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V-Camming in as2

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Started 4 months ago by LifeInAnEgg
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DrNeroCF
aka Brad Borne
Post Count: 703

Alright, I hear V-Cam being thrown around a lot like it's some magic piece of code.

All it does is scrolls and zooms the root to match a clip. Look at the code, it's super simple. Honestly, you might as well write it yourself, way less overhead for the same effect.

If you want to do split screen in Flash, you'd have to double everything, maybe run two shell clips with masks side to side. Certainly possible, but it would be super resource intensive, probably not worth it.

Though, you could probably use Flash 10's shaders and GPU effects and all that to handle the doubling, but that's really not my area of expertise.

Looks like there's at least one Flash game that pulls it off, though:

http://www.fupa.com/play/Shooting-free-games/flashtowerdefense-splitscreen.html

As for that splitting effect, I pushed pretty hard for that in FPA, but it was just way too complex to pull off, even in a C++ engine. Though, when we were at PAX, some ex-Bungie guys were showing off Fallen Frontier:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guZ4DbwNutE

Amazing effect, absolutely. It just took some ex-Bungie dudes to do it, heh. I'm sure you can guess how jealous I was, haha. Though they only have 2 player, don't think it's even possible with more.

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Posted 4 months ago #

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DrNeroCF
aka Brad Borne
Post Count: 703

LifeInAnEgg said:
This may be a bit off topic, but is online multiplayer possible in as2? I googled it and didn't fijnd anything, only that you're very limited on the information you send. You can't just send your the x and y coordinates of every bullet, etc. Can someone tell me anything about that. I mean, there must be a reason why fpa wasn't multiplayer from day one, right?

Yep, would be super hard to do a rollback engine, which is really the only way to minimize lag.

http://www.smartfoxserver.com/overview.php

That's the server I've heard most people using.

Even with a turn based game, though, there's plenty of lag. I believe Flash doesn't support the correct something something, though Adobe's been promising to add it ever since the first GDC I went to.

http://www.xgenstudios.com/play/two

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Posted 4 months ago #

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redligot2009
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Post Count: 1141

hmm... I think by vcam, he meant "camera lag".

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Posted 4 months ago #

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DrNeroCF
aka Brad Borne
Post Count: 703

redligot2009 said:
hmm... I think by vcam, he meant "camera lag".

Er, I'm not sure that makes any sense in the original context...

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Posted 4 months ago #
AJ32
Member
Post Count: 1346

The game Exit Path has a good multiplayer. But it is made with AS3 probably!

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Posted 4 months ago #
LifeInAnEgg
Member
Post Count: 64

DrNeroCF said:
Alright, I hear V-Cam being thrown around a lot like it's some magic piece of code.

All it does is scrolls and zooms the root to match a clip. Look at the code, it's super simple. Honestly, you might as well write it yourself, way less overhead for the same effect.

If you want to do split screen in Flash, you'd have to double everything, maybe run two shell clips with masks side to side. Certainly possible, but it would be super resource intensive, probably not worth it.

Though, you could probably use Flash 10's shaders and GPU effects and all that to handle the doubling, but that's really not my area of expertise.

Looks like there's at least one Flash game that pulls it off, though:

http://www.fupa.com/play/Shooting-free-games/flashtowerdefense-splitscreen.html

As for that splitting effect, I pushed pretty hard for that in FPA, but it was just way too complex to pull off, even in a C++ engine. Though, when we were at PAX, some ex-Bungie guys were showing off Fallen Frontier:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guZ4DbwNutE

Amazing effect, absolutely. It just took some ex-Bungie dudes to do it, heh. I'm sure you can guess how jealous I was, haha. Though they only have 2 player, don't think it's even possible with more.

The splitting in Fallen Frontier is exactly what I meant. I've seen on one of your youtube videos that you put each level in a movieclip. Is it true that you just move the entire level, instead of a v-cam-like movieclip? If that is possible, you could just put two identical levels on top of each other. Just make sure the characters move and animate the same in both levels. Then you mask the levels, and you can move the individual movieclips around, according to where the camera should look. For the splitting effect, you might be able to rotate the masks (rectangles) around the center. You can just calculate the angle between the characters using tangens. And when the characters are at a certain distace, you cann put both level movieclips on the same x and y coordinates, and make the "splitting line" alpha 0. I haven't tried this yet, so fingers crossed! Just figure out a way to make the transitions between different camera modes smooth.

Btw, with vcam I mean the movieclip Bryan Heisey put on his blog.

Posted 4 months ago #
LifeInAnEgg
Member
Post Count: 64

When you have split screen in a game wich uses two-dimensional parallax scrolling, does it matter where the vanishing point is? When the screen splits up, should have two vanishing points?

Posted 4 months ago #
hajg96
Member
Post Count: 1748

LifeInAnEgg said:
The splitting in Fallen Frontier is exactly what I meant. I've seen on one of your youtube videos that you put each level in a movieclip. Is it true that you just move the entire level, instead of a v-cam-like movieclip? If that is possible, you could just put two identical levels on top of each other. Just make sure the characters move and animate the same in both levels. Then you mask the levels, and you can move the individual movieclips around, according to where the camera should look. For the splitting effect, you might be able to rotate the masks (rectangles) around the center. You can just calculate the angle between the characters using tangens. And when the characters are at a certain distace, you cann put both level movieclips on the same x and y coordinates, and make the "splitting line" alpha 0. I haven't tried this yet, so fingers crossed! Just figure out a way to make the transitions between different camera modes smooth.

Btw, with vcam I mean the movieclip Bryan Heisey put on his blog.

This seems a good and logical way!

