Comments on: What’s up with Flash gaming?

By: Joseph burchett

Joseph burchett — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 16:52:03 +0000

You make a good point o.o… But I think you are thinking more about distribution then the actual evolution of flash gaming. BUT in a way I believe the two intermix. If we can have a more effective way to distribute games, then more people with quality games can get there game out there. Then again this could back fire and just help make the spread of crap games easier. Flash portals already do this to some extent, with there whole judging process and eliminate based on quality. But I suppose it would be more interesting if Flash portals start to incorporate a feature that pretty much all video portals sites already offer (youtube, myspacetv, etc), making it so you can easily embed the media (your flash game) across the web. Google I believe does that sort, you can create a widget, and face book, you can create face book apps out of your flash games http://www.emanueleferonato.com/2008/05/30/integrate-your-flash-game-on-facebook/ But yeah, you sir have a good idea and perhaps could be the next step in flash portals.

By: James

James — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 16:25:08 +0000

Ultrakillz – I like that game!

As for viral games – I don’t think people are doing enough – or there isn’t any real way for games to go viral. Look at YouTube and all these video services, they’re a media that successfully goes viral because they can be passed around easily and embedded into websites – they even provide the code – but I certainly haven’t seen a way for games to do the same.

All it takes is a little button, some extra code and Boom! you have a game that can get thrown around, shared on MySpace and Facebook. It’s an obvious thing for video services nowadays…

By: Joseph burchett

Joseph burchett — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 14:50:11 +0000

Yeah I agree with you barrax, but I believe the issue was said pretty well to with what mike said in one of his first comments, “made by teenagers, they’re simply not skilled enough.” Yeah great thing about flash is the entry level is so low, its real easy to pick up, and easy to distrubte… and because of this we see a lot of “shovel-ware” as they say in the console scene.

“a quick console quality gaming experience. “, that is excatly what I am talking about! that is what we need, the tools are there, but yeah seriously now all we see is lots and lots of tech demos… So many tech demos. “Hey look everyone I just spent months on this awesome API… I didn’t create anything really usable out of it… But hey look what I can do o.o *shows off tech demo*… Okay now I am bored on to creating the next API, W00T!”

the thing I love about Sandy3D is that there focus is strictly on ease of use, I tried using the most main-stream flash 3D engine… Papervision3D… And well really it left a bad taste in my mouth. It was confusing, the documentation was a mess, to many different ways to do just one thing (I will never understand why it is so popular). I think that may also be a barrier with all these new api’s out there, they do awesome things, but a lot of people never really follow through with them and because of that they are lacking quality documentation and ease of use. Which in turn makes it hard for people to advance and make killer apps!

By: barrax

barrax — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 14:07:10 +0000

Within the flash gaming scene i personally think that the bar is generally set pretty low (ok there are a minority of great flash games out there). I have a portal site (yeah – haven’t we all:p ) and i get sent some “commercial” games that really should be binned… i mean REALLY BAD – and yet the client has parted with cash in a desperate attempt to get something “viral” out there. Meanwhile the middle-men (you know who you are) continue to sell-in these half-arsed creations to win a quick buck and thus damaging the track records for SUCCESSFUL game-related marketing campaigns.

Ok, maybe that sounds harsh – using gaming as a marketing tool is still relatively new and naivety obviously plays a part here but as Flash creatives we should be pushing towards a quick console quality gaming experience.

By that i don’t mean recreating half-life in flash with a 3D engine (ok im a fine one to talk with Ultrakillz.com – not strictly a “proper” 3d engine but hey its fun to play). Instead, how about tidying up some UI elements, picking a nice font and doing the best we can with what we’ve got – one of the nicest examples is heliattack – proper job! It still baffles me to this day why we arent all aiming for that level of quality and finish.

The only reason i can think of is that the real fun as a developer is creating some clever tech demo and then moving on. If only more creations could be pushed over the finish line.

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 08:55:12 +0000

Alternativa and Sandy are great as FLASH 3d engines It is more likely impressive experiments in flash.
For me it’s not great to watch few low-poly models without any basic shader support and 70% of CPU usage in task manager.
So… Waiting for better 3d and hardware support from Adobe!

By: James

James — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 07:43:16 +0000

Those Sandy and Alternativa games are very impressive – I guess the main barrier to a lot of potential Flash game developers is the complexity of the 3D classes – which is something I’m really hoping Flash Player 10 will cure when they unleash the native 3D stuff.

Great points guys!

By: Joseph burchett

Joseph burchett — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 03:30:46 +0000

Yup, yup, we are clearly on the same page I am with you all the way with pushing flash, and I am to aware of the limitations of 3d in flash.. but they are getting there! Actually I have been working on a 3d flash game myself with a bunch of other people, yeah we are trying to optimize it so we get something higher then 11fps @.@ but it still chugs… sigh. Director shines in the 3D space but 2d, ease of development, popularity flash wins hands down Which is why I love working in AS3 so much, its such a EASY language to work in and its so popular but I am sure by 2009 we will be seeing some much higher quality stuff then what we have seen now! I mean like this game was built in sandy (my 3d AS3 engine of choice ) http://www.qigames.com/game.php?id=alienslayer and it is fantastic! clearly they are using a lot of 2d sprites, but its a very lovely blend of both 3d and 2d This is the sort of stuff I am hoping to see more of… not first person shooters… (we see enough of those in the console space @.@) but just more so games of this quality. Also have you checked out the demos of this new AS3 3D engine? my god it is amazing! http://alternativaplatform.com/en/alternativa3d/ I dunno how they managed to make things run so smoothly… I mean they were getting up to 60fps… (then again there wasn’t a lot of moving objects on the screen to render, but still) Also with the native 3d support now, that means the open source 3d people can start reworking there engines to use the code that is supplied to them from within flash player 10, meaning that will help speed up things, that makes me a bit gitty But yeah, we are still a ways away from REALLY good 3D in flash, but damn we are getting there, and on the way we are seeing some amazing things, as everyone is getting ready for the “revolution”! lol… http://paperworld3d.com/ But really I am curious to see where that whole C++ thing goes with flash, remember that vid shown at max a while back? http://www.peterelst.com/blog/2007/10/03/adobe-max-chicago-sneak-peeks/ (second vid) and finally… just for the hell of it… cuz this vid rules… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMU0tzLwhbE LOL, ah steve ballmer, what would we do without you *coughs* silverlight sucks *coughs*, erhm, excuse me had something in my throat there <.<