Tag Archives: Adobe AIR

ActionScript3, Adobe, AIR on Android, Flash, Games, General, India, iOS, Nasscom GDC, Starling

At the NASSCOM Game Developers Conference

November 18, 2013 Mariam Dholkawala Leave a comment

Another year of the NASSCOM Game Developer’s Conference, India has ended. Another year with a better turnout than the last! What a way to celebrate the gaming community of India.

The NASSCOM Game Developer’s Conference (NGDC as we call it) took place on the 15th and 16th of November 2013 at the JW Marriott at Pune. Located right in the hub of the Pune university area, the location is better connected than the earlier one in Pune city and probably encouraged more to attend the event.

The conference had 3 simultaneous tracks focused on Indies, Business and Technology. There were also workshops on Unity development, Game Design, Mentorship by industry experts, BYOG (Build Your Own Game) and Nasscom Gaming Awards.

I went to the event not just as a delegate but also as a speaker. As delegate I attended a lot of the indie talks. My favorite was the talk by one of the founders of Simogo. With just two people in their company, they have done some amazing games. Their postmortems were precise to each game but it was great to see their unique game mechanics.

A workshop for Unity got me introduced to working with 2D on the new Unity 4.3 platform.

Another good talk was by Martine Spaans from Gramble.com on Best Practices for Publishing Mobile Games in the Western Market. While some of the points were known from the best practices materials available online, the presentation was good with points from personal experience.

Interesting it was to attend the Crowdfunding and Kickstarter session by Pyrodactyl Games because they are a success story on Kickstarter from India for their game Unrest.

I spoke about Adobe AIR games on Multiple platforms. The presentation was basics of Adobe AIR but there was so much to share when talking it – Tools, Scout, Stage 3D, Starling, Native Extensions, Feathers UI, Away3D and it just goes on. I hope the audience (a lot of them non AIR developers) could understand it well.

The best the conference had to offer was meeting old friends, colleagues, twitter friends and networking with new people. Waiting for the event to repeat the success next year!

Mariam

ActionScript3, Adobe, App Stores, Apple, Devices, Facebook, Flash, Flash Platform, Games, General, IGameStudio, iOS, iTunes, Mobile

Stop That Silly Chicken game for iPad

January 23, 2013 Mariam Dholkawala 1 Comment

With the successful release of “Stop That Silly Chicken”, it is heartening to say that the game was developed using Adobe AIR for the iOS platform.

Stop That Silly Chicken is currently available on the iPad and iPhones. The game uses Milkman Games native extensions for social media and advertising. It also uses a native extension for in-app alerts.

Silly Chicken is a character owned by 9X Media, a brand providing entertainment on television through their various music and cartoon channels.

The game concept revolves around Silly Chicken who runs around a kitchen table in a quest to steal and break the eggs kept safely in a bowl. The player has to tap Silly Chicken before he reaches the table. The player can collect game coins from piggy banks and use them to make purchases from the game store that will make it easier to trap Silly Chicken. The game has 2 modes – Survival and Time mode and both are easy to understand and play. The game is completely free using an advertising model with Admob.

I’ve been reading the comments of the players since its release and glad to see it being liked. It seem that the idea of tapping Silly Chicken and seeing its reactions through different animations is funny for many.

Please download the game if you haven’t already and spread the word about it!

Mariam

ActionScript3, Adobe, AIR on Android, Android, Apple, Flash, Flash Platform, Games, General, Mobile

The story of Adobe AIR and game development

December 12, 2012 Mariam Dholkawala 5 Comments

Will Flash ever be able to get rid of it’s tag of being a quick prototype and animation tool? In India where we have a large developer base working on small games and animations for the web, the stereotype that a lot of people hold about Flash will probably always stay true.

Whenever the word Flash appears, people expect magic and quick turnaround times with development. At such times, the fact that “Flash” is going to be used for a more a sophisticated development on limited memory devices is completely ignored.

Whenever we begin work on a game on iOS or Android, my first suggestion is that if technology is not a restriction, we can provide game development services using the Adobe AIR platform. Most of the times there is never an argument on that because we are trusted to know our work well and deliver projects according to the brief given to us irrespective of the framework or tools.

The trouble comes when I explain what Adobe AIR really is. The fact is that Adobe AIR is a cross platform runtime using Flash and AS3 to write applications across platforms. But on hearing the word “Flash”, there is an instant expectation of quick results even for complex games.

So I’m sharing a list of of points that I felt kept coming up during AIR development on mobile/tablet game.

