Multimedia Musings

After last weeks announcement regarding the close of development by Adobe of Flex, I really am starting to worry about Flash. I honestly want to believe that Flash can become the ‘gaming console for the web’, but after weeks of working with the existing tools that they have for Stage3D, I am kind of at a loss. Not that they are bad tools, just really late to the game. It’s like all of this should have been addressed years ago. Now it seems like scrambling to play catch up because in reality, it is.

I ran across Jesse Freeman’s sobering well written article, Game Over: How Adobe Killed Flash, and had an eye opening bucket of cold water in the face of a fan boy experience. Some things he said I suspected but would not admit to myself (denials a hell of a drug). Admittedly, his views may be biased, but damn he raises some good points. Hopefully, Adobe will get its PR together and begin to broadcast a message that will reassure the Flash devs out there. With post like Jesse Freeman’s though, I really don’t know if Adobe can dig its way out of this PR nightmare, or if they even care to. Only time will tell, but at the moment these decisions don’t make sense from a PR perspective. I should have seen the writing on the wall when so many top flash devs and authors started moving on. I guess deep down I knew, but I wanted to believe there was still hope. Perception is everything, and there is now a pretty bad perception regarding the future of Flash.

DCF

I have been seeing post all over the place about the death of the Flash player. Flame wars are going on everywhere regarding the misinformation that Flash is dead. This makes me think of a quote from Mark Twain that I am sure most of you are familiar with:

“The news of my death has been greatly exaggerated.”

Here is one report about the Flash player.

“Report: Adobe Is Finally Pulling the Plug on Mobile Flash” – Gizmodo

Note that the title denotes that Flash is pulling the plug on Mobile Flash. This seems to imply that there will no longer be Flash for mobile. That is not the case at all. Adobe is pulling the plug on the mobile browser based plug-in. The article goes on further to quote a letter from Adobe that reveals the new direction that states:

“Our future work with Flash on mobile devices will be focused on enabling Flash developers to package native apps with Adobe AIR for all the major app stores. ”

If Flash were dying, my shop would be switching to Unity3D and calling it a day with Flash. This is definitely not the case. We’re not married to any tech. We’re going where there is opportunity. We’re seeing a bright future here. Adobe is committed to staying relevant. It’s full steam ahead for the evolution of Adobe’s mobile and desktop app development environment.

Flash is far from dead. I agree that Flash will most likely be used less in the browser for sites in favor of HTML5 in time, but for games and apps for both desktop and mobile IMHO, I believe Flash will take on a whole new life beyond its humble web beginnings. People aren’t going to care what their app is developed in, as long as it does what they expect it to do, be it a game or a calculator. Flash has been great for allowing creative expression across multiple platforms. I can only see it getting better.

Uh Really? – ‘Spin baby spin!’

Flash is dead. Long live HTML5 – (Summary: It’s official, Adobe is putting its future mobile video efforts behind HTML5. So, do you really think that desktop Flash will survive for long?) -  ZDNet

[Wow Steve, have you even seen what is now possible on the desktop in Flash?]

Adobe abandons mobile Flash development, report says – CNN

[Wow. Just wow...]

DCF

It has been a while since I have posted and things have definitely changed. I have been working in Flash since Flash 5.0. I remember when a Flash dev could command an amazing salary, and media companies were popping up all over the place to capitalize on the multimedia goodness of Flash. Unfortunately, those were the days of dial-up, and the Flash player was evolving. Let’s just say expectations far exceeded what was possible.

We are now at Flash player 11. Adobe named this player the “console for the web”. I remember a post back in 2009 by Ben Garney of Torque and PushButton Engine fame begging Adobe to do just that. Now here we are with hardware acceleration, and Stage 3d, and few get what has just happened.  What was impossible back in the day (circa 2000) when people were writing business proposals over lunch on napkins for multimedia based .coms  and getting huge investments for vapor, may actually now be possible.

