OpenSpace is a powerful Flash based isometric engine and framework for rapid development of multi-user virtual worlds and MMO communities.
The engine leverages the power of Actionscript 3 and SmartFoxServer, offering an unprecedented level of features and customizations.

1. Customizable tiles' aspect ratio

OpenSpace gives full control over the map appearance by setting the tiles’ size and aspect-ratio: you can choose between an isometric view and a top-down view, or set your preferred view angle.

2. Tiles Elevation

Tiles aren’t plain surfaces, but flexible building blocks that allow the creation of complex architectures, including bridges, overpasses and four-directions slopes.

  

Also, when you chose a top-down tile aspect-ratio, you can obtain a a real top-down view or a very skewed form just like in the glorious “Ultima Online”.

3. 2D objects in a 2.5D world

Adopting the techniques described in the OpenSpace documentation, you can place large, tile-exceeding 2D objects on the map (for example buildings) without affecting the perception of moving inside a tridimensional space, and without having to split each map object in tile-shaped parts (with the consequent, ugly “pattern effect”).
 You can also group tiles in a so called “super-tile”, for fast reuse of complex map objects in your environments.

4. Backgrounds and foregrounds

OpenSpace handles backgrounds and foregrounds on separate layers, so there’s no need to fill the map with “terrain tiles”: simply create your background/foreground graphics in Flash and they will be placed below (background) and above (foreground) the map. This makes a lot faster and easier to create the map base with a lot of freedom and avoiding (again) the typical “pattern effect” of tiled backgrounds.

5. Scrolling

OpenSpace features and advanced map scrolling which has been fine-tuned to maximize the rendering performance and allow the creation of larger maps.
 The scrolling behavior can be fully customized by setting different parameters: the distance from the viewport sides which triggers the scrolling, the amount and speed of scrolling and the easing equation to be used during the scroll movement.

It’s even possible to enable a continuous camera panning to follow the avatar movement (not recommended on larger maps).

6. Advanced pathfinding

OpenSpace makes use of an extended breadth-first pathfinding algorithm which is able to handle different tile elevations and slopes on the map. The calculated path is transmitted to the other users on the map to minimize the efforts of the Flash Player in handling the movements of all the visible avatars.

7. Powerful avatar management

With OpenSpace, the avatar creation is in total control of the developer: you just have to create a class that extends MovieClip and implements a given interface. By means of this interface, the OpenSpace engine communicates with the avatar whenever required.
For example: when the avatar should start or stop moving, when the avatar direction changes during movement, upon reception of a public or private message (so you can show a speech bubble), on avatar appearance (“skin”) changes, when a custom action should be played (make your avatar dance, laugh, cry...), etc...

By default OpenSpace features an 8-directions avatar movement, but you can configure the engine so that only the four diagonal directions are used, and the pathfinding algorithm will adapt itself to this setting.

8. Advanced map interaction system

By means of a number of specific events fired by the OpenSpace engine and custom parameters assigned to tiles, you can have full control over the tiles behavior and user interaction with the map.
 For example, when an avatar steps on a tile in front of the door of a building, you could make that door open and enable the mouse click on it. If the user clicks it, you could make him/her join a new map, or make a confirm alert appear, or make anything else happen.

  

9. Exhaustive documentation

Keeping up with the much appreciated SmartFoxServer tradition, OpenSpace comes with a detailed introductory and setup documentation, a number of non-trivial, fully commented examples which show the majority of OpenSpace features and a detailed API documentation with usage examples for each method and property.

10. Complete Map Editor

The OpenSpace Map Editor gives full control over each aspect of the creation of a virtual world:

• manage different projects;
• set the global configuration (like tile size and aspect-ratio);
• edit tiles and their “skins” (the tiles’ graphics), super-tiles, maps;
• define your own custom tile/super-tile properties (for example, if a tile represents a chair, you could set its price for your virtual shop, the maximum available quantity, if it can be purchased by v.i.p. users or not, its description, etc... your imagination is the limit);
• assign triggers to skins and tiles for a full control over the events that should be fired at runtime when the user interacts with a map;
• export the final tileset and the maps to files (using an intelligible xml format) or send them directly to a server-side page for storing in a database;
• etc...