I've been a php/ruby/flash/android/iphone developer for quite some time. I'm starting my mobile/browser game development career. I've been searching for a cross-platform framework that would be the best choice for me as a beginner. I fond the Sparrow framework (iPhone) but I'm not sure about it.
Btw... I'll start with simple games (racing or super mario-style).
My questions:
- Which framework should I use?
- Is it possible to create a game in flash and then export it to native OS (iPhone,Android,Symbian).
- I like screen casts (video tutorials), where can I found them?
- Other tips?
Thx 10x!
Using flash is very different than any other framework ive used. Flash takes care of almost everything for you (ie. Loading images, sprites, animations, etc.) while other languages/frameworks require this to be done manually unless you use a game engine. If you are looking to develop on the iphone cocos2d is a good framework to use. Starting from flash and moving to a different framework would be harder than starting with a different framework and moving to flash.
You can use flash, but unless your game is turn based I wouldn't recommend it. The Adobe packager is still dirt slow.
If you want something that is cross platform and pretty easy to get into you should check out Unity3D. It's mostly 3D specific, but has some user created 2D addons. You can use ECMA style syntax as well so it wouldn't be a huge leap away from flash.
Related
I started developing a game application for Android, but as I progress I decided to switch to cross-platform environment. Performance is very important as there is some complex audio processing on the background. After few days researching the subject I came to conclusion that the most successful option is Marmalade SDK.
Now I need to decide if to use IwGame or Cocos2D-X or both for development. Both looks great and interesting. Have anyone used these and can share experience?
Thanks.
It depends on how much your game is dependent on the game engine. Cocos2D-x is more feature reach and heavy duty game engine, contributed by many open source developers, while IwGame engine is build by an individual (or may be a team of individuals) just for marmalade.
I've used Iwgame engine for 3D game camera rotation only and it was too easy to set it up and within a day I could make my game running fine. So if your needs are not high, just use IwGame .
Physics engine like Box2D and Chipmunks are said to be better linked with Cocos2D-x, however I've used them separately in marmalade project and faced no problems at all. So it's not a big deal to have a better linked physics engine.
To work on Cocos2D-x, you'll need to learn it first, while IwGame is not too complex to start. But once you worked with Cocos2D-x, it'll be easier for you to work on serious projects and you'll want to use only this.
IwGame offers a very powerful built-in mark-up language (XOML) that can make laying out game levels, designing animations, creating user interfaces very easy. IwGame also allows you to host your content on remote server and download it on demand. Oh, it also has built in support for ads and in-app purchasing.
Cocos2D is the more mature engine but I believe IwGame is more feature rich and easier to use.
I only use cocos2d-x (without Marmalade). I think it is pretty handy when making games, but the setup process and getting your first game to work aren't that easy.
I didn't try IwGame, so I cannot say much about it.
You can get a feel of what cocos2d-x games look like in my profile.
I have a question about Flash. I am writing my first browser game, and I am trying to decide on a technology.
I have a few requirements:
I don't want to have to pay to write code and a not-complete-crap free IDE would also be good.
I want most (or > 70%) of "normal" computer users to have it installed, so, Unity's pretty much out.
I don't really need performance too much
I need 2D, not 3D
Needs to be able to communicate with the server, and no extra downloads required.
Preferably works with the Facebook platform, but, this isn't a requirment.
Now, I would go with Flash as it fills all of my requirements, but, to my understanding, I need to pay for CS5 to get coding with Flash. Is an alternative around this possible?
Are there any other alternatives I'm missing?
To add onto what ColinE mentioned, FlashDevelop also provides you the ability to download and install the Flex SDK. However, if FlashDevelop as an IDE doesn't work for you, you can also download the Flex SDK yourself.
This is essentially the same thing that's included with Adobe's Flash Builder application, which is basically built on top of Eclipse. This should at least give you a start on creating things in Flash, though you'll be limited to ActionScript 3. I'd suggest sticking with AS3 as it provides a lot of power compared to AS2.
If you do choose to use the Flex SDK, I'll give you a bit of knowledge I've gained since I started using it for developing games. This may be a little long-winded but hopefully it'll answer some of the initial starter questions.
You can develop apps/games using the Flex library but this may increase the size of your SWF file. However, it's worth noting that it's not required to use the library. You can use the compiler (mxmlc) provided in the SDK to build against .as files as well.
From here, there's a few gotchas that might creep in when it comes to assets. Flex provides you the ability to embed assets within your class files. Out of the box, it allows for the embedding of a handful of formats, most notably PNG, TTF, XML and SWF. There's a lot that you'll be able to do with Flex from a code standpoint but it's not very pretty for creating the assets themselves. Primarily, I use the Flash IDE only for cases where a project requires a SWF asset, however, most of my projects tend to use PNG.
