Open Screen Project

I am writing and posting this early so Blazing Games has not been updated yet though I will be doing that this evening. I am going to be delaying my Light Box strategy guide again as there has been a rather interesting announcement today from Adobe. The Open Screen Project ( http://www.adobe.com/openscreenproject/ ) is the continuation of Adobe's open sourcing of Flash. The biggest part of the announcement, at least to me, is the removal of restrictions on the use of the SWF specification. SWF is the binary format that Flash and Flex compile into. The specifications for this format have been available for a long time (since Flash 3 if my memory serves me correctly) but the licensing agreement in order to use this specification did not allow the licensor to create their own player. This meant that an open source player, such as Gnash, were not able to use the official specifications but instead had to create their players using reverse engineering techniques making the work take significantly longer and reducing compatibility.

The reason that I am using flash for a good number of my games, and once the Ultimate Retro project is finished will probably develop all of my client side games in Flash/Flex, is because it is currently the best solution for rich internet applications. My biggest concern with Flash has always been the fact that it was controlled by a single company. Now that the specifications no longer have restrictions, this is no longer a fear. I know that some people will argue that Microsoft Silverlight is technically superior, I really do not trust Microsoft with a cross-platform standard as they tend to want to force people to use their Windows operating system. Sure they are supporting Macs right now and not threatening the Moonlight project, but that could change if Silverlight no longer had viable competition.

By having the open specification for SWF, I no longer have to worry about Adobe abandoning Flash/Flex (not that it was that likely at this point) so can develop my games without having to worry too much about them suddenly not working in the future. My only complaint at this time is the lack of proper 3D hardware support in Flash. While projects like Papervision 3D are quite impressive with what they can do using software 3D, support for an open 3D standard like OpenGL ES would greatly increase the power of Flash. That, of course, is a different rant which I have made before.

I should also probably point out that in addition to removing the restrictions from the SWF format, the FLV format was also released as was the Flash Cast protocol and the AMF protocol. Finally, Adobe is going to be removing licensing fees in the next major release of Flash Player and Adobe AIR for devices meaning that Flash should be appearing on a lot more mobile platforms. From a Flash/Flex game developer's perspective, this is indeed great news today.

AIR has finally been released.

While this may not be an important thing to most people, Adobe's AIR has been released. I found out about it from http://www.mikechambers.com/blog/2008/02/24/adobe-air-10-thank-you/ as I was following the development. AIR lets you create flash/flex/ajax/html applications that will run on the desktop without the need to run in a browser or be connected to the internet. The best part is that the software development kit is being released for free so anybody can create air applications without a large cost. Obviously, tools such as FlexBuilder, DreamWeaver, and Flash will greatly aid in the development of AIR applications. I am currently developing One of those Weeks in flash for the web, but it would not be inconceivable for me to later create a downloadable AIR version of the entire game. Flex 3 also was released today. It too has a free SDK and it allows you to create flex/flash applets.

Airing out my thoughts

I was going to talk about how tiles work, but the final episode of the Sopranos pissed me off so much that I will talk about that instead. Just kidding. Though I am not going to talk about tiles today, it is because of Adobe, not HBO. There are two things released today that should be of interest to game developers. These are Apollo and Flex 3.

Apollo, which has now been renamed AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) is a way of developing internet content that can also be used off line. You can create applications that run on the desktop but are built using Flash (or Flex) HTML and Acrobat. For me this is a great move forward as I would be able to have games that are entirely playable online (for people who don't like downloading things) while having extended versions of the same game that the player can download. The nice thing is that the air program would have (with the user's permission) access to the file system so game saves would be possible. Writing a level editor would also be possible. More information about AIR can be found at http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/air/.

The other interesting thing that was released is the beta version of Flex 3. While I am sure that FlexBuilder3 will remain the overpriced tool that FlexBuilder2 is, The Flex3SDK will be open source. This effectively means that you will still be able to create Flash files for free, though you obviously will have a more difficult time doing so than people using the FlexBuilder3 or Flash CS3 tools would have. One of the key points is that it will be compatible with air. If you want to get into Flash development but don't have money then this is probably a really good option. The link for this is http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flex/ .