Bullet collisions are the basis in a lot of games!! Maybe you need it for a FPS or you are working in a game like a Carnival where you need to shot stacked cans to win the big plush bunny !! Well.. No matter the situation, if you need to shot a bullet and detect the collision with an element in the scene, then you must check this new example that explains how to do it.

In this nice example, you can learn how to solve this kind of behaviours. Notice that in this example the bullets bounce between the elements. How to calculate the bounces? Vector3DUtils.mirror  is the clue .

let’s play!!

Now is time to present an amazing and ambitious development  that has been done using Flare3D , a 3D social game called “Love Apartments Online” created by the Chinese company 9Miracle

"Love Apartments Online" is a Flash 3D Web social game that simulates real life in a social environment and has a very realistic interaction between characters.

This game  with a “Sims” style takes advantage of many of the properties and features that Flare3D offers, providing an immersive and more realistic experience than in a 2D scenario.

This one is only a Demo but soon we will have full versions of 3D social flash games like this one. running in different social networks.

With “Love apartment online” 9miracle is one of the first companies to lead the way to the new 3D Flash social games.

More info about the game and company: http://www.9miracle.com

Grégory Sandt, Like interactive CEO, explains that “we needed a simple and efficient tool to experiment an original gameplay, in order to develop awareness of the French Association for the Paralyzed cause.”

The Handifast game rely on a simple gameplay: embody a disabled person in a wheelchair that needs to get to a job interview, to the movie theater and to the polling station.

The objective, beyond the awareness campaign, is to redirect the player on the Facebook fanpage and the association’s website, to discover the local animations and allowing donating to the association.

The APF (French Association for the Paralyzed) wanted to create a game on the facebook platform, so that it would benefit from a consequent audience, and strike people on the difficulties of the handicapped daily tasks.

This is how Flare3D appeared at Like Interactive, allowing us to fully answers the needs of this unusual client.

Why choosing Flare 3D ?

It combines traditional Flash development with powerful 3D interactive content. Flare 3D gives our agency a new turn: it allows us to offer new possibilities to our clients.

We mainly wanted to give our developers an intuitive engine, that allows rendering in real time the content of a project, and make fast modifications with tools well known by Adobe users, like an animation timeline. We have reached our goals faster and achieved the graphic expectations of today’s gamers.

Flare 3D has allowed Like interactive to broadcast a game on Facebook, but moreover, it let us consider other development supports, like mobile phones.

We are convinced that Flare will have an impact on the future of 3D applications development and the online video game industry. We’re very happy to use Flare 3D on most of our projects.” Louis Bossart, developers at Like Interactive.

If you are interesting in playing or supporting the cause here is the link:

https://apps.facebook.com/handifast

We are excited to announce that Flare3D update v2.0.48 is available.
This is an small update to fix a few little bugs, and over the time, the engine becomes more and more solid and stable!

Download links are available here and the changelog here.

So, is time to bring the engine to the next level, and our team is working full speed, day and night to release a coming new mayor version, Flare3D 2.5!

Starting from 2.5 version, we’ll not call it “pre-release” anymore, and we’re including a watermak on the trial version (you can easily disable for debugging purposes).

We expect to launch this version early in May!, and Flare3D 2.5 will include three new amazing features:

Flare3D Shader Languaje (FLSL v2.0).

It was created originally as an internal tool, but it has evolved into a full shading language.

The new version includes several new features, but most importantly, it lets everyone have the ability to extend the native functionality of the in a very easy way!.

Amazing shaders effects, post process filters, shadows, and tons of amazing new stuff can be created with a few lines of code without needing to use low level AGAL bytecode.

The new FLSL optimizes every aspect of materials and render pipelines and is very well suited for 3D mobile games.

FLSL V2.0 is a complete language that includes many special features that simply doesn’t exist today on current shading languages!.

YES! We are very excited with FLSL V2.0 !!!!

New 3DMax exporter.

Our developers recognizes that one of the most important features of Flare3D is deep integration and workflow with 3DMax.

This new plugin isn’t only a completely rewritten version to support the new Flare3D file format, but also has several cool new features like:

• Support for shared instances.
• Support for all texture formats available on 3DMax.
• Better geometry compression.
• Full integration with FLSL V2.0. This allows to visualize Flare3D shaders directly on 3DMax viewports!

