Casual Gaming Programming, News and Tutorials.
Asphyre
Abra Academy Japanese Release
Mar 3rd
The Abra Academy Japanese version was released in Big Fish Games Japan Portal.
It is Top 3 most downloaded games in the portal.
The Japanese version of Abra Academy was my first game totally made using the new Asphyre Sphinx Engine, and shows the power of this incredible engine.
A demo version is available to download in it’s website.
A demo version is available to download in it’s website.
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Asphyre Sphinx has been released!
Feb 12th
The latest version of Asphyre Engine, now called Asphyre Sphinx, was finally officially released!
This release supersedes all previous Asphyre releases and is under continuous development.
Asphyre Sphinx main features :
2D Graphics Features
- Image transformation including rotation, skew, mirroring and so on.
- Alpha-blending with multiple effects such as add, subtract, multiply, shadow among others.
- Buffered drawing calls deliver extremely high rendering performance in real-time.
- Many different drawing primitives such as rectangles, ellipses, arcs, ribbons and holes.
- Multiple image pixel formats to maximize quality and minimize video memory consumption.
- Images can be loaded from compressed ASDb archives, external files and streams.
- Patterns (small sub-images) can be distributed among different textures to reduce memory footprint.
- Dynamic textures allow fast pixel access for effects such as plasma and destructible terrain.
- Rendering targets allow dazzling visual effects such as motion blur, glows and other effects.
- Proper handling of lost devices, surviving Alt+Tab, Win+L and other rare events.
- Bitmap text drawing with Unicode support, color gradient tags and alignment options.
- Integration with Vampyre Imaging Library for loading many different image formats.
3D Graphics Features
- Easy to use 3D mesh drawing even for inexperienced developers.
- Mesh instancing for improved performance when many small meshes are drawn.
- Illumination models including Phong, Blinn-Phong, Minneart, Cook-Torrance, Oren-Nayer, Isotropic and Anisotropic Ward.
- Optimized 3D pipeline with hidden surface removal and triangle sorting.
- Transparent support for DirectX 7, DirectX 9 and OpenGL providers.
- Billboard rendering for particle effects, explosions and smoke.
- Load meshes from 3D Studio Max using the conversion tool, which can read 3DS and ASE formats.
- Mesh generation code for 3D planes, spheres, round boxes, torus, torus knots and super ellipsoids.
Other Features
- Capture the state of all keyboard keys, read multiple joysticks and mouse displacement.
- Store all images, sounds and other files using LZ77 compression in a single ASDb archive for easier deployment.
- Set password for ASDb archive to encrypt the contents using XTEA 128-bit cipher so nobody else can open your media files.
- Complete set of mathematical types with operator overloading for 2D and 3D vectors and matrices.
- High-precision timer for independent graphics rendering and object movement.
Comments
The Japanese version of my Game Abra Academy that is in final stage of Beta Testing, is about to be released, and is being finalized using Asphyre Sphinx. The conversion was very smooth and easy.
Soon I will start here a series of lessons on Asphyre Sphinx, since from its installation to basic lessons and even more advanced lessons. Also I will release some tools developed by me to be used with this engine, including a PathEngine and a GuiEngine. Soon I will post further details and information about each of these tools. You don’t lose in wait!
Further Info and Download
- Further Info and Download of Asphyre Sphinx you can get in it’s official page http://afterwarp.net/products/asphyresphinx/
- Visit also the Afterwarp Interactive forum .
Asphyre Engine Framework
Nov 19th
Today I will start a series of lectures and articles about Asphyre Engine. In this first one, I will talk about the history of the main versions of Asphyre, and I will give a brief introduction on what are its resources.
Asphyre Framework is a powerful open-source framework primarily aimed at casual game developers. It provides a high-level layer over underlying 3D hardware to support hardware acceleration for 2D rendering.
Versions
- Asphyre 1.5.2
- Asphyre 3 (Asphyre eXtreme)
- Asphyre 4.1
- Asphyre Casual Framework
- Asphyre 5
Asphyre 5
Asphyre 5 was released in September 22, 2008, which includes the best of Asphyre eXtreme, Casual and 4.1. The release uses a provider system that allows its extension to support new resources and new graphics engines, without losing the compatibility with its current version.It’s already compatible with DirectX7, DirectX9, OpenGL and Software Rasterizer providers, that allows great compatibility with absolutely all Hardware today found on the market. It also does not require any external DLLs for the projects, unless you use shaders and 3D (which explicitly requires DX 9 provider) . Its main resources are:
- Extended 2D graphics primitives
- Advanced Bitmap Fonts with efficient letter packing
- Major compatibility with all existing hardware
- Dynamic textures and easy to use render targets
- Alpha-channel support with alpha-blending
- High performance rendering using multiple cache techniques
- High-definition timer supporting VCL, KOL and Lazarus
- Input controls for Keyboard, Mouse and Multiple Joysticks
- In 3D, we have support for Shaders, Bump Mapping, Shadow Mapping, Advanced Illumination and others.
The latest version still does not have official support for all providers, being only compatible with the DirectX7 and DirectX9. But myself I already tested these new providers and they are well stable. For soon, Yuriy Kotsarenko promises that will come out a new version which already have all these providers, Lazarus support and a lot of new resources. As soon as it comes out, I will post further details here.