When using an embedded SWF asset, you may come across an issue where any code that's included in the asset, such as any hover or animation logic as ActionScript, gets stripped out of the copy embedded in the resulting project's SWF. A workaround for this is forcing the mimetype to "application/octet-stream" and using a Loader object's loadBytes() method.
Finally, you should be able to make some sort of progress provided you have some sort of ActionScript knowledge. There are plenty of resources out there but be aware that a fair amount of them still use AS2. The knowledge can be applied with some modifications but may require some extra legwork to implement. The language is fairly easy to work with.
With all that, I wish you luck. Flash gets a lot of flack these days but even with HTML5 nearing final, there's still a lot of features that it will never be able to touch without leveraging Flash in some way.
Flash, Silervlight or HTML5 will tick pretty much all of those boxes for you, however Silverlight is only installed on ~65% of computers at the moment.
HTML5 can be tough to develop with, so perhaps Flash is your best bet. See the following question which discusses Flash IDEs:
Flash Developer IDE
FlashDevelop is a free development environment for Flash.
I believe your question is about which type of development you should use to get this game going, but I would also urge you to consider the future of each of these software sets, and choose based on what you would like more experience in.
Flash has been holding it's ground pretty well, but I've seen it less and less on major sites these days, and I believe HTML 5 is taking pretty good stabs at it. Even Pandora doesn't use flash anymore, and that was a pretty well designed little flash app (they still use AIR for Pandora One, but not their main site). Instead, like many other websites, it's using HTML and JavaScript.
So, while flash is slowly losing ground to HTML and JavaScript, where does Silverlight stand? Microsoft is still pushing their Silverlight technology, and based on Microsoft's support scheme, they'll still be using it for the next few years at least. At the same time, it's based on the .NET framework, so you'll be gaining some valuable WPF and .NET skills by using Silverlight.
There is no right or wrong decision here, it's really just based on which technology you see yourself using past this product, and which technology you want to learn.
I'd give it a shot in Silverlight, myself, but that's simply because I dislike flash, and there's already too many HTML and JavaScript developers.
edit:
Silverlight is a relatively small 30 second install. I generally hate installing new plugins, but Silverlight is relatively painless, imo.
I have read a range of articles on advantages/disadvantages of Microsoft Silverlight framework in comparisson to Flash.
Fact that there were two version of Silverlight in the past 18 months worries me, as well as the fact that over 97% of web browsers already have Flash pre-installed.
I'm a .NET developer and I'm very happy with what I can do in the framework. At the moment I feel like I have to put my own preference to a side and decide whether I need to integrage flash with .NET instead of using Silverlight with WPF.
Did anybody try integrating Flash with .NET? What challanges did you come across? How easy was it in comparisson to working in Silverlight?
I have also read about recent talks between Microsoft and Adobe. Whatever way I go It feels very unstable. Can HTML 5 really compete with what's offered by Flash and Silverlight?
Thank you
I have integrated both Flash and Silverlight into my ASP.Net applications. I have to say that working with Silverlight was by far the easier way to go. Communication with the server is easier, initial setup was easier (along with a ASP.Net application or a simple HTML page). Integration into the ASP.Net application was the easiest part (as I'm sure you imagined it would be). If you're a .Net developer, then this is the way to go.
Also, I wouldn't worry about either of these technologies going away anytime soon. HTML5 is not going to take over. It'll take some of the market share, not all.
EDIT
Here are some links to other SO posts on the subject:
Which is the future of web development: HTML5 or Silverlight(or other RIA framework)?
Should I Abandon Adobe Flash for HTML5 and ?
Can HTML5 do most of what Flash does today?
This is basically the way I pick web technologies:
do you need to support every available platform made now, in the past and in the future? HTML4 (yes, 4!)
Do you have to make stuff that is not possible with HTML4, and are ready to sacrifice some user base? HTML5
Can you limit yourself to desktop users (no mobile devices) and need a very interactive application (more so than a "website")? Flash or Silverlight
Do you need to integrate with .NET? Silverlight
Are you familiar with .NET (more so than Flash)? Silverlight
Do you want to reach the absolute maximum number of users? Flash
Do you know Flash/ActionScript (more so than .NET)? Flash
Do you need even more features than what Silverlight provides, and can you limit your deployment to intranets? WPF/XBAP
The whole debate around Silverlight being dead is completely flawed in my opinion: those that thought Silverlight would be completely multiplatform really were not connected with the reality: just by looking at Flash it was clear from the beginning that iOS & co. would never support Silverlight.