Cool right?

Graphics3D API as the beginning of Flare2D…..best of both worlds!

• Full integrated Graphics3D API!
• Can you imagine creating a vector-based  graphics with Flash Pro, and with a single click convert them to a mesh and render them using the power of the GPU??
• Now you can combine 2D and 3D worlds in the same environment!.

What’s next?

We’ll not stop here!, and soon, we will publish a full public roadmap.

It will include a totally new IDE, dynamic and static shadows, real time post process effects, new collision system, optimizations for mobile, and more, a lot more !!

We are just thrilled to see what biggest studios are doing with Flare3D all over the world. They are raising the bar of online games with 3D enabled games.

Exciting times are coming, stay tuned !!!

Flare3D team.

Social networks, the natural environment for Flash games

As we have shown in previous posts, flare3D it´s mainly focused to the gaming industry, and Flash is present in most of the wide diffused Social and casual games. The industry has a sustained growing and is supported by different social networks that allow the expansion and distribution of these games. After Stage 3D launching, many visually surprising flash videogames started appearing catching a larger number of users, and clearly 3D games are starting to gain more terrain into the social networks. Here some facts and insights that you must keep in mind when deciding the best market to publish your app:

Facebook, the King

Facebook covers practically all the world and 53% of Facebook users play games inside this platfom.

At this moment Facebook is the king of social games has 56 millions of daily players.

Estimated revenue for Facebook social gaming market (in Millions):

2012: $2.37 M

2013: $2.79 M

The Social Gaming Market Will Explode To $5+ Billion By 2015 (by BI Intelligence).

But what kind of games your targeted market plays?

Of course there are several interesting markets beyond US . The results indicate that consumers in emerging markets are more responsive to brands on social media than US consumers. They are going to provide a big portion of gamers in the Social Network audience cake.

Is Facebook your best choice?

Well, this is relative, a geographical analysis shows alternative social networks.

Let´s analyze some other countries:

Brazil has boomed from 13M up to 30M social network users over the past year

According to IBOPEnielsen, more than 85 per cent of active internet users in Brazil use social networking sites, compared with 74 per cent in the United States and 77 per cent in Japan. Brazilians also spend much more time on those sites, averaging almost eight and a half hours a month, compared with six and a half hours in the United States, and slightly more than four hours in Japan.

Social Networks used in Brazil:

1.Facebook.com:36,098,000(+192%)

2.Orkut:34,419,000(+5%)

3.WindowsLiveProfile:13,301,000(+13%)

4.Twitter.com:12,499,000(+40%)

5.Vostu.com:4,901,000(+338%)

6.GooglePlus:4,300,000(-)

7.Tumblr.com:4,029,000(+206%)

8.LinkedIn.com:3,182,000(-)

Russia and China, both big players that show us an interesting market, but in this case , Facebook Is not the most chosen platform.

So, still not sure were to aim your next development? Facebook probably would be your first option, but have in mind that there are several other markets with very important revenues. Don´t forget Flash player Is already installed in 99% of computers in the web, and Flare3D is a great engine for developing 3D flash games .

References

- Facebook Gaming: 10 Facebook Games Stats
- http://www.digitalbuzzblog.com/facebook-games-stats/

- http://www.slideshare.net/Newzoo/newzoo-trend-reportcasualsocialgamesfeb2012

frog design is known by their innovative designs for big companies like Sony and because they have been Steve Jobs’ chosen company for creating the revolutionary Apple IIc. Last March 10th, frog design hosted the official opening party for SXSW Interactive. SXSW is an event that features five days of compelling presentations from the brightest minds in emerging technology. In the party guests could play renewed versions of classical arcade videogames.
The pictures bellow, shows the frog’s multiplayer version of the classic Tron’s deathly race. This game was made with Flare3D and was integrated with hardware for achieving a “physical” version of the game. Starting with two stationary exercise bikes  each one was retrofit with an Arduino, a tachometer, a mechanical hand brake, and a set of steerable handlebars. Each contestant sits in front of a large monitor with a third-person view of his or her trike in the digital arena, while an overhead “God’s eye” view is projected on a screen between them for onlookers.

