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So much progress was made with Flash by Macromedia, then Adobe bought it and dropped the ball literally after a single version. The software quality degraded al

So much progress was made with Flash by Macromedia, then Adobe bought it and dropped the ball literally after a single version. The software quality degraded almost instantly and new features took way too long to release and came buggy, or conflicted with existing features. Animate CC is by far the buggiest software I use, so much so that it continually saves annoying recovery versions of your documents because crashing happens so frequently. I don’t think Adobe was at all capable of making Flash a success on mobile.

lostgame 5y ago
Couldn’t agree more. Flash with Macromedia felt like a real piece of software that passion and care went into. It was a joy to use. As soon as Adobe grabbed it, it just became a shell of what it had been. Honestly sad to see. :(
- JoeyJoJoJr 5y ago
  I’ve got my whole career to thank Flash for. I discovered it when I was 14 and it absolutely blew my mind. I didn’t know what variables, loops, or functions were, but still somehow figured out how to “program” games. Animate CC is still extremely capable animation software for games purposes. I wish Adobe would just sell it to some other company who could actually leverage its authoring capabilities.
mejutoco 5y ago
Definitely. And Director, which extended to 3d! At the time it was more for interactive cds, but the potential for a Unity-like experience was there.
- kmeisthax 5y ago
  The problem with Director was that most of it's market had switched to Flash at this point. Early on, Flash was a competitor[0] to Director that outcompeted it to the point that Macromedia just bought it out. The way Macromedia differentiated two very similar products was that Director was for bigger projects Flash couldn't handle. Which meant that as Flash got more features, Director made less and less sense to use. There's a good few years where Flash basically was "Unity before Unity" in terms of what you could do with it easily. Later on, right after Adobe released the last version of Director; they tried to market Flash itself as a platform for cross-compiling games to. Except they wanted to charge money for it, in a way that severely pissed off Flash developers and drove even people who did not care about mobile off the platform. [0] Formerly known as FutureWave Splash
  - mejutoco 5y ago
    Interesting. Yes, Director could also do 3d way before Flash, but the interface felt, from what I remember, clunkier. Flash for long running applications leaked so much memory. I remembered developing an electronic information panel for screens in flash. We needed to use mdm (a product that extended flash capabilities) and restart the app automatically to avoid it to run out of memory. Fun times. Haxe was, and is, cool too.

lostgame 5y ago

Couldn’t agree more. Flash with Macromedia felt like a real piece of software that passion and care went into. It was a joy to use. As soon as Adobe grabbed it, it just became a shell of what it had been. Honestly sad to see. :(

JoeyJoJoJr 5y ago
I’ve got my whole career to thank Flash for. I discovered it when I was 14 and it absolutely blew my mind. I didn’t know what variables, loops, or functions were, but still somehow figured out how to “program” games. Animate CC is still extremely capable animation software for games purposes. I wish Adobe would just sell it to some other company who could actually leverage its authoring capabilities.

mejutoco 5y ago

Definitely. And Director, which extended to 3d! At the time it was more for interactive cds, but the potential for a Unity-like experience was there.

kmeisthax 5y ago
The problem with Director was that most of it's market had switched to Flash at this point. Early on, Flash was a competitor[0] to Director that outcompeted it to the point that Macromedia just bought it out. The way Macromedia differentiated two very similar products was that Director was for bigger projects Flash couldn't handle. Which meant that as Flash got more features, Director made less and less sense to use. There's a good few years where Flash basically was "Unity before Unity" in terms of what you could do with it easily. Later on, right after Adobe released the last version of Director; they tried to market Flash itself as a platform for cross-compiling games to. Except they wanted to charge money for it, in a way that severely pissed off Flash developers and drove even people who did not care about mobile off the platform. [0] Formerly known as FutureWave Splash
- mejutoco 5y ago
  Interesting. Yes, Director could also do 3d way before Flash, but the interface felt, from what I remember, clunkier. Flash for long running applications leaked so much memory. I remembered developing an electronic information panel for screens in flash. We needed to use mdm (a product that extended flash capabilities) and restart the app automatically to avoid it to run out of memory. Fun times. Haxe was, and is, cool too.