Of Flash and Virtualness

As mentioned previously, I'm currently developing a virtual sports center in Flash. Yesterday I got a quick and dirty mock up done. Doesn't look pretty and has hardly any functionality in it for the time being, but as a quick demo to people I think it will work fine. If people like the idea then I'm going to scrap it and start over. Need to try and get access to a 3D program however so I can render some scenes for it. Shame I can't do it all in Flash so it's vectored, would make life a little easier. Still, I should be able to get some nice images done for the project!

As for 3D, I've been taking a look at Swift 3D. It's a 3D rendering program for Flash application. But some of the 3D models, etc that have been done in it are outstanding! It outputs in both vector and raster and is also capable of photo-realistic images. So with any luck I'll be able to get hold of a copy and produce some great 3D content for the VSC.

After another mini brainstroming session with Andy we decided that, at some point, we'd like to end up with a game-esque style interface. A main window showing you what room you are in, a minimap to allow quick navigation (while still be able to navigate in the main window). An info box giving a brief description of room and finally a box that displays the information you click on in the main window. So for example, you could click on a notice board in the main window and it would display the info contained in the notice board just below in a little box.

We are also going to look at controlling the content via XML documents that are imported into Flash at runtime. This means that the entire VSC can be kept up-to-date without editing the Flash at all. Hopefully we will be able to put a PHP backend somewhere to allow the creation/updating of the XML documents so that anyone can add new/edit information.

All in all it sounds like a great project to work on and something to write my dissertation on when that comes about!