Pat Marsh, frog senior designer. Said about his experience working with Flare3D

“Our goal with Light Trikes was to create a highly physical and visually immersive experience. Flare3D made it possible to create a stunning 3D game that delivered the responsiveness and cutting edge graphics that people expect from most games. Flare3D’s powerful framework allowed us to spend more time perfecting details without having to spend too much time working on the core experience. We are extremely excited to continue using Flare for more projects and expect that Flare will have a huge impact on the future of game design and development.”

~Pat Marsh, frog senior designer

The following video shows the development process

SXSW 2012: Light Trikes from frog on Vimeo.

As you probably know , Adobe launched Air 3.2 RC, and thanks to that, Flare3D is now compatible with mobile devices. As an example of this check out our "Yellow Planet" game running on an iPad 2.

This version is the same that you can find for desktop with a few modifications to adapt it to mobile.
For those interested you need to download AIR 3.2 SDK to publish your Flare3D app on Android and iPhone/iPad devices.

Enjoy it!!

Meet with the Flare3D crew at the "Flash Gaming summit" and
take advantage of our discount code to get your pass 20% off

The discount code is: sponsor20_Flare3D.  Please be sure to pass along this code as well as the link for FGS Registration.

We will waiting for you in our stand!

The waiting is over, Flare3D physics engine beta version is finally here. Let´s Solve some complex tasks such as mouse detection, mesh collision and many others! 

Check out our Wiki (wiki.flare3d.com) there you will find everything you need to start using this engine. Explore online examples included in Flare3D, code snippets, utilities, experiments and advanced examples.

Are you new working with Physics? don´t worry, you don´t have to be Isaac Newton to create amazing physicalized developments. In our Wiki we go from the basics, explaining how to initialize a physics engine to how to control an avatar in a 3D map.

During the process you will learn how to handle mesh collisions, primitives (how to create different kind of rigid bodies), understanding materials properties of a body (friction, restitution, force, mass, torque, etc), how to keep attached a body to a specific position and even understanding how mass of body affects its motion.

Sounds complex, but is not! Why don´t you try it?

Wiki: http://wiki.flare3d.com

Team flarephysics credits:
Marcos Lazo (Core)
Juan Pablo D’Amato (Data Structures, Optimization)
Cristian García Bauza (Core, Project Manager)

Are you fit enough for the network of tomorrow?

That´s the question you will have to answer by playing this great 3D flash advergame developed  by the digital creative agency “North Kingdom” for Vodafone Germany.

This game was developed using Flare3D and takes  full advantage of stage 3D´s capabilities, but what`s better than hearing from them about this project and their experience working with Flare3D, here is a short interview:

Could you please tell us a little bit about this project and how did you come up with this idea?

It was a short 4 week project. The idea was to create a game to go along with an ad-campaign running for Vodafone Germany.
This is the TVC: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsZ06ZcA-Ag
So we came up with an idea based on that for the gameplay. Each guy, that represents a bar in the reception icon, has a unique skill that is needed to overcome obstacles while going through the city. So “keep the right guy on the track” is the basic idea.
Here´s the intro for the game

 Why did you choose Flare3D?

We choose to use Flare3D mainly because we are already using it in another bigger/longer project already. So we could exchange knowledge in between us developers and quickly get up to speed.
We needed a stable engine, since it was such a short timeframe. So we couldn´t afford to have much api-changes and stuff like that while developing. We also needed a solid “pipeline”, 3d-artist to developer, for the assets. Flare3D have a great 3dsmax plugin for that. That is one of the key things imho, that many engines seem to overlook. I think the way you are going with Flare3D Studio is a really good idea.

Are you working on any other project involving Flare3D ?

Yes, like I said we are working on another bigger/longer project, that should hopefully go live sometime early next year. It´s for “a big animation studio”, and that’s about all I can say right now.

Why did you chose Stage3D instead of a technology that requires plugins?

It was mostly because of reach. With the flashplayer you can potentially reach more people. We discussed around webgl aswell, but you lose IE then. Also webgl didn´t run that good on some peoples macbooks, so they had a hard time “selling” that. Also the flashplayer is traditionally often used for games so people are used to that.

Would you like to play this game?  http://netguys.vodafone.de/
North Kingdom Website: http://www.northkingdom.se/