[Verious]

Here is a technology preview of my smooth-scrolling Flash/AS3 game engine for the RPGDX Side-Scrolling Mini-RPG Summer 2009 Competition:

http://www.tiltedaxis.net/TechPreview.html

Controls: Arrow keys move upper viewport, WASD moves lower viewport. The controls will seem to be backwards because you are currently controlling an invisible character (without collision detection), so when he moves right, the screen moves left.

Current features:

• Maps load from external XML files (sample map)
  
• Maps load default parameters for missing XML attributes
  
• Tilesets load from external PNG files (with translucency support)
  
• Framework to support n players (sharing the same computer/keyboard)
  
• Unlimited viewports
  
• Viewport scaling/zoom (for magnified views/mini-maps)

It probably doesn't look like much, but the engine has come a long way in the short amount of time that I've worked on it; at this point a lot of the core pieces are in place.

Obviously, the colors, tiles, and current maps are temporary placeholders while I develop the engine.

I believe Flash 9.x is required to run the engine, but so far I have only tested it in Flash 10.0.32.18.

[Mattias Gustavsson]

Cool stuff, looks like you'll have a nice foundation to build on when it all kicks off :)
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[DeveloperX]

excruciatingly slow scrolling here

I'd have expected it to move faster than 16 pixels per second

good luck
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[Verious]

The movement speed is variable between 0 and 32 pixels per frame. In the technology demo, the speed is currently 1 and the framerate is limited to 30 frames per second, which is why the scrolling is fairly slow. I was mainly checking that the engine was scrolling properly and that it was not rendering unnecessary, off-screen tiles.

I have optimized the code quite a bit since the technology preview. Many of the calculations were being performed each frame resulting in many inefficiencies. In the current version, most values are cached until the system determines that they need to be recalculated, which greatly reduces the processing time per frame. I have also made several other improvements to the code to improve the performance and reduce the memory footprint.

[DeveloperX]

ah. well excuse my prior post. sorry.
good luck to you on your entry!
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[Verious]

No problem, the technology preview does scroll slowly, I just wanted to provide a little background information about the engine and its internal workings.

[Puddinlover]

Did you ever make a game with this?
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[Verious]

Unfortunately several of my relatives came into town unexpectedly (from Chicago and Pennsylvania), so I didn't have time to create a game. It was nice seeing my relatives, but it totally killed my plans to create an entry.

I am still planning to create something with the engine and will keep everyone posted as I make progress.

[codeugly]

I have never programmed with flash, but I am surprised there is no tearing between the tiles. I'd like to see a game made with this engine.
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[Verious]

Flash has come a long way since the early versions. Recent versions of Flash (8.0+) support bit blitting via the copyPixels() function, which allows the screen to be rendered like a traditional game. The tiles are drawn to a BitmapData object, which you can think of as a back-buffer where the scene is composited. Then the BitmapData is displayed by assigning it to a Bitmap object which is attached to the stage.

I am contemplating creating a blog to discuss the development, if there is interest.

[DeveloperX]

[Verious]

Thanks for the offer, but I have a design and layout in mind for the series of articles.