So I have written about Mr Joa ‘The Flash God’ Ebert before. He is well known throughout the Flash community for his incredible coding skills, particularly his work on low-level SWF optimisation.

His latest project is called JITB and its nothing short of stunning as this video taken from his blog shows:

Basically he has gone and written a Flash Player in Java. What this means is that you get all those awesome speed benefits and optimisations that the Java team has worked hard for years and years to implement but you can write it all in a language already familiar and sexy, AS3! The result? You get about a 30x speedup! (disclaimer: a micro-benchmark taken from Joa’s blog)

This is all great news and very exciting. I cant wait to see a custom browser plugin using this flash player, or even having Pixel Bender shaders running on the hardware *me drools in anticipation*.

Well its been quite a while since my last progress report. I have mostly been sleeping (well 4 hours of it anyways).

So progress is coming along nicely STILL no gameplay tho :S

So far you can shoot and destroy the enemies and then collect thier giblets before they become part of the terrain. The idea is that you can then shoot those giblets back at the enemies. Take alook if you are interested:

Oh I just noticed I left some debug sliders on there I was using to try and hone the bloom levels. Have a play with them if you want.

Right. Gameplay.

Okay its been about 6 hours since my last update, and I have been working pretty much solid apart from an hour lunchbreak when I went for a wander into town.

Ive made quite abit of progress with the core bits of the engine including the physics particle systems and the destructible terrain.

Dont believe me? Take a look for yourself:

Theres still no game really, just a pretty tech demo. Im hoping the gameplay will come next

Im going to have abit of a break now, get some food wind down a little then its going to be a loooooong night ahead for me!

For those not in the know the demo scene or “scene” is where a team of people come together and compete to make a music video. Except that they arent videos in the traditional sense as its all generated using code and runs in realtime. This means that you have to be super efficient with your code. Some of the competitions are “64k” or even “4k” competitions which means that the whole demo must fit in 64kb or 4kb! The music is also produced by the groups and often excellent.

I have been checking out some of the demos produced by the teams this year and they are simply stunning. Every year they get better and better.

This one from CNCD and Fairlight particularly caught my eye as it has massive numbers of particles and a stunning soundtrack kinda reminiscent of glitchy Radiohead. Therefore I thought it essential I share it here.

Enjoy:

Oh while im at it check out this one from last year:

If you are interested in more demos from assembly you can get them all here: http://scene.org/newfiles.php?dayint=7&dir=/parties/2010/assembly10/

Oh I have also posted about the demoscene before here: http://mikecann.co.uk/art/andromeda-software-development-lifeforce-2007/

Its a a physics engine called Lagoa and its by Thiago Costa, check it out:

Lagoa Multiphysics 1.0 – Teaser from Thiago Costa on Vimeo.

I have immense respect for some of the flash developers out there and Quasimondo is one of them. He has just released a little particle related experiment.

Whenever I see these kind of things it inspires me to bash out my own little experiments.

I wont talk too much about it but check it out on this lab page: http://incubator.quasimondo.com/flash/galactose.php