Early in 2006, I received a phone call from Tony Parisi of Media Machines saying that he had a great idea. “Ajax 3D” he spoke. “Got it” I replied, and so here we are today. 

Over the last years the StarbaseC3 catalog of parts and 3d objects had all been updated from vrml97 to X3D, so all it took was the delivery of the “Strike Fighter” models, the original .jpg  diffuse textures from 1996 , plus new “light and normal texture maps”, as well as the original sounds and interface art to begin to get “Strike Fighter v.3” into production.

It was clear that this update needed to go further than the original game in both production value, gameplay and usage. Otherwise why do it? Production value increases could easily be handled by the new features that X3D offered and that the Flux Player could provide. The game could have light and normal maps to make it graphically stronger. The audio could be an .mp3 track, and most of all the game could be full screen or at least very large with high performance that rivaled the original v.1 game.

Gameplay enhancement was to take advantage of the “Ajax”, in “Ajax3D”, Not only would their be a second bonus target drone that could make play “indefinite” but the High Scores of players could be recorded and uploaded to a server for high score contests. This simple feature – so important to building a community of players- had been missing all these years since none of the web3d solutions used in the past had a level of server communications that this showcase version would have due to the Ajax3D concept.

A separate article in this feature written by Dave Arendash who programmed the v.3 game will go into the details of how he used Flux, X3D and JavaScript to bring the game to life. From my POV as the game’s designer and visualist I’m very pleased with how the the Strike Fighter v.3 game demo came out. There are a few tweaks and things I plan to change over the next weeks after this release, but overall the game is fast, looks good, and is fun to play. It’s a simple example of the power of the Ajax3D concept and hopefully can show many how they can go beyond 2d flash games and start to truly create a “metaverse” of virtual worlds and experiences on the web.

So give the game a try, Get out there and shoot those target drones and see if you can have a high score in the top 10 from week to week.

Back to the game.

Best to all,
Larry Rosenthal
Cube Productions inc.
Cube3.com
StarbaseC3.com