Development with AIR may be familiar ground because of AS3, but the development workflow is the same as with other technologies, especially with good OOPs practices.

There are plenty of frameworks available which provide support to Adobe AIR to enhance game development. A developer who wants to give the best to the project considers the time he/she will be spending on including those frameworks in the game.

Development of game logic or controls is not about copy pasting code from different places. Each game logic has its flow and limitations which cannot be solved by existing code (unless if it is a port of a game owned by the developer).

Mobiles have limited memory. There is a possibility of the game taking up too much runtime memory thus leading to crashes and low frame rate. Optimization of code and graphics is top priority when developing for non-web platforms.

Sprite sheets, no matter how much fun they may be to work with, are not easy for replacing the graphics in a game.

Compilation of game for devices take time. The workflow of deploying and debugging a game on devices is a time consuming process.

Comparison to an existing game is fine, but assuming that the game could have been developed in 2 days and wanting the same time frame for a new game development is an unheard story.

Any existing game code of a web game cannot be picked and pushed on Adobe AIR. If the game was developed using AS2, the process of converting the code to AS3 is tedious. What’s even more tedious is optimizing badly written code.

I’m ranting about the way game development with AIR is thought of by some people in India and it really saddens me to think they take it for granted. I know this will change over time, but till then we have to bear the brunt and keep educating people about it.

Mariam

ActionScript3, Adobe, AIR on Android, Games

Working with Debug Mode in Starling with Box2D – AS3

November 4, 2012 Mariam Dholkawala 5 Comments

I recently started work on a Box2D game project using Starling, and one of my concerns was getting the debug mode to display correctly.

Box2D is a very popular physics engine. It has a debug mode which draws shape outlines, defines center of mass and shows joint connectivity, all very useful while debugging shapes behavior in a physics world. Debug mode is also very useful during prototyping when artistic graphics are not ready. Box2D has its own API but still uses native Flash objects and events.

Starling on the other hand is a game framework developed on top of the Stage3D APIs which helps write fast GPU accelerated games without having to access the Stage3D APIs. The Starling API is very similar to native Flash AS3.

Once a Starling stage instance is created, all display objects subsequently become part of this core Starling instance.
Since Box2D uses native Flash Sprite, the best way to work with Starling is to add a native Flash sprite on top of the Starling stage instance. I’ve given a quick example of how this will work in the example below –

The PlayGame Class is where the Starling framework is initialized. Within the PlayGame class, the Box2D debug sprite instance is defined. The Box2D debug Sprite instance is a native Flash and not a Starling class.

package{

    import flash.display.Sprite;
    import flash.display.StageAlign;
    import flash.display.StageScaleMode;
    import flash.events.Event;

    import starling.core.Starling;

    public class PlayGame extends Sprite{

        private var myStarling:Starling;
        public static var debugSprite:Sprite;

        public function PlayGame(){
            super();

            stage.align = StageAlign.TOP_LEFT;
            stage.scaleMode = StageScaleMode.NO_SCALE;

            Starling.multitouchEnabled = true;
            myStarling = new Starling(MainGame, stage);
            myStarling.antiAliasing = 1;
            myStarling.start();

            stage.stage3Ds[0].addEventListener(Event.CONTEXT3D_CREATE, onContextCreated);
        }

        private function onContextCreated(e:Event):void{
            //debug mode
            debugSprite=new Sprite();
            addChild(debugSprite);
        }
    }
}

package{

import flash.display.Sprite;

import flash.display.StageAlign;

import flash.display.StageScaleMode;

import flash.events.Event;

import starling.core.Starling;

public class PlayGame extends Sprite{

private var myStarling:Starling;

public static var debugSprite:Sprite;

public function PlayGame(){

super();

stage.align = StageAlign.TOP_LEFT;

stage.scaleMode = StageScaleMode.NO_SCALE;

Starling.multitouchEnabled = true;

myStarling = new Starling(MainGame, stage);

myStarling.antiAliasing = 1;

myStarling.start();

stage.stage3Ds[0].addEventListener(Event.CONTEXT3D_CREATE, onContextCreated);

}

private function onContextCreated(e:Event):void{

//debug mode

debugSprite=new Sprite();

addChild(debugSprite);

