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Anyone have a good explanation for why someone hasn’t built a true replacement? e.g. a good, widely used flash-like tool that compiled down to a HTML5 bundle of

by acid__ 6y ago

Anyone have a good explanation for why someone hasn’t built a true replacement? e.g. a good, widely used flash-like tool that compiled down to a HTML5 bundle of assets?

Vorh 6y ago
I haven't worked with Unity, but doesn't it compile to web?
- larsiusprime 6y ago
  Unity WebGL export is a big rusty bucket. It works but it's a) incredibly heavy, and b) the abstraction leaks and is buggy.
- redisman 6y ago
  Unity is a fine game engine but where flash had a handful of abstractions you needed to make games, unity has hundreds. It’s never going to reach the same audience (as in the non technical devs)
larsiusprime 6y ago
There's been lots! I've funded and contributed to many of them! The most famous is probably OpenFL, which uses the Haxe programming language. It does exactly that. You can even use Adobe Animate to author content for it. The main missing pieces, however, are: 1) The abstraction inevitably leaks. HTML5 is just a fundamentally fiddly bundle of tech and there's always this or that little thing that can shake loose. 2) The tech burden is fundamentally higher with an open source project no matter how you try. With Flash you never needed to even touch a command line or download anything other than the Flash authoring tool. 3) The community is smaller. Fewer tutorials, fewer people able and willing to help you out. It's respectable, but back in the day Flash's community was MASSIVE. You'd post on the forum and get a detailed technical reply in MINUTES. 4) Resources are thinner. Without Macromedia or Adobe's pockets individual developers just have to bear the burden of dev/maintenance themselves. 5) Flash portals are dead. Now everything's about app stores for software and baked-out video for animation. It's still a great project and I use it myself, but IMHO it's going to take someone to dump a bunch of money and time on top of these ongoing projects to recreate all the magic Flash had. There's only so much a small community of open source coders can be expected to pull off.
- bawolff 6y ago
  > The tech burden is fundamentally higher with an open source project no matter how you try. With Flash you never needed to even touch a command line or download anything other than the Flash authoring tool. What does open source even remotely have to do with that?
  - larsiusprime 6y ago
    Sorry, using it as shorthand for "small project of volunteers with limited funding", which is the specific case with OpenFL. Getting the aesthetics and UX and tooling up to snuff is really hard and we've had our hands full just getting the tech online.
rishav_sharan 6y ago
Openfl. All flash APIs are supported and it compiles to js
shepardrtc 6y ago
You should check out https://www.ceros.com/ https://www.ceros.com/ That's actually exactly what we do.

by acid__ 6y ago

Anyone have a good explanation for why someone hasn’t built a true replacement? e.g. a good, widely used flash-like tool that compiled down to a HTML5 bundle of assets?

Vorh 6y ago

I haven't worked with Unity, but doesn't it compile to web?

larsiusprime 6y ago
Unity WebGL export is a big rusty bucket. It works but it's a) incredibly heavy, and b) the abstraction leaks and is buggy.
redisman 6y ago
Unity is a fine game engine but where flash had a handful of abstractions you needed to make games, unity has hundreds. It’s never going to reach the same audience (as in the non technical devs)

larsiusprime 6y ago

There's been lots! I've funded and contributed to many of them! The most famous is probably OpenFL, which uses the Haxe programming language. It does exactly that. You can even use Adobe Animate to author content for it. The main missing pieces, however, are: 1) The abstraction inevitably leaks. HTML5 is just a fundamentally fiddly bundle of tech and there's always this or that little thing that can shake loose. 2) The tech burden is fundamentally higher with an open source project no matter how you try. With Flash you never needed to even touch a command line or download anything other than the Flash authoring tool. 3) The community is smaller. Fewer tutorials, fewer people able and willing to help you out. It's respectable, but back in the day Flash's community was MASSIVE. You'd post on the forum and get a detailed technical reply in MINUTES. 4) Resources are thinner. Without Macromedia or Adobe's pockets individual developers just have to bear the burden of dev/maintenance themselves. 5) Flash portals are dead. Now everything's about app stores for software and baked-out video for animation. It's still a great project and I use it myself, but IMHO it's going to take someone to dump a bunch of money and time on top of these ongoing projects to recreate all the magic Flash had. There's only so much a small community of open source coders can be expected to pull off.

bawolff 6y ago
> The tech burden is fundamentally higher with an open source project no matter how you try. With Flash you never needed to even touch a command line or download anything other than the Flash authoring tool. What does open source even remotely have to do with that?
- larsiusprime 6y ago
  Sorry, using it as shorthand for "small project of volunteers with limited funding", which is the specific case with OpenFL. Getting the aesthetics and UX and tooling up to snuff is really hard and we've had our hands full just getting the tech online.

rishav_sharan 6y ago

Openfl. All flash APIs are supported and it compiles to js

shepardrtc 6y ago

You should check out https://www.ceros.com/ https://www.ceros.com/ That's actually exactly what we do.