Developing 3D Games with Macromedia Director

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Developing 3D Games with Macromedia Director

• Brian Robbins
• Director, Online Gaming
• Fuel Industries, Inc.
• www.fuelindustries.com

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My Background

• Director developer since 1999
• Worked on over 70 games
• Developing 3D games since 8.5 Beta
• Previous Projects
• Lots of games for CleverMedia
• The Lord of the Rings Online Trading Card Game

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Recent Projects

• Coors Golf
• My first use of shadows and other enhanced visual
  effects
• Cowboys Engines
• Multi-user Junkyard
• Wakeboarding
• Crazy wakeboarding game

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Todays Topics

• Graphics
• Production workflow
• Using user-data
• Power to the artists
• Shadows
• Overlays
• Skyboxes

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Todays Topics

• Programming
• Time-based
• Character Add Ons
• Collisions with MUR
• Billboard sprites

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Graphics

• ltltbig cool screenshot goes heregtgt

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Project Workflow

• Model the world in 3D Application
• Maya, MAX, etc
• Export to .w3d
• Public exporters or your own custom exporter
• Import into Director
• Put it on stage

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The joys of .userData

• Lets the artist become a level designer
• The best way to add information in modeling for
  run-time
• repeat with ig3d.model.count down to 1
• mdl g3d.modeli
• usrData mdl.userData
• tmp usrDatatextureTransparent
• if not voidp(tmp) then
• --Set the texture's renderformat to rgba8888
• mdl.shader.texture.renderFormat rgba8888
• end if
• end repeat

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Let artists worry about the visuals

• We should be providing tools to the artists
• They are the visual people, let them do the
  visuals
• Make an engine, and let them use it
• NEVER underestimate an artist

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Shadow Maps

• What is a shadow map?
• But .w3d doesnt support multiple texture layers!
• Example
• generateLightMap(member("Source Scene"),
  member("lightmap scene"))
• getLightmap(member("source scene"))

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Other Shadows

• Simple circle
• Can be effective
• Barry Swans shadow controller
• Lots of overhead, but looks the best right now
• inludo.com/rd/d85/tuts/shadows01.htm
• gCharShadow script("P Shadows").new(g3d,
  g3d.model("character"), lightVector, floorPos,
  shadowColor, true)
• Noisecrimes real-time shadows
• noisecrime.com/develop/techdemo/dmx/shadowmapping1
  1.htm

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Better Overlays

• Built-in overlays suck
• We use multiple cameras
• Gives us much more control
• Now we have an overlay controller

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Create Overlay Camera

• --Make it an ortho camera
• pCam.projection orthographic
• --Set the cam not to clearAtRender
• pCam.colorBuffer.clearAtRender false
• --Set the cam's rootNode to itself
• pCam.rootNode pCam
• --Remove the cam from the world
• pCam.removeFromWorld()
• --Set the hither and yon
• pCam.hither 1
• pCam.yon 10000
• --Add the camera to the sprite
• p3dSprite.addCamera(pCam, pCamIndex)
• --Set the orthoHeight to the sprite height
• pCam.orthoHeight height
• --Update cam rect too
• pCam.rect rect(0,0, width, height)

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Creating Skyboxes that work

• This is the same theory as the overlays
• Instead the camera goes first
• Now we can have fog and a backdrop!
• baseCam pSprite.camera(1)
• pTargetCam baseCam
• pMyCam baseCam.clone("SkyboxCam)
• --Turn off the base clearAtRender
• baseCam.colorBuffer.clearAtRender false
• --Add our camera to the sprite
• pSprite.addCamera(pMyCam, 1)

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Programming

• ltltbig cool screenshot goes heregtgt

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Time-based is the Key

• Absolutely critical for 3D games
• When planned from the start its easy
• Once you go timed, youll never go back
• on newFrame me
• currTime the Milliseconds
• timeElapsed currTime - pLastTime
• pLastTime currTime
• if timeElapsed gt 100 then
• timeElapsed 100
• end if
• return timeElapsed
• end

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Character Add Ons

• How to attach objects to a skeleton?
• Useful in all sorts of character games
• Clothes
• Weapons
• etc
• on updatePosition me
• --Get the transform of our parent bone
• if pBoneID gt 0 then
• trans pParentModel.bonesPlayer.bonepBoneID
  .worldTransform
• pMyGroup.transform trans
• end if

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Collision Detection

• This makes (or breaks) your world
• ModelsUnderRay works well
• Collision resolution can be tricky

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Collision Resolution

• --Slide the char along the object
• --First get the normal Angle
• normalAngle pCollisionInfo.isectNormal
• --Next get the vector that's parallel to the
  normal
• parallelVec normalAngle.cross(vector(0,0,1))
• --Now get the amount we need to move (this takes
  into account whether to slide left or right)
• dotProd pDirectionRay.dot(parallelVec)
• --Get the moveVector to be the appropriate length
• moveVec parallelVecdotProd
• --Now 0 out the moveVec's zAxis (so we don't go
  up or down)
• moveVec.z 0
• --Check to see if we can actually move to that
  point
• if me.checkMove(moveVec, true) then
• --Actually move the character this way
• pMyParent.translate(moveVec, world)
• else
• --There's another object preventing us from
  sliding there so just stop
• end if

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Billboard Sprites

• They always face the camera
• Character names
• Signs
• Trees
• Etc
• Easy to do!
• --Get the cam rotation
• camRot pSprite.camera.getWorldTransform().rotati
  on
• -- Update the model position (optional)
• pMyModel.transform.position pModelParent.transfo
  rm.position pOffset
• --Update the model rotation
• pMyModel.transform.rotation.z camRot.z

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Conclusion

• Graphics
• Workflow
• .userData
• Artists are visual
• Shadows
• Overlays
• Skyboxes

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Conclusion

• Programming
• Time-based
• Character Add Ons
• MUR and Collisions
• Billboard Sprites

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Links / Resources

• dubane.com/cons
• noisecrime.com/develop
• inludo.com/rd/d85/
• director-online.com
• blog.fuelindustries.com

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Q A