The problem is that flash suffers the same problem triggering admin interaction to perform any kind of update for quite a while.
due to that the installbase of flash 10+ is not remotely as large as the XP day installbase that benefited from the lacking security.
Or in short: if you target it you will have similar problems to unity, just that it has a small ‘brand benefit’ at the price of being slower and significantly more limited.
Unity provides superior tools for working in 3D → Flash, Flex and Air provide none. If you are just doing 2D work, then Flash with Flash Develop may be a better option for you. If you are doing any kind of serious 3D work in Flash, the license is worth every penny.
zipper
We’ll see about that when Adobe provides us more information on the license. I’m getting more and more afraid that Adobe will kill the awesomeness of premium content the moment the license goes live.
Not true. I know 3d games made with flash.
Please posts links to the tools available in Flash to work in 3D.
There is NO 3D visual editor in Flash, no timeline support for 3D objects. Shaders in Flash are written in a proprietary language… I have done extensive work with 3D in Flash myself and it is an excruciatingly painful process. Everything must be hand coded to work in 3D, and you can only see the results of your positionings, textures, lighting, model imports, etc… by compiling and running the flash project.
So if you mean that Flash provides a code editor, in which you can code a 3D scene by hand (line by line), then yes flash has a “tool” for working with 3D
zipper
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/games/gaming_engines.html
Check that link. Unless I’m misunderstanding your post, that will provide you answers.
Correct, there is no visual editor in flash. If there is no timeline support for 3d objects then where do these 3d games and engines come from?
Your talking about pixel bender right?
But that’s not what he said. He’s talking about toolset and pipeline integration, not technical capability.
We’ve whipped up 3D stuff in Flash from scratch, but there’s no way we’d look at using it for any more than a proof-of-concept without it being backed by a strong toolset. Since Unity is the same toolset that we use for the majority of our other projects, it’s a no brainer that we’d also use it for Flash 3D stuff if at all possible.
With the Unity Flash plugin, making 3D Flash content is as easy as selecting a different option at the end of our existing development pipeline. On the other hand, while we could make Flash 3D stuff without Unity, we’d need a completely separate and mostly incompatible pipeline - which would cost us more than a $1500 licensing fee on the first project where it was used.
The AlternativaPlatform (flash) offers a 3DS Max plugin. I don’t recall ever seeing if any others do the same though.
That’s only one part of the pipeline, though.
What are all of the tasks that need to be performed for a project from start (typically a client ordering something) to delivery (handing over or deploying a ready-to-use product to the client)? The less duplication of effort required to support different deployment platforms, the better.
Just to clarify, most of those are libraries and engines. Only a few actually deal with 3d content, most are libraries that leverage stage3d for use in 2d games for performance boosts. (for users who have fp11). Starling in particular is a great engine for that.
But there aren’t that many 3d games in flash. Mostly a handful of tech demos. Zynga had one in geo-beta a few months ago, but no word on whether or not that will ever go live. Right now, there is nothing really main stream that uses 3d in flash. (at least for 3d content, many use stage3d for higher performance on 2d assets.)
I assume the point he was making about timeline support was with regard to the IDE. In other words, none of those allow you to drop an asset on the stage in flash and move it around. If you are creating big games the timeline is rarely used in flash. And not at all if you are doing 3d games. But that isn’t a downside, as the timeline is not really an efficient aspect of flash. For 3d in flash, you use an external tool. For 2d in flash leveraging stage3d, you either use some sort of convertor/tool for puppet rigs, or sprite sheets.
With all those tools, development of flash games remains largely the same, almost entirely code driven with the exception of asset creation/preparation. Flash game development is done mostly in a code editor. That’s not a bad thing, but for kids who are all excited about getting into making games, flash is a much bigger hurdle than Unity. A few clicks in Unity and you have something that plays like an FPS. Instant results. In flash there is a lot more ground work before seeing results.
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To the larger topic, Flash isn’t going away anytime soon. It is possible (and likely) that it will be displaced in the future, but today it is the most common and most accessible. It is also entirely possible (though I am not holding my breath) that Adobe may turn that around. They have recently (and finally) recognized that flash is used for game development and are going to support that. Though it may be a little too late.
Even it does change, like all technologies on the internet, it will be a slow transition. There is plenty of work for flash devs, and will it is still growing. It is unlikely to make a dramatic change in a short time. Flash gaming is lucrative and bigger than ever right now.
Unity supporting flash will be excellent, but it has quite a long way to go. Our company is working very closely with them, and they are committed to making it work, but it really isn’t ready for wide spread use at this point.