Don’t get me wrong, there is a lot to do, and a long way to go before it all becomes as practical as working in the current IDE, but at this stage (no pun intended) it really looks promising. It’s really early in the game. It feels like the time just before the Flash boom back in the late 90′s. The thing that Flash has going for it now is penetration and trust. People will update the flash player thanks to video. The tools that support Stage3D will eventually come. Adobe has delivered the goods, and if they aren’t too late,  and they can get mobile nailed down, we could actually have another boom. Only this time it won’t be all hype. I for one am excited, and glad to be able to once again say, ‘It’s good to be a Flash developer’. Now where’s my napkin?

DCF

This is my first post of the year. Been busy as all get out working on projects in Flash and Unity3D. With all that is going on with Flash, I just had to post. After years of developers begging, the beta for Flash 3D is out and looks pretty darn good. Granted there won’t be Adobe tools available to make it easy to develop 3d content, there are engines out there (Away3d, Flare3D, Alternativa, etc) that will fill this need. To top it off, Unity announced that they are working on a Flash exporter. Out-freaking-standing!

This is very exciting because while Unity has a superior web player, its web penetration is pretty low at the moment. Flash has a high penetration rate according to its stats. Don’t know how powerful the next Flash player will be in comparison to the Unity web player, or how extensive the Unity Flash exporter will be, but regardless the possibilities are incredible. One could easily develop an app or game in Unity, and at the very least make a feature reduced demo version of the app in Flash. That could be huge for advertising.

It is a really good time to be into Flash and Unity. Checking out with the beta Flash player, I was pretty impressed. I love Unity, but I have a lot of years invested in Flash development. I would like to be able to capitalize on both. Looks like this will now be possible very soon. With all this change I am hoping that more people will be using Flash, and that Apple has to reconsider allowing it on its devices. Only time will tell.

With the announcement of new Flash capabilities today at MAX, the big one being real GPU accelerated 3D, I am kind of excited. Folks have been waiting for some of these features to come down the pipe for quite some time. I remember Ben Garney’s post a little while back requesting that Adobe, Make Flash the Console for the Web. He basically broke down why this needed to happen. Just over a year later, looks like steps are being taken to make this a reality. I think this is a logical move, or a very good opportunity for Adobe is going to be lost.

I have been using Unity3D for just over a year. I really like it a lot. I am getting used to Unity still, but it is coming along. At my job, we still have Flash projects on the board, but it was looking like we’d be moving more to Unity as time went on. Obviously, Unity player penetration is still an issue, but we could accept that because our projects do not depend on player penetration. Always in the back of my mind, I wished there was some way that the Flash player could pull off what Unity was doing. I wished that I could leverage my AS3 skills and pull that kind of 3D off in Flash. Looks like that wish just might come true.

I love Unity’s IDE. If I could build Scaleform like interfaces and mini games in Unity, I probably would not look back to Flash for 3D at all. GUI development in Unity is not one of Unity’s strong points. The prospect of being able to do both 2D and 3D all in Flash is pretty compelling. IF Adobe can pull this off, I really think they might be able to maintain the title of web player of choice for gaming. Even if the engines that are built on top of the new 3d API aren’t as powerful as Unity or Torque, I think Flash player penetration is going to be the factor that could make it the environment of choice for web games.

I remember the Adobe promises of 3D made in the past, and the disappointed devs left in the wake.  I think they have to make good on this promise this time or they will lose many more devs to other platforms. Very interesting days ahead.

DCF

Have been playing around with Unity3d for almost a year now and using it quite a bit on the job for learning modules. I am still leaning towards Flash when it comes to 2D and GUI intensive things, but Unity is the shiz for 3D.

Here is a silly little particle system test that I was playing around with in my spare time. Got the idea from Keith Peter’s, Making Things Move book and wanted to see how it translated to Unity. Used quite a few emitters, so it is CPU intensive. Run Particle FX

Decided to do some Fall cleaning. Upgraded the blog and let the old post die.