HTML5 will probably be the real "universal multiplatform" environment (what is HTML4 now), but with all the nightmares we all know of html. If you are targeting desktops and need more interactivity, better tooling, unit testing & co. then Flash and Silverlight will still be the first choice.
Silverlight's user base is quickly coming close to Flash, so between those two it really comes down to the one you know better and the ease of integration with an existing backend.
The fact that Silverlight got a new major version every 9 months until now is just a sign of how much they are pushing it. Now that it's reached a mature stage you can expect to see larger intervals.
Frankly, AS3 is not hard to learn if you already know OOP. It will take a week or so. If you don't like all the frames stuff in Flash, you can create a single frame app and then manage everything from your custom AS classes.
I'm also a .NET developer, and I had no trouble learning AS3.0. Of course, one week is not enough to become an expert (it takes years to become an expert in any field). But if you simply need to create video or mp3 players, create drag and drop basic games/apps to add to an ASP.NET page, it's worth spending 20 or 30 hours on AS3. There are great video trainings out there . Seven or 8 hours training should take the 20 to 30 hours I mentioned. I went for AS3.0 a few years ago, rather than SL, simply because everybody has Flash plugin installed.
AS3.0 is typed (simple types like Number, String etc), but at least it's typed. There are plenty of functions, classes and methods allowing to implement hit tests, drag/drop, event listening (mouse events, keyboard events etc). Really cool and fun language.
Take care.
HTML5 has SVG and Canvas and video.
It's perfectly possible that at one point someone creative is going to create a very nice animation package that generates SVG files. There already are SVG generators there of course, but obviously they're not good enough because SVG and Flash is, so far, never mentioned in the same sentence.
But is ought to be possible. SVG does structured vector graphics, embedded scripting. The things you see done in Flash has to all be possible in SVG. Flash also has this awful notion of frames, which was a major design flaw from day one.
They should have just let you determine that you want to move an object from point A to B along a path determined by a line or curve or freehand path, and that the times of A and B can be anything and not just confined to a particular frame.
Then at playback, the faster your computer is, the better the frame rate ends up being. Slower computer, slower frame rate. As long as the object moves from A to B.
Then there are the bugs and just overall clumsy handling of Flash.
Flash can be done so much better.
So, I think that someone will at one point soon make an amazing SVG animation package that will just crush Flash.
I'm against Silverlight because it's Microsoft. Microsoft means proprietary. They do whatever they want to do. You've already mentioned different version numbers. This means your customers have to have the right version downloaded. You can count on your customers having to download major upgrades, and before you know it their entire .net install needs updating, before you can show your animations and applications.
Silverlight also doesn't work on Linux. It's supposed to, through Novell's efforts with Mono, etc, but in practice, in the field, it just does not work where you need it to.
I don't know if and how well, in practice, Silverlight works on the Mac, but I don't trust it.
Eventually, I think, that future HTML5/SVG (Canvas maybe?) is the way to go. It'll even do 3D using OpenGL accelerated graphics... (but I don't know if that's portable enough).
In the meantime, Flash is your safe bet, and it's almost guaranteed to run anywhere.
I wonder if anyone has created an animation package that outputs to swf files that's better than the Flash IDE. Shouldn't be too hard, given Flash IDE's clumsiness.
Microsoft recently announced a "change of direction" with Silverlight with more emphasis on mobile rather than desktop.
Flex/Flash and SilverL. now are very similar... using webservice for the clientt/server comunication you can work well with both.
Sure, for .NET developer with Visual Studio to use SilverL. is much more FAST and you need C# only.
But, Flash is more available on PCs, also for mobile devices... you could think for Flash if you need portability.
I'm mainly asking this to professionals who know the playing field of professional developing. Is it worth it to learn and develop skills in Silverlight?
I know that penetration for Silverlight is obviously low in comparison to Flash but Silverlight seems lighter and a more cutting edge technology.
What are some of the benefits Silverlight has over Flash?
Is there a lot of work for Silverlight developers (of course combining them with ASP.net)?
Thank you very much for all the responses. :)
Edit: I program mainly in C# so there will be an obvious plus side to using it.
Also, how reliable are these results: BubbleMark
It's a huge topic and you can read articles all day on Flash-vs-Silverlight-vs-AJAX.
I use Silverlight and was completely over the moon when it was released due to the ability to employ the CLR in browser based applications. Javascript/DHTML development drives me nuts and for me Silverlight was my way to escape its clutches. As far as Flash goes my very brief foray into it found ActionScript to be more painful than Javascript but that was years ago and things have undoubtedly improved since then.
Basically if you're using .Net for your back end then it makes perfect sense to use Silverlight for the front end. It means you only have one development environment and language to deal with and where appropriate you can reuse a lot of your back end code on the client.