HTML5 (javascript) may be the option for simple games, but it is limited and still suffers from browser problems. And really only has value as a way to deploy flash like content to web browsers on phones. Which is at this point a niche market. Why use something that is limited and sort of like flash, when you can just use flash?
Personally, I don’t see there becoming a king of game dev platforms. I think there will be multiple platforms/preferences and people will leverage what they know and what their target is. General understanding of engineering and development will be much more useful than focusing 100% on an engine/platform.
my 2¢
ZG
Very true. Unfortunately the reality is that doesn’t currently exist. Unity is close, but not there yet. And also it is important to note that not every game needs to (or should be) deployed to platform. Different platform represent different gaming experiences. Developing a game for a mobile device will (should) have much different design considerations than one to a social network or a console. Market is different, play patterns are different.
But yes, the ideal is that you should be able to develop game assets (and hopefully logic to a degree), and be able to leverage that on another platform without massive headache. Regardless of whether it is a direct port or an alternate version.
Part of my job involves converting games from one platform to another, and it is way more challenging than it should be.
It exists for me. My current hobby project is a game for desktop standalone, desktop browser, iOS and Android, and in that project switching platforms is literally just a matter of pressing the appropriate button. If I could afford the appropriate licenses, I’m also confident that it could target consoles, too.
That’s not because of magic. It’s because I understand the tools available, and my target platforms, and when I develop for multiple platforms I design from the start with the lowest common denominators in mind. With that in mind, there are only two pieces of duplicated effort for me in this project: local file access and Facebook integration. The former is super easy to implement and the latter is totally outside of Unity’s control. All of the other duplicated effort for platform specifics is wrapped up inside Unity. They’ve done all of that work for me.
I understand that porting from one platform to another would be a pain in the ass, even in Unity. However, that’s because if you need to “port” you are almost by definition putting something on a platform it wasn’t designed for. That’s where the pain comes from. It may be most apparent in the implementation (“I need to make a new control system that doesn’t rely on a pair of thumb sticks!”), but it actually began in the design (“how can we best implement our game mechanic using this controller with two thumbsticks…?”).
Im not doing a port, though. I have one game with four build targets, being designed from the start to work on all of them.
And Unity is making the implementation ridiculously easy.
In regard to the IE10 discussion, I still find this to be funny: Internet Explorer 10 FAQ for IT Pros | Microsoft Learn
It’s ticked off a few people, that Microsoft’s offering more support for Flash developers than Silverlight developers…
But you ask, who cares about Silverlight? Well, uh…I do, but that’s neither here nor there. The key part is the:
Unity Web Player…
So er…what about another browser?
There’s this over on the MozillaWiki for a Metro Firefox: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Windows8
An update from July 19th: http://www.brianbondy.com/blog/id/145/
So it will be curious how it plays out. Microsoft’s not offering Metro support outside of Flash, and even there - it’s limited scope. If you have a Flash game up on your site…better redirect the user from Metro to the desktop…
Sorry, I just meant with regards to flash. Indeed, Unity does cover most of the bases. And when they get the flash solid and working, it will be fantastic.
Another thing to consider in regard to Flash is this little notice I saw while doing a fresh install of Linux:
Whoa, that is interesting. I had no idea that flash was ever supported on linux.
It never was. Flash 3D never got HW acceleration there and the movie hw acceleration is a bad joke.
But thats no news, none of adobes products works right on linux not even the pdf reader
The Linux version of Flash never got Stage 3D, that’s correct - because with the version of Flash that introduced Stage 3D, Adobe dropped HW acceleration support for Flash. HW acceleration existed before version 11.er whatever it was. They dropped it stating the nature of driver support under Linux.
The funny part about them stopping on 11.2 is the problems that version causes with Firefox for some folks. You needed to pick your version of Firefox and Flash to get it to work - either going older with Flash or older with Firefox. Different folks would have different issues. Flash 11.2 and Firefox 14 for me…kerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrash.
We have this:
from: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplatform/whitepapers/roadmap.html
This announcement earlier in the year: http://blogs.adobe.com/flashplayer/2012/02/adobe-and-google-partnering-for-flash-player-on-linux.html
PPAPI’s still an experimental feature. Will be interesting to see what comes of it, but it sucks that it’s a Chrome/Chromium project.
Out client specifically would’t let us develop the game in Unity because of the licensing thing. I doubt anyone is going to hand over almost 10% of profits to use a plugin that is normally available to a Flash developer for the price of the Flash program ($700), not to mention the hassle of opening your books to a 3rd party.
I use monkey for flash/html5 etc. It’s pretty bad ass.
www.monkeycoder.co.nz