It's written in Flash and, as I understand it, is making use of low-level graphics acceleration. Kevin claimed it was capable of rendering millions of polygons per second.
The bash on Flash as a game engine has been it's slow speed and the resultant poor quality of graphics due to insufficient polygon rendering. If they've really got a solution to this, then programming games in Flash becomes much more attractive as Flash-enabled TV sets and TV interface boxes like Google TV become more commonplace. It won't replace the high-end gaming consoles or the monstrous PCs built for high-fidelity gaming, but it could significantly erode the low- to mid-range game market from these systems and that's a big deal.
Game success isn't about physics or polygons nearly as much as it is about fun. There are lots and lots of games out there for the i-platforms, but the big hit these days is a graphically trivial one called Angry Birds.
If you're trying to develop the next Angry Birds and you want to be able to market it to the widest customer base possible, you could do a lot worse than program it in Flash. Everyone but Apple is enabling Flash on their systems. And which mobile OS is growing the fastest? Flash-enabled Android.
Google's (GOOG) Android was the most popular operating system in the U.S. among customers who purchased smartphones within the past six months, according to the Nielsen Company's August survey.
Rumors of Flash's death seem to have been greatly exaggerated.
So I take it you have never had to write a game in Flash. As someone who works in Actionscript 3 give me a native OS and Open GL like Apple and Android any day. Actionscript 3 is really an annoying language. While it is an improvement over earlier versions, it is still annoying.
ReplyDeleteSure Flash is everywhere which forces us poor programmers to code drudgery. Just what you need upon an OS add another layer of code such as Flash and then you wonder why your CPU starts to peg and your browser crashes.
When I compile Flash via Flex I get large swf files even for simple interactivity. Not exactly an efficient file format.
With Safari, HTML5 was the most efficient and consumed less CPU than Flash using only 12.39% CPU. With Flash 10.0, CPU utilization was at 37.41% and with Flash 10.1, it dropped to 32.07% Yeah code bloat.
HTML 5 is the future and is standards based - Flash is closed and even though their is an open source SDK for for Flex you have to pay for some features such as font management. HTML 5 will just work without having to install anything.
My iPad which I use constantly and even at work - guess how many sites I can't use because it doesn't support Flash. Well none - I have not gone to one site that I cared about that became crippled for me other than not seeing some damn Flash adverts.
Steve Jobs has it right. Flash was good in it's day, but it is an out of date technology that needs to be pushed aside. Though if you like code bloat and slower performance - you're welcome to it.
Oh and check out this video from an mobile expert and Android fan using the mobile version of Flash.
ReplyDeletehttp://newteevee.com/2010/08/31/video-flash-on-android-is-startlingly-bad/
Yet on my iPad - YouTube, Netflix, etc run just fine.
Just a note: when one is quickly scanning over some text, "Flash-enabled Android" looks a lot like "Flesh-eating Android". Which is much more disturbing.
ReplyDeleteJeff, thanks for the comment. I've written games in C++ on SGI development stations for Nintendo platforms, so I know how hard coding can be.
ReplyDeleteAs for the comment about not needing to see Flash on your iPad, in the session on the future of Tablets, the tablet-agnostic speaker talked about how the iPad drives him crazy because it doesn't show Flash. It's like whole sections of the web are closed to him. From my own experience, my Droid not running Flaqsh has been a horrible experience. I hate it. I just got a Droid 2 and I'm totally jazzed it runs Flash. It will open up all kinds of things for me that I didn't have before.
Tim, just what is your issue with flesh-eating Androids? Androids must consume fuel in one way or another. What's wrong with a little flesh now and again?
ReplyDelete