A while back, I posted an entry on the universe of cross-compiled code and the power of Adobe Alchemy. At that time, I put in a good word for the most publicized example of Alchemy at work: Flash Doom. Well, not content to just please the nostalgic gamer masses, Mike Walsh, the creator of this surprising port, is bringing smiles to curious Flash developers everywhere. He has just released the source code for the latest version of the conversion, the Doom Triple Pack. The Triple Pack includes the shareware episodes of Doom, Hexen, and a personal favourite of mine, Heretic.
In case you wanted a refresher on what Alchemy does, here is the one sentence "nutshell": Alchemy allows C and C++ code to which hooks have been added to be cross-compiled to AVM2 byte-code and built into a SWF file which can be loaded into a Flash application. The intent of this experiment was to provide a means of making existing (legacy or open source) libraries available to serious, business-driven Flash applications. As is often the case, despite the "useful" nature of this technology, game developers have driven the cutting edge and come up with something quite unexpected.
Get the Source
As mentioned above, Mike posted the source to the Triple Pack on GitHub a few days ago, to little fanfare. If you'd like to see exactly how he pulled it all off, now's your chance. I've only had time to poke around a little but his custom pre-loader is in there, as are reams of C code (ah, the nostalgia!). Shortly after the original release of Flash Doom, Mike explained the ins and outs of his endeavour in this interview with Peter Elst.
Also, here is a link to a step-by-step guide to compiling your own Alchemy-powered Doom. It is not by Mike but might help in making heads or tails of his source.
Continue reading Source for "Flash Doom Triple Pack" Released.
