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Flash is dead, long live OpenFL

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Re: Flash is dead, long live OpenFL

#81

Post by mahmud »

IanCal wrote: post #51
tbrock wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So basically, the open source community made a better flash than Adobe did? That is rather amazing considering the resources of the respective groups.

They've done it twice. MotionTwin did a lot of work in AS2 so they built a better compiler for it (MTASC), which compiled faster and made faster swfs (it's still used in production at the BBC). Then when AS3 came out they seem to have thought "Oh come on!" given the quality of the compiler and language features so they built a better language. Again, faster and better compilation, as well as properly implemented thin…

Actually, HaXe, Neko, mtasc and MotionTwin projects of one person: Nicolas Cannasse. Dude is a legend, and community surrounding those projects is amazing.

Re: Flash is dead, long live OpenFL

#83

Post by cyborgx7 »

cpeterso wrote: post #53

If you would like to see how Mozilla's Shumway SWF player is coming along, you can preview Shumway-rendered Flash content without installing the Shumway add-on in this gallery. Even works in Chrome and Safari. :) http://www.areweflashyet.com/shumway/gallery/

Well, this is new. This just logged me out of my Ubuntu session. It didn't restart, I just had to log in again.

Re: Flash is dead, long live OpenFL

#84

Post by larsiusprime »

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…

Kind of the entire point of Haxe is that you don't have to find/predict the stack that will last the longest, because whenever the hot new thing emerges... you just add a new Haxe target for it.

Re: Flash is dead, long live OpenFL

#85

Post by xjh »

slacka wrote: post #17

For those not familiar with OpenFL, /u/larsiusprime posted a nice summary of how it's used: "OpenFL is is a programming API that mirrors the Flash API, but in the Haxe language. So you take your old ActionScript code and port it over to Haxe (very similar language, but with additional features). Then you also take your Flash-vector-art SWF files, and you load it with the Haxe SWF library. OpenFL ensures you can still…

How does it do networking?

All I see in docs is a simple GET/POST request. Realtime multiplayer game would be very slow using it.

Re: Flash is dead, long live OpenFL

#86

Post by Veratyr »

phoboslab wrote: post #23
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another example is ImpactJS, which allows you to write high-performance mobile-ready games! http://impactjs.com/

It always makes me happy to see my game engine mentioned here. Thank you! :) Just to chime in, I believe that HTML5 currently is as "cross-platform" as it can get, especially for games. Two examples made with Impact: - Olympia Rising[1] - this game recently had a successful kickstarter campaign and will be released for various desktop platforms and maybe more later. - XType Plus[2] - my own game coming to the Nintend…

Just thought since I have the opportunity I'd mention: My biggest problem with ImpactJS is that I'm required to pay before I'm allowed to try using it.

I've considered it a number of times but each time, that $99 barrier pushes me back towards the alternatives like Panda.js (which I believe is actually inspired by Impact). Not to mention Unity, which is free for some platforms.

If you offered a trial license, that would be awesome, although I understand you likely don't because of fear of abuse.

Re: Flash is dead, long live OpenFL

#88

Post by larsiusprime »

xjh wrote: post #85
slacka wrote: post #17

For those not familiar with OpenFL, /u/larsiusprime posted a nice summary of how it's used: "OpenFL is is a programming API that mirrors the Flash API, but in the Haxe language. So you take your old ActionScript code and port it over to Haxe (very similar language, but with additional features). Then you also take your Flash-vector-art SWF files, and you load it with the Haxe SWF library. OpenFL ensures you can still…

How does it do networking? All I see in docs is a simple GET/POST request. Realtime multiplayer game would be very slow using it.

Documentation is one of Haxe's weak points right now.

Various Haxe networking libraries: https://github.com/MattTuttle/hxnet https://github.com/andyli/hxudp

Re: Flash is dead, long live OpenFL

#89

Post by TheZenPsycho »

Kequc wrote: post #66
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 it back in 1996 when it was called "future splash". the first major website to use it was simpsons.com, with the major selling point that the drawings could be done with vectors and thus be quicker to download than hefty GIFs or JPGs. it was "just" a vector image format. Nothing about apps or interactivity.

People (especially flash devs) give HTML5 a lot of flack now for not being a "real" "viable" platform, but those same people don't seem to remember flash used to get a lot of the very same kind of flack for not being as powerful as java applets.

and java applets used to get the same flack for not being as powerful or fast as native apps.

In the grand scheme of things, flash and java didn't take that long to gain wide acceptance as serious platforms for real apps. People find it comical now that we're doing things now in HTML5 that we could do 10 years ago in flash or java, without remembering you could do it 20 or 30 years ago on the metal. Progress is sometimes making these things more broadly accessible, instead of just more "impressive" or "serious" from a technical standpoint. And that's still an important and valuable kind of progress that should not be so easily discounted! Yeah html5 is not as impressive now as flash is now, but it's open, free, and it could do the things flash could do when it started to get taken seriously. we can see the course of history from this point forward because we've been here before. Multiple times.

Re: Flash is dead, long live OpenFL

#90

Post by TheZenPsycho »

nnq wrote: post #59
mercer wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The real question is why do we let people to abuse technology instead of using it well. I am (still!) amazed by the gap between how I see a computer and how most non-geeks around me do. To them, it's like a set of different, often frustrating tools rather than, well, an amazing piece of technology that can be prodded to do whatever you want (to the point where an iPad with few to no apps can provide them with all t…

Jobs had his famous 'computers as bicycles for the mind' metaphor (I guess this is the origin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DA_jypfKfAA ), and this is how we geeks see them. The problems are that: 1. computers today don't really look or feel like 'bicycles for the mind' to the average joe -- it's our job to make them look like what they really are instead of dressing them in pretty silky dresses (think all the iStu…

I see this kind of sentiment on Hacker News a lot. I kind of feel like, if you really want to express this thought process, I'd like you to suitably justify that this argument isn't just a smokescreen, disguising your resentment that more people than ever can learn to use and enjoy computers and you're not quite so special anymore.

So you make up this story that what they are doing is not really using computers. It's not the same kind of wonderful magic that you can do. And while you say "Now that we have "a computer in everyone's pocket" we should get our heads out of our asses and show people what a computer really is!"

Well what if that actually happened! what if computer/coding/programming literacy really did become as widespread as reading,writing and arithmetic. There'd be nothing special about you anymore! So you fight the future. you fight the "Fancy UIs" while saying you're not!

Okay maybe none of this applies to YOU specifically. My point is, if you're going to embark along this argument, I think you should really make an effort to prove your true dedication to it. Prove it's not just an expression of a deeper insecurity.

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