Hello everybody,
After hard work,
I am happy to announce the release of the beta1 of the Cubic Panorama Plugin!
The download is the last attachment of this message (after the screenshots).
Notes:
You can try it out with any edition, including the Free Edition if you want (but in that case you are limited to 20 frames).
Whichever edition you use, please note that it is currently
NOT allowed to use the beta1 of this plugin for commercial purposes.
Getting Started:
1) Download and extract the file "Cubic_Panorama_Plugin_v1_0_Beta1.zip" that is attached to this message.
2) You will obviously need at least one cubic panoramic picture to use the plugin. You can download a
sample picture here (screenshot1 below shows a preview).
TIP: To create your own panoramic pictures, you can use just any 3D rendering program. Simply render 6 square-sized images with a camera FOV of 112.5. You can find a very nice
tutorial for Bryce here. Instructions for POV-RAY, Blender, Vue, and Terragen can be found
here. Once you have the 6 pictures, you can merge them into a single picture by using the "Cubic Panorama Image Combiner" tool that is included in the plugin package (screenshot2).
3) Copy the plugin files into the "Plugins" sub-folder of Adventure Maker (screenshot3).
4) Activate the plugin from the "Plugins" tab of the Project Properties (screenshot4).
5) Create a new frame by using the panoramic picture mentioned at step2, and apply the plugin by going to the "Plugins" tab of the Frame Properties (screenshot5).
6) Test the frame, and voil?!
Features:
The plugin supports hotspots, cursors, graphical elements, looping videos, full-screen transitions, and more.
You can move back and forth between panoramic and non-panoramic frames.
You can look in any direction, and, unlike the cylindrical plugin, there are no limitations in the range of movement: you can look vertically at your feet, and vertically above your head!
Limitations:
Like the cylindrical plugin, this plugin currently does not support inventory drag/drop, rippling water fx, and animated gifs (use looping videos instead). To drag/drop items from the inventory, please move temporarily to a non-panoramic frame.
You cannot use images bigger than 2048x2048 (however, since it is a cube and not a cylinder, the resulting quality is much better, and the viewing angle has no limitations: you can look at the sky and at your feet).
The beta1 of the plugin cannot be used together with the cylinder-based AM panorama plugin. You must enable either one or the other from the Project Properties, but you cannot enable both in the same project (this may become possible in future updates - not sure though).
In order to be able to use the "Save Game" and "Load Game" features of Adventure Maker without any error messages, you must follow these simple steps:
1) Create a new 2D solid-color frame named for example "PleaseWaitWhileResuming".
2) In the "Frame Properties" of that frame, make it so that it goes to the "Last visited frame" after 2 seconds.
3) Click "Set resume locations", select all the frames, and assign the "PleaseWaitWhileResuming" frame to all the frames.
Enjoy the new cubic panorama plugin and please post comments!
GM-Support