and you thought the AppStore was crowded now… 
omg …
This may be a good time to open up some features to the iPhone basic crowd
Thanks col000r. Here’s an official link from adobe, complete with video and references to existing apps on the appstore built in flash.
already in another thread (gossip section)
but might fit better in here…
Wow…Seems that would be THE tool to own for all things 2D.
…And give us “Pro” users free source control software…
Why?
Flash is no holy grail and its performance will have to be seen.
Also flash is 2D, not 3D.
And cost wise, I wouldn’t forget that Flash Pro, required to have iphone deployment, costs $1200
Commonly flexible and powerfull editors as those in unity would already lead to $10k+ per title licenses with technologies like the unity one, so basic licensees really have little to nothing to be unhappy.
Also I doubt that you are planning to pay $200+ per feature addition update like the 1.5 one to fund them / pay the dev time to create them.
OMG!!! Flash can have it?
I wonder what Apple thinks of this?..
i think they think “30% of each app? more please?”
Just tried some of those first flash apps. Performance really isn’t that great so far… But I guess they’ll work on that… Flash could be a good tool for building 2D games, no question! And well, it’s not like the average price could go down much further and like the AppStore isn’t full already…
I don’t think Adobe knows anything about performance. I started years ago with flash and have developed several flash apps and ALWAYS regret doing so. The ideal is so great, that it kept me coming back. This time I’ll stay away from flash.
If you have the chance to look at the architecture powering flash, you’ll see there is no way they can reach an acceptable performance. The architecture is plain horrible. Its too object oriented for its own good.
Photoshop, Flex/AIR, AS3 in Flash, all bloated products/code/API, its bad.
The runtime display list… is one big chunk of slow engineering.
If you’ve invested any time on Unity, don’t go back to flash, not even for fart apps.
What does that mean?
I’m undecided if this is a good thing - might be good for Apple’s coffers though - app store revenue plus more $99 annual developer subscriptions.
I’ve developed using flash amongst other technologies for years.
I too think the performance will be shockingly poor - given my past experience of Flash/Flash Lite.
Also, most of what Unity can do will be impossible using CS5 and I don’t see Adobe ever catching up to Unity in terms of features/abilities, at least for 3D/Games.
I think this might be useful for some types of simple apps - like widgets - and perhaps for porting existing apps if possible performance-wise.
I’m not a fan of AS3 really. I’ll be happy to stick to Unity for 3d/games and Objective C for more traditional apps.
ohh boy, not sure how to go about answering that.
game programming forces modeling around data (the metal), but developers like modeling around logic, which is totally understandable.
when modeling around logic, you build up abstractions that move you further away from data. this right here is not a problem… yet. Until someone gets ‘high’-level.
For example,
_root.DrawMovie…
movie.DrawScene…
scene.DrawFrame…
frame.DrawList…
drawlist.DrawObject…
object.DrawRender…
renderer.DrawModel…
model.DrawMesh…
mesh.DrawSubmesh…
submesh.DrawTri
glDraw…
It’s not obvious when to stop abstracting, but its obvious when enough is enough. There IS such thing as too much object oriented. OO is not evil, but has been abused.
This gets even worse when you need to write high performance critical code. A purist will just shoot you and commit suicide.
For an example closer to home, less related to OO, and more related to modeling around data. Unity uses components, which require component lookups. You might be inclined to use std::map, which by all standards is a perfect fit. Except that its not. A binary search on a sorted std::vector will give you much better lookups, at the cost of an uglier obfuscated implementation.
Hmm, not sure what’s wrong with going as far as possible. But that’s another topic.
Flash CAN do 3D, and I don’t see why new developers wouldn’t use it instead of Unity. I didn’t begin use Unity because of its performance (it was unknown then), but because it seemed an easy alternative to learning Cocoa.
Think of the amount of Flash developers and tutorials out there. That’s going to be hard to compete with.
Flash 3D is nowhere near as accomplished as Unity 3D and that’s on the desktop. To be honest, I reckon you can do better 3D on Unity iPhone (with less time and resources) than you can on Flash for desktops.
As for Flash authored 3D in CS5 for iPhone - I can’t see this being better than Flash aimed at the desktop - by a long way - so if you want 3D then Unity will be the only sensible choice imho (after native Objective C of course if you have the resources and need).
Flash CS5 may well become the best choice for a 2D game for iPhone development environment though (again outside of Objective C) - but I won’t be holding my breath.
I wonder if Apple had a hand in this (helped Adobe) at all.
I doubt the fact that Flash CS5 will run on windows will overcome the fact that you will need a Mac to use XCode to prepare a final project for app store submission. In which case it will likely help Apple sell even more Macs.
Btw, Flash CS5 authored apps won’t run on OS2 devices - so that cuts out a lot of the target audience (at least for the next year or two) - another thing in Unity’s favour.
Lastly, if developers are capable of writing AS3 - they’ll likely be capable of learning/writing Objective C instead. It’s AS3 only for Flash CS5 iPhone apps - so this is no AS2 game to iPhone button, the game will have to be ported to AS3 which is likely as much work as doing a new game in Unity from scratch.