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Flash is dead, long live OpenFL

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Re: Flash is dead, long live OpenFL

#61

Post by AdrianRossouw »

alecsmart1 wrote: post #55
zacharypinter wrote: post #47

> I've been a stalwart Flash developer for 15 years, so nothing bothers me more than greatly exaggerated reports of Flash's premature demise. ... > I've learned my lesson -- whatever my next platform is, no-one should be able to take it away from me. There's an interesting side discussion here. It seems to me that the rate of substantial changes in technology/frameworks/ui design/etc is increasing such that the expec…

Flash did what any other technology is still unable to do (maybe with the exception of java)- offer a true cross platform solution. Look at webrtc. Its been over a year now since the hype and we still don't have support in half the browsers. Till date no technology does audio/video chat as well as Flash.

open platforms are a long term investment.

Re: Flash is dead, long live OpenFL

#62

Post by larsiusprime »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #50

> I could try HTML5, but that precludes releasing high-performance desktop-ready games for Steam. Oh Jesus Christ. Do not do this. "Flash" and "high-performance" do not ever belong in the same sentence. Binding of Isaac was a game that, visually, could have run on a Super Nintendo, but it chugged like a tired tortoise on a midrange 2010 laptop. I know Flash is popular, I know it's easy to develop with, but if you use…

Did you read the article?

Re: Flash is dead, long live OpenFL

#63

Post by teach »

I must correct a minor error: "[Unity3D's] web browser target depends on a clunky plugin with a low install base."

This is no longer true. Unity3D can now (or very soon?) export to pure javascript and run in any WebGL-conformant browser without any plugins.

Re: Flash is dead, long live OpenFL

#64

Post by PhasmaFelis »

larsiusprime wrote: post #62
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #50

> I could try HTML5, but that precludes releasing high-performance desktop-ready games for Steam. Oh Jesus Christ. Do not do this. "Flash" and "high-performance" do not ever belong in the same sentence. Binding of Isaac was a game that, visually, could have run on a Super Nintendo, but it chugged like a tired tortoise on a midrange 2010 laptop. I know Flash is popular, I know it's easy to develop with, but if you use…

Did you read the article?

I did. I may not have been clear, though. He says HTML5 is a poor substitute for Flash because it doesn't work for "high-performance desktop-ready games for Steam." I'm saying that Flash has never been any good for "high-performance desktop-ready games," and devs really, really need to stop deluding themselves that it is.

Basically I'm saying I have trouble trusting anyone who thinks that Flash was ever a decent high-performance gaming engine.

Re: Flash is dead, long live OpenFL

#65

Post by j_s »

ANTSANTS wrote: post #57
ojii wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, as far as I know there's still no decent solution to stream video without flash (I'm talking Twitch et al here). Twitch is the only reason I still have flash on my computer (and not actually for watching games being streamed, but for the annual Desertbus event). Has the HTML5 video streaming improved at all over the past year?

I also kept Flash around mainly for this reason. It doesn't help people that want to make streaming video sites, but you don't need Flash to watch live video streams from sites like twitch.tv. You just need a media player capable of playing streaming video (mpc-hc, mpv, and vlc all work), and the livestreamer command line tool which extracts direct video stream URLs from twitch.tv pages. http://livestreamer.readthedo…

Is there any client option for iPhone users to view streaming Flash video?

Re: Flash is dead, long live OpenFL

#66

Post by Kequc »

zacharypinter wrote: post #47

> I've been a stalwart Flash developer for 15 years, so nothing bothers me more than greatly exaggerated reports of Flash's premature demise. ... > I've learned my lesson -- whatever my next platform is, no-one should be able to take it away from me. There's an interesting side discussion here. It seems to me that the rate of substantial changes in technology/frameworks/ui design/etc is increasing such that the expec…

> finding a platform that you can hold on to for 15 years is becoming untenable.

I would think so. It only became clear that Ruby would be viable for jobs about 7-8 years ago. It is used absolutely all over the place right now, true. But it is going to be competing against Google's V8 pretty much directly, and that, well that is not winnable.

Adobe Flash has been around for so long that Wikipedia doesn't mention when. I remember flash on even the first web enabled computers. Everyone had it so they could play games on Newgrounds.

That is such an exceedingly long time ago, I don't feel like OP has very much to complain about.

Re: Flash is dead, long live OpenFL

#67

Post by larsiusprime »

teach wrote: post #63

I must correct a minor error: "[Unity3D's] web browser target depends on a clunky plugin with a low install base." This is no longer true. Unity3D can now (or very soon?) export to pure javascript and run in any WebGL-conformant browser without any plugins.

To be fair, they announced that a day after the article was written :) And the feature is not yet released. I can update the article in a bit.

Re: Flash is dead, long live OpenFL

#68

Post by larsiusprime »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #64
larsiusprime wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read the article?

I did. I may not have been clear, though. He says HTML5 is a poor substitute for Flash because it doesn't work for "high-performance desktop-ready games for Steam." I'm saying that Flash has never been any good for "high-performance desktop-ready games," and devs really, really need to stop deluding themselves that it is. Basically I'm saying I have trouble trusting anyone who thinks that Flash was ever a decent high…

I get that. (I wrote the article by the way).

"I have trouble trusting anyone who thinks that Flash was ever a decent high-performance gaming engine"

I never said it was -- just that if I have to switch to something anyways, performance is something I want to take into account.

And for what it's worth, flash wasn't high performance, but with proper optimization you could get acceptable performance -- and in the case of our game[1] locking ourselves to 800x600, we got way, way, better framerates and sprite counts than Binding of Isaac (which uses AS2 and unoptimized graphics).

Perhaps I should have been more clear in the article -- "As long as I'm leaving flash behind, I don't want to jump straight over to something else that might have the same performance concerns I've been fighting/hacking against all these years."

[1]http://store.steampowered.com/app/218410/

Re: Flash is dead, long live OpenFL

#69

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

AshleysBrain wrote: post #39
phoboslab wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Edit: for those unfamiliar with Ejecta: http://impactjs.com/Ejecta ) I do have a toy project that aims to be a cross-platform Ejecta eventually. It's written in C and divided in an OpenGL Canvas drawing library (so you essentially get the HTML5 Canvas API in native code) and a host application that provides the JavaScript binding. Currently, there's only a host application for iOS. I don't know much about Android an…

I wouldn't bother - Crosswalk does the job great for Android: https://crosswalk-project.org/ It's based on Chrome for Android so you have a fully-featured browser engine available. iOS is the only platform where there isn't a good GPU-accelerated browser engine available that can run native apps, hence the use case. (P.S. we hope to support Ejecta in Construct 2 officially soon!)

Wait, Chrome? With its horribly slow 2D acceleration and aliasing? Why would you want that for your game?

Re: Flash is dead, long live OpenFL

#70

Post by [deleted] »

AshleysBrain wrote: post #39
phoboslab wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Edit: for those unfamiliar with Ejecta: http://impactjs.com/Ejecta ) I do have a toy project that aims to be a cross-platform Ejecta eventually. It's written in C and divided in an OpenGL Canvas drawing library (so you essentially get the HTML5 Canvas API in native code) and a host application that provides the JavaScript binding. Currently, there's only a host application for iOS. I don't know much about Android an…

I wouldn't bother - Crosswalk does the job great for Android: https://crosswalk-project.org/ It's based on Chrome for Android so you have a fully-featured browser engine available. iOS is the only platform where there isn't a good GPU-accelerated browser engine available that can run native apps, hence the use case. (P.S. we hope to support Ejecta in Construct 2 officially soon!)

[deleted]
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