AIR as a valid game engine alternative

kupo_games

2dguy
I briefly tested the PC version of BH2 on my Galaxy Note 8, and it ran pretty well! The main issue was stuttering during garbage collection, so I think it could be optimized to run ok on most mobile devices, at least on the less chaotic, easier difficulties. (And in the arcade days, bullet-hell games like this were often designed to slow down during the very difficult parts. )

blablabla
Ruffle already runs AS3 reasonably well - there's still a few things that don't work correctly, but my massive RPG Epic Battle Fantasy 5 is almost playable, and Epic Battle Fantasy 4 only starts to softlock half way through the game. AS3 code runs a bit slower in Ruffle than in Flashplayer, but I think this is more than made up for by how much faster vector graphics are in Ruffle, and the AS3 stuff is still being optimized.

I'm already working on a big hidden-object Windows game that will run on Ruffle, and it's coming along pretty well. It would never have been possible to make vector graphics this detailed in Flashplayer.

2dguy

kupo_games I'm already working on a big hidden-object Windows game that will run on Ruffle

If you don't mind, how will you deploy this game to the public and how will you monetize it? Thx.

Michoko

Very interesting... Honestly, when I first saw Ruffle, I thought it would be just another half-finished Flash emulator, but by seeing its progress and activity on Github, I might definitely be wrong (which is great news! 🙂)

Having a new implementation of the Flash Player would definitely be a game changer for us.

blablabla

drunkcat you can already use Ruffle. They regularly release Ruffle even they have nightly builds.
But again, AS3 APIs are not 100% implemented yet.

General

We should actively submit our games to https://airsdk.dev/showcase and perhaps asking for permission from some big devs who don't have time on this to submit their games, too. For example, Bart Bonte is building successful puzzles with AIR: https://play.google.com/store/apps/dev?id=6731838628059519714

When talking about mobile development the two big good sides of AIR are:

small output file (30 MB)
possibility to build iOS games on a Windows computer

kupo_games

General
"possibility to build iOS games on a Windows computer"

Yeah, this was a really useful feature for me! Not only build on a Windows PC, but also install the test build straight onto a iPhone via USB cable. I still had to buy an old MacBook to upload the app to the store, but at least I don't have to use it very much. 😛

In the end I made way more money on Android, but once the app works on Android, getting it on iOS is only a few days extra work with AIR, and it was worth it.

General

Or here is an AIR game with over 500M installs: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=air.com.hypah.io.slither

General

elegantdeer
On what Discord server is this?

elegantdeer

General https://discord.gg/V9YvmBXKDs

kupo_games

2dguy
Direct sales on Steam.
If it makes it to mobile (Ruffle may not be ready for that yet, but I could maybe use AIR) then free with paid DLC.

Ruffle doesn't really have Desktop deployment options yet, but the Ruffle team will figure something out for me when it's time (I'm a big sponsor). All I really need is a basic .exe wrapper (as currently I'm launching the game with a command line script) and some way to unlock Steam achievements.

2dguy

kupo_games

Thanks for the reply, much appreciated. Surprisingly 99% of my old flash games using .draw() & .copyPixels() run just fine on their demo. Do you know if Ruffle supports or plans to support Stage3D? Thx.

HaimSh

2dguy Its is supported but performance is bad.

kupo_games

2dguy I think Bullet Heaven 2 is playable, but really slow - so yeah, there's support coming in, but it's still fairly early days for Stage3D.

hydroper

I think Hero Fighter, a AIR game, uses solely bitmaps and rarely uses the vectorial capability of AIR.

Shark Bite Bay Adventure is another one that uses blurry bitmaps and gets interesting: (oops, this one is a Flash game)

Fancy2209

Michoko They used Starling, that's how!

PippoFlash

In my opinion for 2D games AIR is unbeatable, but it is also 25 years that I develop in AS so that probably makes a difference. With some careful planning games can be easily resolution/density agnostic.
Also for kiosks AIR has no competition. Especially coupled with Animate that allows for super fast design and prototyping, and if desktop is involved runs very very well. Also for digital signage, with AIR now exporting for Linux, you can operate remotely on machines in background without messing with the video output so in terms of productivity is unbeatable.

UDP works perfectly. I built multiscreen installation with the same app running in display mode on desktops and in management mod ein an iPad, communicating on the local network using UDP and works just seamlessly out of the box.

For multiplayer, there are several platforms that support AS3. Imho, the best one is SmartFox Server, shipping with AS3 libraries. It is a very mature project, abt 20 years old, very well maintained.

Sound management works ok if you do not need BPM precise sync. I know there are ways to sync perfectly sounds working on byte arrays directly but I have never used them. To overcome this on Desktop installations I couple aIR with Max/MSP and communicate to each other using an http api on localhost.

Something I miss dearly, is a maintained OSC library for AS3. I need to use a NodeJS middle tier that converts http calls to OSC.

Ruffle is now use in internet archive for running old sites. It works well. Though, sadly, most of the things I built in the 90s and early 2000s used external configuration files and assets, and since htose were not linked in the html but only in the SWF itself, archive didn't load and archive them so the most advanced things get stuck at loading screen. I am wondering wether, for example for simple casual games, outputting directly for ruffle in the browser might not be an alternative to revive the build once run anywhere paradigm.

Anyway, with its pros and cons, AIR is a swiss knife that allows for incredible outputs in no time. Any agency should seriously consider it. I remember abt 20 years ago just listing ActionScript in your skills would have landed gigs in no time 🙂 good memories...

« Previous Page