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AANABAY01

I was checkin' out flash professional earlier and it seems pretty good to me, and fairly close to my ideal way of making simple applet games. ze problem is zat i worry about paying (a lot of money) for a license if it is about to be replaced by something better - i saw an article just today where steve jobs trashes flash specifically and got wonderin' about how long it'll be supported for - any insights? was jobs just bein' a jerk? ;F

(i noticed there are a few free alternative developing tools for flash, but, well, i'm a pretty mediocre coder when all i've got is a text editor - i'd prefer to have an entire suite to work with. i never got into pure coding as such - basic and bad python is my limit)

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Russia, Moscow

There are growing alternatives - MS Silverlight, Java FX, and HTML5 (which Steve Jobs promotes). They aren't anywhere near Flash by popularity, and this will take many years to replace the Flash.

You can develop Flash apps without paying for the Adobe's app - there are few free compilers and IDE's. However, they aren't include a graphics/vector editor, so it not going to be easy way. You should understand that you will need to write a lot of code these days to make a nice Flash game.

Last edited by Shiru (Jun 25, 2010 4:32 pm)

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Venezuela

i should say YES. BUt... is because there is no other with this popularity/time as FLASH. And is the "only" option outside, i mean, big sites use it as a default tool, for basic stuff as video, music players, banners and stuff. It's solid and have been growing a lot since AS 2 and 3. And for vector animations it's pretty good and simple.

But you have to considerate this...... basically IT SUX a lot... still have so many problems to handle the memory and since it's linked to a browser will not powerfull as it should be. It's a shame because is a powerfull tool but is mismanaged in my opinion. A better options for videogames (with best performance) is the shockwave but is a forget tool. ""Not much"" ppl use it. But it handle a loooot better the elements and dont feel rusty as flash in the graphic part.

In you case, if you want to develop games. There is a HUGE (really really huge) background of GOOD games made in flash. So is a good tool for that.  if you dont have much exprience with it will take a bit for you to dev games, because flash is a bit tricky.

I have been using flash since 2000 and doing graphics/animation/sounds for flash games since 2003, so if your goal is to develop games and earn money with. G0G0G0G0

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Wellington, NZ

Flash is on it's way out thanks to apple. I do think HTML5 is the next big standard. If you just want to make a small game flash will be the way to go unless you plan on using it for the next few years

But if im not mistaken html5 has a free open programming environment so no need to pay for dev tools and such.

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uhajdafdfdfa
OwenMcGarry wrote:

Flash is on it's way out thanks to apple. I do think HTML5 is the next big standard. If you just want to make a small game flash will be the way to go unless you plan on using it for the next few years

But if im not mistaken html5 has a free open programming environment so no need to pay for dev tools and such.

I'm not so sure about HTML5 replacing Flash for games. For example, no game with an online high-scores chart will work if everyone who plays the game can view and edit the source code with a couple of clicks!

Also, HTML5 is supposedly not going to be completely ready until 2022, so I think Flash has quite a bit of life left in it. And there's already a few open source Flash players about, so maybe by the deep dark post-apocalyptic future of 2022 there will be a Flash player written in HTML5! wink

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Wellington, NZ
ant1 wrote:

Also, HTML5 is supposedly not going to be completely ready until 2022, so I think Flash has quite a bit of life left in it. And there's already a few open source Flash players about, so maybe by the deep dark post-apocalyptic future of 2022 there will be a Flash player written in HTML5! wink

That long? Not if apple keeps up like they are. Youtube and vimeo have already began to switch and almost everything is available inn html5.

But an HTML5 flash player would be cool.

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Still good? When was it ever!!!!??

Well, it be fair it was pretty cool when I used VideoWorks on a Mac SE in like 1987... smile

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▐▐▌▌▐▌▌█▐ ▐▐▌▌▐▌▌█▐ ▐▐▌▌▐▌▌█▐

im all about flash.
i have been using it for a number of years now (like 7 maybe?), and it just keeps getting better.
the newest incarnation of action script 3 is simply amazing. it's like we took this simple animation
tool (flash 5) and added a full on programming language (java style) to it.

as for developing flash, you actually have a lot of options.
the "flash creative suite" is obviously the first choice. it's the native flash IDE that adobe has developed.
it's expensive. your 2nd choice is "flash builder" (aka flex builder). this is adobe's new IDE that's focused
more on code then visuals. it's my preferred development platform. it's built on eclipse, so there's tons
of cool coding features like strong typing, code hinting, intelesence, auto function writing, proto-classing,
etc, etc... this is also pay ware, but it's much cheaper. next up is "flash develop". this is an open source *FREEWARE*
application, similar to flex, for developing flash content. it's really fast and really lightweight. it uses adobe's
real open-source SDK (same as flex), so your exporting real flash.

html 5 is still in it's infancy (the standard still isn't 100% yet). but it's growing fast.
if you haven't seen them, check out the chrome experiments. good stuff.

