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I still use Flash

foon.uk

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Re: I still use Flash

#111

Post by rchaud »

mFixman wrote: post #71
BulgarianIdiot wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flash was conceptually fantastic, and today we can do everything Flash did, and more, with HTML, and WebGL. Unfortunately we don't have the authoring tool to do so. Flash IDE became Adobe Animate, but it has relatively restricted output and capabilities, compared to Flash before. Unfortunately also Flash was full of bugs, FULL. I mean the player, the IDE, everything. And Macromedia and consequently Adobe were increas…

> today we can do everything Flash did, and more, with HTML, and WebGL. There's one big piece missing: we don't have an animation/gaming interface that's as easy and intuitive as Flash. Flash didn't become ubiquitous because it was powerful, but because it was easy for any 13 year old to pick up and do something nice in a couple of days without reading any documentation or doing any course. Good luck getting anything…

Developers love saying "But you can do everything that was in Flash directly in Javascript today!!"

I wish they could understand that what they're saying would be equivalent to switching out Excel for a Python IDE and saying "but you can do calculations here too!"

Re: I still use Flash

#113

Post by adrian17 »

LoveMortuus wrote: post #80
adrian17 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While Ruffle's AS3 support is still lacking a lot of features, since a couple months ago it's been able to play some simple games that require it. The build used on author's site is from 2021, and I just checked that the latest build is able to play several more AS3 games hosted there. (note: I'm a Ruffle dev)

I'm waiting for it to develop further, I'm very excited, especially because I still play Crystal Saga everyday, I don't know why, but it's got something that I haven't been able to find in any other games. But sadly, I haven't been able to make Crystal Saga work using Ruffle

MMOs are pretty much the last game Ruffle or any in-browser emulator will get to support - not just because it's likely some of the most complex piece of code you can find, but also because MMOs are likely to use sockets, which AFAIK can't really be accessed in modern browsers at all.

Re: I still use Flash

#114

Post by dandigangi »

dj_mc_merlin wrote: post #96

I remember creating a simple "catch the falling X" game in Flash 20 years ago. It was basic, but had everything you'd expect in a beginner project: points, multiple game states/screens, a victory condition, basic story (which was just a screen at the beginning, like NES). The thing is, I was a literal child and I also had no clue how to code -- I did everything by following tutorials and gluing together code I copy&p…

Had an awesome experience learning programming on AS also! Simple projects/games but great language to learn. Can involve so many key concepts.

Re: I still use Flash

#116

Post by Nuthen »

Great article, thank you for sharing this experience. The part I found most interesting is the section about the aspect ratio and interpolating between the 16:9 and 16:10 views relative to the original, although I'm having some trouble fully understanding the implementation. Why is the game interpolating between them based on the games aspect ratio?

Re: I still use Flash

#117

Post by rchaud »

danuker wrote: post #11
valeg wrote: post #6

C'mon, Adobe. Open source it.

Hah! They have let Flash die rather than open source it. Also, it might compete with Adobe Animate. "Service as a Software Substitute" https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-s...

You can do 3D on Flash. Adobe Animate is a step backwards, it's all HTML/CSS3/JS, so 2D only.

Re: I still use Flash

#118

Post by hansworst »

zozbot234 wrote: post #98
fallat wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. What we see in UI design today is a consequence of game theory at work. It's to optimize business. In fairness you don't want to scare users away. I think though many people equated it all to "clean looking", without realizing removing micro-interactions is a net negative....

I think touch screens are a bigger factor. You can't have small buttons in a touch-screen UI, because they must be targets for your finger. (OTOH, swipes in a touch UI are a lot easier than mouse drag-and-drop. So the optimal touch UX probably has lots of drag-activated pie menus. And confirmation flows for potentially destructive actions, to cope with the lower accuracy of touch interactions.)

Yeah, if my memory serves a lot of UI design started to get more airy around the time smartphones became more popular. Even on desktops, which I think may just be because large buttons and text became trendy and although some may deny it, I think a lot of ui design is just following trends. It takes a good designer to not just blindly copy things because they look cool.

Re: I still use Flash

#119

Post by bashmelek »

Great timing for this article! I just used Flash CS5 this week to make my first animation. I’ll admit that I’m rough with it (made a few games with it many years ago, but that is all, stuck with Actionscript and static images). Some of the logic hasn’t stuck with me yet, namely with the timeline and movieclips, and I get frustrated. That said, I’m having a great time with it.

Re: I still use Flash

#120

Post by rogual »

andai wrote: post #27

You mention that while using Flash you found it missing basic features, could you give some examples? One of my long-term projects is to build a Flash clone (Flash-the-authoring-tool). So I'd love to hear from people who are still using Flash, to see what features / pain points are most important.

Sure!

* You can't set keyboard shortcuts for some common actions like changing the brush mode between "paint behind", "paint inside", etc. You have to click the button every time.

* No way to import or export any standard vector graphics formats.

* No easy way to just add custom properties to objects on the stage.

* No outliner. Unless you put exactly one object on each layer, it's very hard to find and select objects on the stage that aren't large and obvious. Invisible objects? Nightmare!

* You can name frames, but there's no menu to quickly select one to jump to. In a 500+ frame timeline, you've just gotta manually scroll around to find the frame you're looking for, even if you've named it.

* You can't set an alpha component for the grid to make it semitransparent.

These are all missing in Flash CS6, the last thing that was called "Flash". I don't know if any were added in Adobe Animate because I don't like to rent software.

There's definitely room for a Flash authoring replacement. Every now again I look at all the programs I can find in the space and try them out, but nothing reaches Flash yet, in my opinion, despite its limitations. Best of luck with yours!

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