As many of you have probably heard by now and started to panic, Adobe has announced they are phasing out Flash by 2020. As ya’ll should know, all of my games are still made in Flash.
Adobe is only discontinuing Flash in browsers, meanwhile it will still run fine as standalone AIR apps on Steam and mobile, so there’s no chance of Flash games suddenly disappearing. And Flash on browsers will still be around til 2020 anyway, so it probably won’t affect EBF5 much. Even if this turns out to be a problem, I can always release free/demo versions of my games on Steam instead.
Adobe has also announced lots of new features for Desktop AIR in the upcoming years, including more resolution options and GPU support. So who knows, maybe EBF5 won’t run like shit once these new features come out!? It would be a miracle!
Either way all this news is a great relief for me. Adobe has been quite quiet about the future of Flash and AIR for a while now, and it’s been driving me crazy. It’s good that they’ve finally revealed their plans. If things go well, I may even keep using Flash after EBF5 and work on some small spin-off games again. I really miss being able to pump a game out in 2 months. I would like to try that again.
Anyway, I’m going on holiday for 2 weeks. Bye.
I’m gonna throw out the Flash advantage that no-one else seems to be talking about (I’m not discounting other advantages/disadvantages, I’m just less familiar with them as I’m not a programmer): separate processes. From time to time, Flash sucks down all the resources and makes browser and possibly whole computer painfully slow or non responsive. So does HTML5–less often (in both cases, I think ads are/were actually much more common culprits than games, which is a little bit disturbing). However, when Flash does this, if the computer as a whole is responding at all, I can open Task Manager* and kill the Flash process separately from the browser. Is it frustrating to do so? Yes. Is it much better than having to bring down the browser as a whole, either through Task Manager or waiting for it to truly crash, possibly losing unrelated work done in other tabs? Also yes. HTML5, however, is just part of the browser, and there aren’t really other options.
*I use Windows, and so that’s the term I’m familiar with. There are Linux equivalents, I think named System Monitor in at least some versions? Mac’s equivalent is…rather weak and didn’t ever show Flash or other processes that aren’t main programs, as far as I know. However, in all OS including Mac, it is also possible to list and kill processes with the command line.
Well, shit. Time to go learn HTML5.
currently HTML5 isn’t anywhere as good for games, I’m afraid
Have a nice trip Matt! :yay:
God damn. 😐
…wait. Does this mean I’ll NEVER be able to create animations, my one and only objective in life!?!?
Where else will I find a “decent” animation sofeware!?!?!?!?
tip: read the post before replying to it
is there any chance to make digital shop with gadgets or something like that, because i relly want to have t shirt in ebf style ❓ ❓
and by the way have a nice trip :yay:
Maybe I’ll make some more T-shirts someday.
thanks i’m waiting :yay:
this may come late but, good holiday for you 🙂 :coffee: :bacon: :yay:
Oh jeez, I sincerely hope AIR will work on linux. :ooo:
If I use wine, even if it runs better for everyone else, it’d run worse than on a browser… 😥
Hey, at least steam label flash games as for all OSes? Right? Tell me they do… :scared:
There should be some workarounds for linux. It won’t be fully supported, but the game should still run with a few minor limitations.
make the full game a dlc
And the soundtrack the game
how about on steam do 2 version ones the free verison and the 2nd is the expanison or do a dlc so put all ur games on steam so u dont have to worry about flash i know its properly more harder then i think try what ever u want goodluck 🙂
I would like to say, Flash in browsers should be taken down years ago. Its performance is so bad that it often freeze the browser, even crash the browser.
I would like to run flash in a standalone environment, such as AIR. It will have a good performance, and cause less trouble.
Well, have a good trip! :yay:
2 weeks holiday? :scared: So, when the EBF5 will be finished? 😡 I so sad 😥 😥 😥
“Small spin-off games”, eh?
You could always remaster Adventure Story and put it on Steam! :yay:
2 weeks holiday? :scared: :scared: :scared: So, when the EBF5 will be finished? :scared: :scared: :scared: I can’t wait to play the 5th episode! :love: :love: :love: (sorry for bad English)
He needs some time off man. Making games isn’t that simple.
When you look at “why” they might be retiring Flash on the browser, the answer is obvious: HTML5 provides a lot of the capabilities that people were using Flash for.
Perhaps it’s time to migrate to an HTML5 basis for your new games?
The beauty of HTML5 is that you can use a code generator to produce it – so you could build a game engine/game description language for your new games, and HTML5 is just one of the possible export targets. Nothing says your game compiler can’t produce ActionScript that gets compiled into Flash…
But then the “game description language/game compiler/game engine” is more of a CS approach than an artist/programmer approach. Not sure where you lie on the spectrum, but based on your work with A-star, I have no doubt that you could pull it off.
say what?
Does HTML5 have ways to interact with a resource like what Flash calls MovieClips with timeline animations?
Lol, we all know the answer to that : not at all…
If you could/import a few very large libraries, you can get similar functionality, but it still pales in comparison…
I wonder if the people advocating so much for HTML5 have ever touched the straight HTML5 APIs, or attempted to re-create some of Flash’s more useful features with JavaScript, like at all. Or, if they’ve ever used Flash, or decompiled an SWF file, etc…
And the argument HTML5 wasn’t meant to be used directly is a weak one, no proper high-level API NEEDS you to build a huge codebase above it.
The only HTML5 rendering engine that MIGHT compete with Flash’s graphics capabilities is webGL. And since GL is low-level, that means libraries are still required, sometimes to have just a few features…
I’ve been messing with HTML5 for a few years, now, and I can say with confidence it is years behind progress that Flash had managed to make in the same amount of time that HTML5 has been around thus far. It’s just not ready, but no one seems to care (or even believe this), and Apple has a fixed Market called the Crapp Store to keep control over…
Also, Animate doesn’t support all the same features as Flash does, at least, if exporting to HTML5. Those saying how ‘great’ HTML5 is should do a few google searches about how to do the color filters, optimize javascript, control very large/complex animations, etc… Contrary to popular belief, even CreateJS is lacking a whole lot of those features, and they cannot easily be re-produced, either…