that there might be a security sandbox issue with the data files, so I'll make sure that the policy is correct before I put it online.

The data files will be missing from the subversion tree, but they can be freely downloaded from the SCUMMVM download page.

The Idea

I've been thinking a lot about making a game. I always do but I've never got round to it. But now's the time. Not for a game, but for the best damn engine for a game, EVER!

While down the pub one night (about 18 months ago!) a friend, Adam, and I came up with an idea to make a game in the style of the old Lucas Arts Graphic Adventure games. Like Monkey Island. Need I say more?

I work as an Actionscript Developer, so my first thoughts always lean towards writing it in AS, and with the dawn on AS3 it seams anything is possible. So I tinkered around for a while and created a test scene. Overall, it didn't seem to complicated a task. Adam had previously introduced me to AGI Studio, so I decided to take a look at how they handled the complexities of storing the data, handling items, and interacting with the environment. It soon became blindingly aware that the task at hand was far greater than I had anticipated. This and an ever increasing workload made me put things off.

I'm now working for an interactive agency in Copenhagen where a few of the guys keep talking about getting together to make a game. So it got me thinking again. It's too much of a task to create the engine alone, so why not start an open source project to create a graphic adventure engine. I banded the idea around a few forums but got no real response. So I decided to give it a go myself. Maybe people would be more enthusiastic about it if I could get something up and running.

A few years ago, Revolution Games released the source of one of their graphic adventure games, Beneath a Steel Sky, to the SCUMMVM developers to help them better build their SCUMM interpreter. Since all the source is available for both of those, I thought that would be a good place to start. So I had a look through the SCUMMVM Subversion tree. The more I looked, the more I realised that it could be done with AS3. Just look at the great work that Max Herkender has done with Doomed Online, and what Scott Peterson has done with his C/C++ to Actionscript converter. Actionscript isn't as limiting as it used to be.

So I've changed my mind. I think it's time to take SCUMMVM and port it to AS3. Not a direct port though. AS3 offers a new environment for games, with both advantages and disadvantages. The disadvantages would put most people off. Running games in a browser plugin is not an easy task, so the code has to be tight and optimised for speed. But it's the advantages that got the thinking.

My original thoughts on online possibilities are to completely redesign the Load/Save game interface and create a login with a back-end system. This would almost make downloads redundant. So games like Beneath a Steel Sky could be played directly from their website. Anytime you want to play the game, you just login and continue from where you left off.

So I hope you see that there are possibilities in this. Check out some of the links below to see the current progress, and if you would like to offer a hand or just some encouragement then just send my an email!

Links

The project home is here:
GAAS Engine on Google Code

Any discussions can be had here:
GAAS Engine on Google Groups

Beneath a Steel Sky and SCUMMVM can be downloaded here:
SCUMMVM's download page

Doomed Online
Doomed Online project home