I am excited to introduce today a new project we have been working on,called "Starling". So what is it ?
Starling is a 2D framework for game development developed in collaboration with the Austrian company Gamua (already behind the Sparrow-Framework on iOS),running on top of Stage3D (Molehill). It allows developers to leverage the power of the GPU without diving into the low-level details of the Stage3D APIs (available in Flash Player 11 and Adobe AIR 3). I am convinced that most of Flash developers will love this initiative,as most developers would like to leverage the GPU while reusing concepts like an event model,a display list,movieclips,sprites,etc.
Most of you,who had a look at the Stage3D APIs understand that this can be complex sometimes. So instead of writing 60 lines of code to draw a textured quad.
You will write the following :
01.
// create a Texture object out of an embedded bitmap
var texture:Texture = Texture.fromBitmap ( new embeddedBitmap() );
Image(texture);
image.pivotX = 50;
;
30011.
image.y = 15012.
image.rotation = Math.PI/413.
14.
// display it
addChild(image);
Quite nice hu ?
Of course,as a little obligatory test,find below a bunch of things (yes,sausages!) moving around :
Here is below another demo using Starling plugged with Box2D (for physics) :
Then,you have complete rendering of the your physics scene on the GPU.
Then of course particles! :
Click for demo (press right key for starting the particles and change).
Below a more concret example including MovieClip (through spritesheet) :
If you want to learn more about Starling,check the little book (Introducing Starling - 110 pages) I wrote about it,you can download it from the link below,it covers many concepts to get started with Starling :
click to download (Introducing Starling - rev 1.2.2).
Check the official Starling website to download it and share your content with the Starling community.
I hope you will like it!