In practice it's not quite that easy and my experience has been that there is a lot of resistance in user land towards Silverlight. The main bone of contention is generally that the cross browser and operating system support is not good enough. Users that employ Opera or use Linux or PowerPC Macs can't use Silverlight (Moonlight isn't there yet). Those users are generally vocal ones.
If you know all your users will be on IE/Firefox on Windows/Mac Intels or you have a compelling application that users will change their set ups for then Silverlight is almost certainly your best option. If you have an application that you want to hit a wide range or disparate users you may need to weigh up the options a bit more.
The fact that Microsoft has thrown their weight behind Silverlight as the Web Application Framework of choice gives it a pretty decent chance of becoming widely used (though certainly no guarantee).
To position yourself in the most versatile way, though, you might want to consider first learning about the capabilities and limitations of both systems and then learning how to implement with both.
There will probably be many projects done with Flash, and many done with Silverlight. If you can program to either, you will be in a good position. If you are able to provide skillful assistance in deciding which one is best for a given project, you will be in a great position.
I tried it and did not like it. I didn't like the split development environment, xaml, or the limited install base and platforms it runs on. The IDE and platform itself still has a ways to go before I would consider it for use in a production environment.
How is Silverlight going to change the internet in the next 10 years?
Is this going to be a scene changer or just another blip?
People often underestimate Microsoft. I don't know if it's going to change the Internet, but Silverlight will probably become pretty widely used, especially in web-based business applications that require rich interfaces. Flash is good, but being able to develop rich web interfaces with .NET and WPF is much nicer, particularly in that realm.
It will be another blip. It's not seriously cross-platform, unlike Flash or any of its other competition, and no one seems particularly interested in it. It might be neat and shiny but I haven't seen any real reason to move past playing around with it.
Put another way, it's a cool toy but not much else.
Until Silverlight has respectable implementations in other operating systems (read: OS X and Linux) and it can differentiate itself from Flash considerably, it's never going to grab a significant percentage of the rich content web app market, IMO.
I personally think Silverlight will be popular, its got a good "feel" about it IMO as a developer.
The cross-platform issue will be solved soon, as Mono continues to grow fast.
But I think it will be a very long time before anything knocks Flash/Flex off its perch on the top of RIA development platforms.
Silverlight allows the developer to offload some processing to a CLR on the client, using the native language such as C#, provide rich interfaces that are not restricted to HTML/CSS/DOM differences between browsers, and potentially reduce the need for scripting in javascript.
Although I might seem antagonistic here, I really, full heartedly don't like Silverlight, and I don't like Flash either.
They don't bring anything to the table anymore, now that browser are truly fast at rendering and processing. You can do most of the same things with pure Javascript and HTML/CSS. And what you can't do you will be able to do with HTML 5.0. What we need are not more proprietary frameworks, but better tools for what what we already have.
So my guess is 10 years from now, Silverlight and Flash won't be more than wikipedia articles.
I feel that while you can do most of what you need with Javascript and CSS, Silverlight programming feels much more fluid and fast to me. This is especially true when it comes to easily building a rich design with loads of animations. It is very easy for a team of designers and developers to collaborate on Silverlight and WPF projects, and that efficiency is important. Visual Studio being a fantastic IDE has kept many developers on the Microsoft ranch. The Expression suite feels like the next big advancement in allowing your IDE to do a lot of your work for you.
Deep Zoom is another big winner for Silverlight - check out the Silverlight implementation of the Hard Rock Memorabilia collection. Now look at the Flash implementation of SF Moma's art collection.
Don't knock Silverlight until you try it. I am no Microsoft fanboy, but it is very easy to use. People who have never developed using Microsoft technologies don't know the meaning of a good IDE.
I mostly develop with PHP, and I use Aptana for development. VS200x is lightyears ahead of any other IDE in just about everything.
The only real thing standing in the way of Silverlight becoming more widely used is better cross platform support; which would be pretty amazing thing I don't see happening at all. If Microsoft could loosen the reins up a bit, it would do wonders for it. Then again, Microsoft has gotten got at getting certain really good tools out there for free: The Express VS tools, the Dreamspark suite, etc.
One area that Silverlight will catch on is business applications. As architecture models shift into the service oriented realm there will be many companies looking to port their old client/server apps. Silverlight enables them to maintain the rich UI of the forms application while providing the messaging capabilities necessary to talk to the services. Also,t he deployment is wider than what they would get with strictly WPF and xbapps. Flash doesnt really compete in this area and a straight asp.net or other web technology front end, while getting nicer with Ajax and all that fun stuff, wouldnt support the richness you can get out of silverlight.