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Posted 4 months ago #

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Nyubis
Nyubis of Strata
Post Count: 9090

@Life: IIRC Brad doesn't move the level itself around, he moves the _root (stage) around, which is the same what VCam does.
What you describe may be possible, but I think it will be hell to manage keeping those 2 different sessions synced up and not using a huge amount of resources at the same time.

Not in cruelty
Not in wrath
the Reaper came today.

An angel visited
this gray path
And took the cube away.

Posted 4 months ago #
LifeInAnEgg
Member
Post Count: 64

Nyubis said:
@Life: IIRC Brad doesn't move the level itself around, he moves the _root (stage) around, which is the same what VCam does.
What you describe may be possible, but I think it will be hell to manage keeping those 2 different sessions synced up and not using a huge amount of resources at the same time.

That's the problem I'm having right now, getting it sybced up is difficult. I put all my script in one frame, and on the bottom I send the x coordinates,y coordinates, animation frame, etc. to the second level. It kinda works, but is still very unstable. However, I do have splitscreen. I'll try to post my swf and .fla here, if anyone is intrested. If I got the hang of it, I migh be able to make the splitting screen thing, I'll see.

Posted 4 months ago #
hajg96
Member
Post Count: 1748

Yes post something

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Posted 4 months ago #
LifeInAnEgg
Member
Post Count: 64

Can i upload both swf and fla in truploader, or should i use something else?

Posted 4 months ago #
hajg96
Member
Post Count: 1748

You can do it.
http://truploader.com/

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Posted 4 months ago #
LifeInAnEgg
Member
Post Count: 64

The .fla and the .swf of my split-screen engine. I quickly made a background and some arrow movement, so please don't judge me on the quality of things. Use the arrow keys for player 1 and WASD for player 2. The FLA is made in CS5, but the CS4 version is here. Older versions weren't possible for some reason.

What I've done is made the entire level inside a movieclip first, including the movement code, then I duplicated the level, but I changed the code so it would only copy the movements of the original. I placed both levels in the _root, and masked them.
I'd appreciate some tips and improvements I can make. Maybe I'll be able to make the splitting soon.

Posted 4 months ago #
hajg96
Member
Post Count: 1748

It is pretty cool even if it's very rough... Quite far from that game shown by Brad but however it's good... I wonder if a complex game like the one you want to make in flash would run on my PC XD... No, probably it won't
What about splitting the screen after the 2 players get far from each other?

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Posted 4 months ago #
Nyubis
Nyubis of Strata
Post Count: 9090

Nice work, if you could make both screens merge when they're close, it'd be perfect.

PS: I fixed your links for you. Make sure you don't forget the http:// and don't add any quotes.

Not in cruelty
Not in wrath
the Reaper came today.

An angel visited
this gray path
And took the cube away.

Posted 4 months ago #
LifeInAnEgg
Member
Post Count: 64

Thanks everyone! The splitting and merging shouldný be that hard, when both cameras are at the same position, they are basically merged. Then I should make a center, wich is always exactly between the two characters, usually in the center of the screen. Then the masks will pivot around that point, with some basic calculations. The only problem would be the transition between merged and splitted. I will start by making the rotating seperation. I do need to rewrite the code for the cameras, because now the characters are strained to (640, 180) and (640, 540). When it rotates, they must always be 180 pixels away from the center, and I have no idea how I am going to do that... Maybe Pythagoras?

Posted 4 months ago #
DrNeroCF
aka Brad Borne
Post Count: 703

Nyubis said:
@Life: IIRC Brad doesn't move the level itself around, he moves the _root (stage) around, which is the same what VCam does.
What you describe may be possible, but I think it will be hell to manage keeping those 2 different sessions synced up and not using a huge amount of resources at the same time.

I've started moving all the clips instead of the root. Made it easier to move the backgrounds, and I was FINALLY able to get the 3d camera working properly with the backgrounds (check out both of the levels with the shell). But yeah, at the end of the day, moving the vCam and just moving the root at a negative with an offset it pretty much the same thing, just without a clip in the middle.

Doodle, sketch, draw, design, fill notebooks with elaborate scenes, funny character designs, and gameplay ideas.
Find your own personal style and run with it. Craft characters and stories that you love.
Enjoy your own work, and donâ€™t be afraid to show it off. Create.

Posted 4 months ago #
DrNeroCF
aka Brad Borne
Post Count: 703

LifeInAnEgg said:
Thanks everyone! The splitting and merging shouldný be that hard, when both cameras are at the same position, they are basically merged. Then I should make a center, wich is always exactly between the two characters, usually in the center of the screen. Then the masks will pivot around that point, with some basic calculations. The only problem would be the transition between merged and splitted. I will start by making the rotating seperation. I do need to rewrite the code for the cameras, because now the characters are strained to (640, 180) and (640, 540). When it rotates, they must always be 180 pixels away from the center, and I have no idea how I am going to do that... Maybe Pythagoras?

Haha, maybe sorta sounds easy, but will take some time to get right either way. The two masks will probably be a huge performance hit, and syncing the two means that you'll either have to babysit all the animations, or keep them super simple.]

What you've already uploaded looks super promising, lemme poke at the source for a minute...

Doodle, sketch, draw, design, fill notebooks with elaborate scenes, funny character designs, and gameplay ideas.
Find your own personal style and run with it. Craft characters and stories that you love.
Enjoy your own work, and donâ€™t be afraid to show it off. Create.

Posted 4 months ago #
LifeInAnEgg
Member
Post Count: 64

Yeah, syncing the two will be quite difficult. Is it possible to make a variable, wich hold the number of the frame the animation is currently on? That you can say: char2_mc.gotAndStop( that variable).

Posted 4 months ago #

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