Away3D 3.6.0: Flash 10 upgrades and the Influxis Battlecell API
The latest update to Away3D gives a much needed boost to both speed and memory optimisation in the FP10 branch, and marks our first release after the switch to full time Flash 10 development of the engine. However, for anyone still using Flash 9, you will not be forgotten! We will still be posting maintenance updates, but our main focus of development is now firmly in the Flash 10 camp. In order to celebrate the release, we are launching an online demo born out of a recent collaboration with Influxis, who have been assisting with an experiment that uses both the extra power of the new engine and the peer-to-peer capabilities of Flash 10.1 to produce a realtime 3D multiplayer prototype. We'd like to thank Influxis dev Sean McCracken, as well as Away3D coders David Lenaerts and Fabrice Closier, and 3D designer Federico Selmi for their hard work producing
The demo uses a newly developed API for multiplayer games over RTMFP (the new P2P protocol available to Flash 10.1 users). What it allows is live data connections between clients with little to no lag, creating the perfect environment for some serious fragging fun! BattleCell is the name given to both the demo and the underlying AS3 API, the latter written by Sean in order to easily connect
The BattleCell demo is a typical FPS Deathmatch-style game, complete with room allocation, choice of weapons and a large play area for you to roam. Obstacles in the game include lifts, teleport windows, acid baths and secret tunnels to assist your attacks... but be careful who is
The new 3.6.0 version of Away3D has a completely remodeled core to take full advantage of all native 3D APIs in Flash 10, which results in more stable and less memory-hungry apps. Performance has improved also, and we expect framerates to increase still further as we continue to optimise the new framework. There have been some older class replacements that you need to be aware of when upgrading: both custom classes MatrixAway3D and Number3D have been replaced by the native Matrix3D and Vector3D classes respectively for added speed and stability.