Hypercosm Curation

Hypercosm 3D player was a plugin created in 1999 to view interactive 3D models and simple games. It is one of the most finicky and unstable techs we support, so to curate for it all steps must be followed correctly and any problems reported.

WARNING!!! Flashpoint currently does not support Hypercosm 3, if any applications return an error, it most likely is because of this! We are working on implementing it.

Before You Start

This tutorial will assume you've read the standard Curation Tutorial, which is highly recommended to go through. Try curating a Flash game before moving on to Hypercosm.

Identifying Hypercosm Applications

Button typically placed in the page where the plug-in was needed.

When you enter a page containing Hypercosm content, it usually indicates that the player is needed in order to view it. Some have a button that linked to the player download page, while others have a prompt asking you to download it, but not always.

To confirm it is indeed Hypercosm, go to the developer tab of your browser, and in the Elements tab, you should see in the embed frame something along the lines of src= where the main .hcvm model file is located.

Grabbing The App From The Internet

Besides the main 3D model file, the applets can request other external assets like textures, sound effects, etc. These are listed on the page embed itself, not on any Hypercosm related files, and are not listed in it as full links but as partial URLs that are reconstructed to call them. After a variable stating the total of assets it calls (numresources="X"), each will be numbered and listed afterwards (example; resX="'image.png'");

<embed src="https://static01.nyt.com/library/national/science/galileo-signed.hcvm" type="application/x-Hypercosm-3D-Applet" pluginspage="http://www.hypercosm.com/player" width="512" height="384" align="" alwaysactive="FALSE" noads="TRUE" windowname="Hypercosm" numresources="9" res0="'radiator.png','013100radiator.png'" res1="'jupiter.jpg','013100jupiter.jpg'" res2="'stars.jpg','013100stars.jpg'" res3="'mag_boom.png','013100mag_boom.png'" res4="'small_antenna.png','013100small_antenna.png'" res5="'large_antenna.png','013100large_antenna.png'" res6="'flame.png','013100flame.png'" res7="'flame.png','013100flame.png'" res8="'noise.wav','013100noise.wav'" commandline=" -width 512 -height 384">

You will need to reconstruct these URLs is to take the one for the main file, and replacing the name of the asset at the end for the one you want to load;

• hcvm URL - https://static01.nyt.com/library/national/science/galileo-signed.hcvm
• Directory URL - https://static01.nyt.com/library/national/science/
• Asset name - stars.jpg
• Full Asset URL - https://static01.nyt.com/library/national/science/stars.jpg

Create a .txt listing the URLs of the hcvm and extras, and after doing the same for all listed assets, run it by cURLsDownloader to get all the files with the correct folder structure.

Curation Steps

An incomplete Hypercosm app with only the main .hcvm file will usually look blank with a white background and flat colour surfaces. It's important to check whether there's more files the app needs.

Create a new curation in the Curate tab of Flashpoint Core and fill it out with as much information as you can. The Platform should be Hypercosm, and the Application Path should be FPSoftware\FlashpointSecurePlayer.exe.

For the launch command, we need to call the .hcvm file, following this format;

hypercosm "http://_URL_"

Example;

hypercosm "http://static01.nyt.com/library/national/science/galileo-signed.hcvm"

You cannot simply test in the curate tab like other games. You'll need to copy the contents of the content folder to Legacy\htdocs beforehand.

After the files are copied, to test the curation, click the Run button. It will require you to run the app as an Administrator User. After that, Hypercosm will detect that your PC contains 3D graphics acceleration hardware, and ask if you'd like to use it to run the app. Click No, as most apps were not created with it in mind, and will have trouble loading certain assets.

After you made sure it works, you can delete the files you copied to htdocs as they are the ones already in your curation folder.

All Hypercosm curations must have -extract in the Mount Parameters.

Wrapping It Up

First, make sure that you have thoroughly tested your curation and followed the Curation Format. Scroll down in the Curate tab and click the Export button at the bottom of your curation to save it as a .7z file. After you've exported the curation, you can find it by clicking the Exported Curations button on the Curate tab (as long as you didn't choose to save it somewhere else). Once you have the file, submit it to the Flashpoint Submission System. An explanation of how the site works is available here.

After you have uploaded your curation to the website, a Curator will check it. This can take some time, so please be patient. You will be pinged in the #fpfss-notifications channel about whether or not your submission was approved, and if any changes need to be made.

Congratulations! Your submitted game/animation will appear in a future version of Flashpoint.