Tag Archives: Adobe Flash

ActionScript3, Adobe, AIR on Android, Android, Book Review, Box2D, Devices, Facebook, Flash, Flash Platform, Games, General, iOS, Mobile, Starling

Box2D for Flash Games – Book Review

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Box2D For Flash Games

Box2D is a highly popular physics engine. Its popularity lies not only in it being a free open source engine, but also because it has many features to produce realistic physics effects in games. It has also been used by many popular games across the mobile and web.

Flash is one of the supported platforms, therefore this port of Box2D has become almost a priority for many game developers wanting to use realistic physics with AS3. The book “Box2D for Flash Games” written by Emanuele Feronato is therefore a great resource for understanding of the Box2D physics concepts and getting your hands dirty with actual game development.

The book dive starts with basic examples without going too deep into the engine theory. Every new line of code added to the examples thereafter is further explained in detail. Concepts such as friction, density, primitive and complex body types, shapes and collisons are all covered . The chapters then take a step by step approach towards developing actual game levels from popular games such as Totem Destroyer and Angry Birds.

I personally follow Emanuele Feronato blog and know that he comes with tremendous experience in gaming. He contributes to the community with his gaming articles and this book only lets him share more refined and in depth information with his readers.

 

Adobe, AIR on Android, Android, Apple, Device Central, Devices, Facebook, Flash, Flash Platform, Games, HTML5, India

Flash vs Unity vs HTML5 at Nasscom GDC

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The Nasscom GDC 2011 ended in Pune yesterday making it one of the well attended events in India. Since we don’t have many conferences like these happening here, it was great seeing this one unfold connecting the Indian gaming community on a single platform. It was also encouraging to see gaming now being accepted as an industry with students taking it up as a career option – something which did not exist some years back.

The 2 days of the event had back-to-back sessions covering various aspects of the state of the gaming industry, gaming platforms and technologies and sessions for budding entrepreneurs.

I was invited as a part of a panel discussion covering Flash vs Unity vs HTML5 and it was a fairly well attended session (we had 2 very competitive sessions running parallelly so a well attended session is a compliment!). It was great to see that most of the audience were into Flash development at some level and keen to know what the panel had to say about the three most spoken about technologies in the recent times. The panel came with their expertise and spoke about the strengths of the platform they specialized in.

HTML5 is a platform that Zynga believes will be the future with social games. They are already looking into it; their Words with Friends being a classic example of a successful HTML5 social game going cross platform.

Cha Yo Wo on the other hand felt that HTML5 has it’s disadvantages and is better suited for enterprise applications rather than game development, especially when getting it across multiple platforms. They had some good talk to share about their engine allowing easy porting of code across different mobile platforms.

Glu Mobile belives in Unity and had some good points to share about using the platform to develop freemium games.

I spoke about my experience of working with Flash on different platforms, specifically devices. My thoughts were that Flash developers have the advantage of taking their ideas to multiple mobile platforms through the Adobe AIR runtime, but that can come with some limitations. The native platform for devices offer more polished APIs than AIR thus giving it an edge over Adobe AIR. With the introduction of native extensions, Adobe AIR can open up better development options but that will only be known in time.

However having said that, HTML5 is an new standard for the web that developers can be excited about, especially since Apple has been talking about it for a very long time, Adobe is investing heavily in the tools, and companies like Zynga believe that they can push the envelope of online social gaming with it.

The consensus was that a developer should never be limited with an idea because a technology is known and comfortable to work with, instead choose tools and platforms that best help bring the idea to life.

Flash vs Unity vs HTML5 Panel at Nasscom GDC

Mariam

Adobe, Flash, General, HTML, HTML5, Websites

Adobe Edge and Flash – the coexistence!

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“Flash is at the risk of being dethroned by the all new emerging HTML5 revolution!”

Well, something similar to the statement above is what I have been reading a lot lately. And this probably has to do with Adobe’s latest offering for web animations – Adobe Edge. I finally got it installed after a few hiccups and this is my initial impression after trying out a couple of amateur animations.

  • The Adobe Edge UI gives you a nice wide canvas to create animations. The interface has a stage, a timeline, a tool panel and a properties panel. Edge is great because it eases the production of animated web content which can be deployed and supported easily on multiple devices and platforms (iOS too!)
  • Adobe Edge is still in Preview, which means the team is expecting people to test it and provide feedback.
  • Adobe Edge is probably similar to what Macromedia Flash 3 was –  an animation tool still in its early phase.
  • Edge does not provide any means to edit the HTML file from within the GUI, however you can generate an HTML file and edit it in another software such as Adobe Dreamweaver.
  • There are very limited tools to use (only 4!) with an option to import image resources. An option to support the new HTML5 media elements such as video can be a great added feature!
  • The timeline can get a little different to work with initially, especially if you are comfortable working with Flash Professional.

Adobe Edge will definitely get interesting to work with as it matures.  As for Flash, I don’t see it going anywhere soon!

Mariam

Check out the Expressive Web Beta, an initiative by Adobe to showcase the modern web features!