Bu Zhou and the spagetti monster engine

[MadGypsy]

I was spinning my wheels with crossbridge attempting to get it to compile a quake source into an SWC. I came across a blog of a gentleman that seemed to really know his stuff with crossbridge. I took a shot in the dark and contacted him directly asking if he would give me a minimalist example (ie...just get the source to be an SWC without a bunch of proxy AS3 that can communicate with the engine).

He mailed me back within hours that he would give it a shot but, he didn't feel confident he could do it. He just mailed me again (barely one day later) to tell me he completed it and that he just wants to clean up his code and write a blog about it.

I'm blown away. This man is a beast. Roughly 30 hours ago I was pulling out my last 2 hairs and now I'm maybe an hour or so away from having a huge jumpstart handed to me. When he posts this to his blog I'm going to put the link here.

It is absolutely related to Quake in every way. If he followed my specific request his blog will be about how to convert the pro Quake source to an SWC (usable as a library in Flash/AIR) with Adobe Crossbridge. Which is sheer gold for anyone wanting to make a Quake based game in adobe flash with the most modern tools.

Thank you Bu Zhou!

edit> if for some reason he did not use the Pro Quake source, I will port his work to the Pro Quake source. Why is this important...well, Pro Quake supports multiplayer so, in theory, any Flash/AIR derivative should also support this. Also, if I'm not mistaken, Pro Quake is one of the most widely used MP engines.

Edit2> Wooops, the gentlemans name is actually Bruce Jawn. I went from the name given in his email profile but his blog states otherwise.

[monoz]

interesting.. how will pak2 work?

[MadGypsy]

IDK... that's for other people to worry about. My specific needs for this will not entail a pak2. I'm assuming since PAK0&1 are all that is needed for SP Quake, PAK2 must be an online pak that needs to load? Id assume you would just use a URLLoader(new URLRequest(url:String)); like anything else in flash. From there, somebody quake source savvy should be able to modify the engine to accept the data from flash. Then again, If PAK2 is an online thing, why wouldn't Quake already know what to do with it? Granted the engine is running inside the AVM but none of it's functionality should be crippled. In the case that functionality does become crippled (especially retrieving online data...assuming the flash security sandbox is overriding the engine requests) there is no reason why flash couldn't pass the information along as a proxy. The server would have to have a policy file though, which is nothing but a simple text file that tells flash it is allowed to retrieve the data. Then again, with a flash quake there is no reason to have flashQuake on your computer, meaning, you could set up a webpage that supplies flashQuake and simply put pak2 on the same server.

I could probably think of even more ways to work around this issue (if it is even an issue). My current needs are not MP related. I'm going to tweak the engine to work on touch screen devices that don't have a keyboard (or any other input device). It won't even be that complicated.

In crossbridge I will assign some proxy AS3 classes that act as a facade for the respective Qsource classes that accept keyboard input.

Then I'll make an on-screen controller in flash. As the controls are interacted with they will send along the corresponding keycodes to the quake engine, essentially fooling it into believing the proper keys were pressed

The only thing I can think that may be a challenge is faking the freelook mouse functionality. My initial idea is to make fire a more complicated control. Basically the graphic would act as a sticky analog. A filled inner circle and an unfilled outer bounds circle. Dragging the inner circle changes your look direction and tapping any potion of the entirety fires. Releasing the drag would not snap the filled circle back to the center. That's where the "sticky" part comes in. It's assumed the direction you pointed is the direction you want to look until you change it.

Anyway, that's my current solution. Who knows what the final solution will really be.

[MadGypsy]

Quake to flashQuake source and instructions

Crossbridge Quake 1 Simplified - Bruce Jawn

Thanks again to Bruce Jawn