OwenMcGarry wrote:

But an HTML5 flash player would be cool.

it exists already... check out smokescreen
take that steve jobs!!!

flash is here to stay!
whether yew like it or not!
lulz ;D

Last edited by xero (Jun 29, 2010 6:52 pm)

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Russia, Moscow

It should be noted that Flash has a lot of serious problems even today. Lack of support for hardware acceleration, low accuracy of all the timers (and even worse, different accuracy for different browsers), different speed depending from the browser and how it is embedded (up to 50% slowdown in some situations!), rather underdeveloped sound capabilites (good luck with seamless loop of MP3; peak CPU overhead at start of every sound) - it just a few that come in mind first. Well, alternatives nowhere near by popularity, and has their own problems too.

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Minneapolis

Yes, browser embedded anything is usually junk IMO. The way the internet is currently structured is inefficient enough as it is without adding an extra layer on top. Flash is the most wasteful of CPU and bandwidth resources of them all, Silverlight really only works with with Microsoft OSes (no surprises there), Java FX is Java (interpreted runtime? In a browser? No way!), and HTML 5 support is a long way off. I personally think HTML 5 has the most promise for embedded apps/games, but extending a deprecated markup language isn't my idea of an upgrade.

Last edited by arfink (Jun 29, 2010 8:05 pm)

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▐▐▌▌▐▌▌█▐ ▐▐▌▌▐▌▌█▐ ▐▐▌▌▐▌▌█▐
Shiru wrote:

It should be noted that Flash has a lot of serious problems even today. Lack of support for hardware acceleration, low accuracy of all the timers (and even worse, different accuracy for different browsers), different speed depending from the browser and how it is embedded (up to 50% slowdown in some situations!), rather underdeveloped sound capabilites (good luck with seamless loop of MP3; peak CPU overhead at start of every sound) - it just a few that come in mind first. Well, alternatives nowhere near by popularity, and has their own problems too.

i have to agree w/ some of these comments.

the lack of hardware acceleration is sad really. but the problem isnt adobe. they are trying hard to work w/ gfx card developers
to create a standard method of accessing the GPU from flash. but ATI and nVidea dont ever want to work together on anything.

the timer issue is a big one. but that problem is intrinsic to the browser running it.
IE handles things one way, firefox another, chrome yet another... since IEEE will not create a standard for such things,
this becomes a problem w/ almost every run-time plugin (e.g. silverlight).

creating sounds from nothing in flash is not easy (though not impossible),
but i hate that looping mp3 argument. it's litterally 2 lines of code...

var soundLoop:Sound = new LoopingSound();
soundLoop.play(0, int.MAX_VALUE);

done.

this is an argument as old as the player itself.
i liken it to: mac vs pc, windows vs linux, nintendo vs sega, etc...

but i digress...
to answer your original question, i think if you want to program
web-based games, that are awesome. unity3D is your plug-in of choice.

Last edited by xero (Jun 29, 2010 8:15 pm)

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Russia, Moscow

Regarding seamless looping, these 2 lines of code will not work in all the cases (only works when you encoded WAV to MP3 using CS). Be sure, I know what I'm talking about.

Last edited by Shiru (Jun 29, 2010 9:12 pm)

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Flash has years of life in it, and will support alot more features that html5 when it finally becomes a standard.
Flash is finally making its way onto mobile devices and becoming lightweight on specific features which people bogged it down for, give them time.

regardless of html5, Flash will always still be around for in terms of ActionScript and the Animation platform it has. I fail to see a site like http://newgrounds.com spawning up which is basically the same except for html5 content.

But to be honest. for video and audio html5 will replace Flash.

TL;DR: flash is going to stay for a LOOOONG time

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Wellington, NZ

Short answer is here!

If you want something usable by many now and for a few years, go with flash.  If you want to be progressive, though not all browsers support it yet (internet explorer of course), go with HTML 5.

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Sweden

You should try processing. When it comes to programming games, I think that it's a lot easier to get into than flash, and whatever you create can be embedded on a web page.

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AANABAY01

thanks for all the answers - i take it i can rely on flash being supported for years to come

i checked out a lot of the alternatives people gave and they all look good and useful, but some felt a little daunting... processing in particular ;F i guess i prefer the whole suite that comes with flash to the small utilities that are essentially text editors and need to get more confident with tough programming - what puts me off isn't programming logic but the abstractness of looking at the text instead of the end result. flash still seems most comfortable to me because i remember using games factory years ago, and it's not so very far away in some respects.

Last edited by Zan-zan-zawa-butt (Jul 1, 2010 3:14 pm)