}

The Box2D class

package{
    import starling.display.Sprite;
    import starling.events.Event;

    import Box2D.Dynamics.b2DebugDraw;
    import Box2D.Common.Math.b2Vec2;
    import Box2D.Dynamics.b2World;

    public class BoxWorld extends Sprite{
        private var world:b2World;
        private var worldScale:int = 30;

        public function BoxWorld() {
            addEventListener(Event.ADDED_TO_STAGE, onAddedToStage);
        }

        private function onAddedToStage (e:Event):void {

             this.removeEventListener(Event.ADDED_TO_STAGE, onAddedToStage);
             //create Box2d world
             world = new b2World(new b2Vec2(0, 10), false);

             //set debug mode
            debugDraw(PlayGame.debugSprite);
        }

        private function debugDraw(debugSprite:flash.display.Sprite):void{
            var debugDraw:b2DebugDraw = new b2DebugDraw();
            debugDraw.SetSprite(debugSprite);
            debugDraw.SetDrawScale(worldScale);
            debugDraw.SetFlags(b2DebugDraw.e_shapeBit | b2DebugDraw.e_jointBit);
            debugDraw.SetFillAlpha(0.5);
            world.SetDebugDraw(debugDraw);
        }
    }
}

package{

import starling.display.Sprite;

import starling.events.Event;

import Box2D.Dynamics.b2DebugDraw;

import Box2D.Common.Math.b2Vec2;

import Box2D.Dynamics.b2World;

public class BoxWorld extends Sprite{

private var world:b2World;

private var worldScale:int = 30;

public function BoxWorld() {

addEventListener(Event.ADDED_TO_STAGE, onAddedToStage);

}

private function onAddedToStage (e:Event):void {

this.removeEventListener(Event.ADDED_TO_STAGE, onAddedToStage);

//create Box2d world

world = new b2World(new b2Vec2(0, 10), false);

//set debug mode

debugDraw(PlayGame.debugSprite);

}

private function debugDraw(debugSprite:flash.display.Sprite):void{

var debugDraw:b2DebugDraw = new b2DebugDraw();

debugDraw.SetSprite(debugSprite);

debugDraw.SetDrawScale(worldScale);

debugDraw.SetFlags(b2DebugDraw.e_shapeBit | b2DebugDraw.e_jointBit);

debugDraw.SetFillAlpha(0.5);

world.SetDebugDraw(debugDraw);

}

ActionScript3, Adobe, Apple, iOS

Adobe ships Flash Player 11.4 and AIR 3.4

August 21, 2012 Mariam Dholkawala Leave a comment

Adobe has released the new version of the Flash Player 11.4 and Adobe AIR 3.4. The runtimes have a list of new features, enhancements and bug fixes. Adobe has also upgraded the technology behind the AS3 Reference for the Adobe Flash Platform (ASDoc).

The updates to the runtimes are very critical, especially for mobile development. I had filed a bug about using the Adobe Native Extension (ANE) with Adobe AIR 3.3 on iOS some weeks back. Hoping the new release would be easier to work with ANE.

Flash Player and Adobe AIR Feature List

ActionScript 3.0 Reference for the Adobe Flash Platform

Mariam

Adobe, AIR on Android, Android, Android Marketplace, Flash Platform

Adobe AIR 2.6 for Android

February 25, 2011 Mariam Dholkawala Leave a comment

Adobe recently announced the availability of Adobe AIR 2.6 for Android smartphones and tablets. AIR 2.6 for Android adds support for Android 3.0 and the latest Android tablet devices, including the Motorola Xoom, as well as improvements to performance and GPU-based rendering, updated Android gesture support, and improved handling of HTML content within AIR apps.

AIR 2.6 for Android can be downloaded from the Android Marketplace and is available on devices running:

Android 2.2 (Froyo)
Android 2.3 (Gingerbread)
Android 3.0 (Honeycomb)

A list of mobile devices that meet the AIR system requirements can be found at http://www.adobe.com/flashplatform/certified_devices/.

AIR 2.6 for Android have performance improvements which include:

Up to 20% faster scrolling performance
H.264 video decoding at 30fps
GPU-based animation and games at up to 50FPS

AIR 2.6 for Android also have functional improvements which include:

Support for the latest Android system gestures
Bitmap Capture for StageWebView, which provides tighter visual integration between Flash and HTML content
Asynchronous Bitmap Decoding, which improves the performance of transitions in image-intensive applications

Applications developed with the Adobe AIR 2.5 SDK are compatible with the Adobe AIR 2.6 runtime. Adobe is on target to deliver the AIR 2.6 SDK and desktop runtime before the 2nd half of 2011.

Mariam

Games, Devices, Technology