Andrew Phelps has sent me a nice email with a link to a very interesting project, namely an Actionscript 2.0 Framework for 3D programming in Director, using Shockwave3D and the Irrlicht Xtra. Pretty cool, check it out!

Got rid of some superficial classes (SceneManager, VideoManager, GuiManager), their methods are all accessible of the member now, making the syntax shorter and easier.

New demo, new DIR and new Xtra are all online. Check the links to the right.

Next stop:
include the irrEdit Editor as the media editor for Irrlicht worlds in Director…

But first: some 3 weeks vacation …

Have fun!

Hi,

welcome to my new dev blog site! As the Xtra gets on its way, i also set up this blog to facilitate posting.

A new version of the Xtra is now online, v0.4. Get it via the link.
The new version is justified by having folded back almost all important methods and properties to the member level, and not sprite level as it used to be in the past.

This makes the API more like Shockwave3d. Also, this version compiles the new Irrlicht 1.1 version code, just for kicks. However, the Irrlicht engine code is considered to be “alpha” state - getVersion() reports “1.1alpha”, yet this does not apply to the core 3d engine in my opinion which wasn’t touched.

I took the new Irrlicht code as there are interesting new methods in there:

the Xtra can now loadScene() and saveScene() via the two new methods

member().loadScene(”file.irr”)
member().saveScene(”file.irr”)

The “irr” files are normal XML files referrencing external media assets. The scenes are thus just explained content-wise, not totally defined by it. Do not confuse this with the W3D-format, which describes the whole scene AND its asset, the irr file format just defines what the scene looks like and what it contains, not the media itself!

In short, this means that you can set up Irrlicht scenes using the irrEdit editor and then load them into Director. Or, you can create a scene in Director and save it outside.

Please keep in mind that although this is working, the feature itself (the setup of the 3D world) is not perfect yet. For instance, you can load media assets from a Quake PK3 file (which is nothing else than a ZIP archive). A scene using those media assets (meshes, textures, etc.) is currently not correctly restored, as the elements are all saved individually without any reference to the ZIP archive they are originally from.

I will have to move out of my current office tomorow, and will then be on a 3 weeks vacation until mid-July. So tonight will be the last update for a couple of weeks.

If you happen to be an experienced Mac developer who would like to tackle the Mac version of the Xtra, feel free to contact me.

As for the others, feel free to contact me as well, as usual.
Enjoy!