How's Flash doing?

I took a few hours to test the Flash 5 trial back when the ban was lifted, but while I like ActionScript and the development environment, I was really knocked back by the performance of even the very simplest of programs (I always assumed that compiling a program to native code would be enough to bring things up to speed).

It’s been a few months now, and has anyone heard how Flash is doing? Are there any Flash program success stories in either the iOS or Android world, anybody hitting the big-time? Any killer Flash programs on mobile platforms at all?

I certainly don’t plan on investing any time or dollars in updating my CS4, but I was just curious if, after all the fuss, if Flash had proved worthwhile for anyone.

– Walt Sterdan [import]uid: 4329 topic_id: 6838 reply_id: 306838[/import]

Adobe has vastly improved both the run-time performance of Flash as well as the Actionscript language itself. Actionscript has matured into a full, modern language, and the SDK capabilities have grown as well.

Actionscript 3 gets “just-in-time” compiled to native instructions on the target machine, so performance is probably more than an order of magnitude better than you remember. I wrote a side-scrolling golf-cart racing game that had great performance, even with physics, lots of particle effects, large scrolling worlds, verlet water effects, etc…and that was in 1996.

If you want to code, don’t worry about Flash CS5…you don’t need it, just download FlashDevelop for free and one of several really good game libraries that are available (that are also free.) You’ll find that it’s pretty easy I think. (This is why I’ve been advocating cross-compilation for Corona! It would be a great target platform for the SDK.)

-John [import]uid: 29170 topic_id: 6838 reply_id: 23884[/import]

john… i’m sure walt is talking about flash packager for iphone/android which is a whole different matter.

i still think i’d go with corona so far, but check this game made with the CS5 packager: “Whack the Rodent”… it’s not bad for performance, but there’s not a whole lot going on really.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMQEFJmMhks

j [import]uid: 6645 topic_id: 6838 reply_id: 23894[/import]

:slight_smile: Wow, I totally missed that…I guess I was thinking too far “off-topic”. :slight_smile:

I didn’t play with the CS5 packager, but I did look at a game or two that used it. What I saw was very slow. I was interested in trying this myself, but the performance just isn’t there.

-John [import]uid: 29170 topic_id: 6838 reply_id: 23901[/import]

the first game that the PushButton team put out… that space trading one… they didnt use the bitmap caching to optimize things. not sure if they’ve updated it yet

http://itunes.apple.com/app/trading-stuff/id331031044?mt=8

you still wont get Corona performance though, not that i’ve read anyway… worth trying out things though since you can develop with FlashDevelop for free… but I’m still sticking with learning Corona for now

[import]uid: 6645 topic_id: 6838 reply_id: 23917[/import]

I have taken a number of fairly graphic intensive Actionscript 3 (as3) I have created and used the packager for iPhone on them and had really bad performance issues. Yes the apps run but the response time is very very slow. Timeline based animations seem to go ok but anything which involves as3 is dog slow.

The whole process of having to optimise code for the packager seems to be entirely counter intuitive to the point of the whole thing. So subsequently I would say, stick to Corona and use your AS3 knowledge to get your head around Lua (very very easy to learn and understand) rather than spend time learning Objective C (yick and overly complicated). [import]uid: 22878 topic_id: 6838 reply_id: 23928[/import]

Soon there will be Monkey out from Blitz Research. It suppports Flash, Html5, IOS, Android, XNA, Windows, OSX. Might be very interesting for you if you want to target flash. [import]uid: 5712 topic_id: 6838 reply_id: 23936[/import]

Mike: Monkey, AGK, GM9, GLB and Cuttlefish are all figments of your wild “easy-iOS-gamedev” imagination… we don’t talk about them here :wink:

[import]uid: 6645 topic_id: 6838 reply_id: 24080[/import]

Whats your problem? He was talking about Flash and i mentioned a tool that exports to Flash. [import]uid: 5712 topic_id: 6838 reply_id: 24094[/import]

was just a joke mike, sorry. there are a lot of competing products that’ll export to iOS. as long as it doesn’t turn into flame wars I’m sure Ansca don’t mind us discussing them here

[import]uid: 6645 topic_id: 6838 reply_id: 24111[/import]

Hi Guys;

I think there’s been a little confusion; I love Lua and Corona is my main iOS kit, with Live Code my backup (only because it allows development for iOS and OSX simultaneously), and while I tried it out, I wasn’t ever considering switching to Flash. I have built commercial apps in Flash, but it was some time ago (Flash 5, actually) and while I’d ported a few fun games over to my PSP, I’ve already switched anything I wanted to keep over to Lua months ago.

I was just curious if there’s been any major hits using Flash; if you come to Ansca, or most other development sites (Game Salad, Appcelerator, PhoneGap, etc.) you find lists of apps built with them, but I haven’t really seen anything similar for Flash, despite the thousands and thousands or Flash programmers, and despite all of the furor when Flash was disallowed by Apple for a while there.

I’m really just curious if there’s been anything with a success story like Bubble Ball, or any success stories at all built with Flash.

Thanks for the replies, it’s all interesting stuff, and appreciated.

– Walt Sterdan [import]uid: 4329 topic_id: 6838 reply_id: 24114[/import]

As far as I know, there are no Flash CS5 success stories such as bubble ball using CS5 Packager.

C [import]uid: 24 topic_id: 6838 reply_id: 24122[/import]

carlos, surely you mean…

What is Flash?

:wink: [import]uid: 6645 topic_id: 6838 reply_id: 24140[/import]

I thought you meant Camera Flash…

LOL

C. [import]uid: 24 topic_id: 6838 reply_id: 24823[/import]

I have done some tests on the updated Flash CS5 IOS Packager and I can honestly say it was still utter pants! Bit of a joke really as I cannot see how this can produce playable games especially if you want to target the slower devices like the 3G. [import]uid: 7863 topic_id: 6838 reply_id: 24860[/import]