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They can't even get Flash to work well on the desktop. Video performance is abysmal. Sure, it's possible that they'll get their act together for the mobile vers

They can't even get Flash to work well on the desktop. Video performance is abysmal. Sure, it's possible that they'll get their act together for the mobile versions, but it seems unlikely. And that is a very good thing.

chipsy 17y ago
The more I work with Flash the more I see glaring faults that will probably never be resolved: -Lousy internationalization(showstopper language-specific input bugs have remained unfixed for a year+) -Inconsistent API access(For example, you can load a Sound from a ByteArray, but not a Video.....), new features are arbitrarily exposed via one of the Flash IDE, AS3 APIs, and MXML and not necessarily the others. -Default fonts fall back on system fonts. Hence many swfs render text incorrectly, sometimes illegibly, on platforms lacking the fonts they were built for. -Major performance variations across platforms. Using lots of alpha transparency for your game? Then say goodbye to Linux, because alpha is absurdly slow on that platform. (Plus to rub salt in the wound, since there's no palettized, colorkeyed transparency, that's kind of the only option for most layered effects.) I have this dim hope that the JVM will somehow reemerge as a strong browser gaming platform, as it has great modern languages and tons of libraries and infrastructure - putting it technically well ahead of any other option I know of, but MS played that crucial king-maker role for large-scale deployment of Flash early on; nothing points to that scenario ever happening for the JVM. So if you want to reach the largest gaming audience possible Flash is still going to be "it" for the foreseeable future.
- johnnybgoode 17y ago
  Interesting info. What is your opinion of the prospects for browsers with canvas, O3D, etc. as a gaming platform?
  - chipsy 17y ago
    There is a strong possibility that a platform using Javascript and some combination of canvas/O3D/other APIs will emerge in the next decade. But it will take a while and not all the pieces are visible yet, because you need to support several I/O components beyond fast graphics to have a really credible game platform: -user file system access, low-level networking, swf or jar-style data & code bundles -input devices: keyboard, mouse, gamepad...graceful coordination of input between the rest of the browser and the game is needed. -sound and music, preferably with abilities to do runtime sound generation and processing Missing one of those isn't necessarily a showstopper, with the right kind of game, but together they put severe constraints on what can be built and how easily it can be distributed. Flash has very gradually and awkwardly added some degree of support for all of these things, but its origins as a graphic design and animation tool still pollute the design, even with the major refactor of Flash 9 and Actionscript 3. The JVM platform is a lot more self-consistent and it has solutions for all of this stuff right now, hence why I'm more hopeful about it than a Javascript-based solution, or another plugin like Unity.
    - johnnybgoode 17y ago
      Thanks for the response. I wonder what percentage of users will have the JVM installed in the future; maybe it depends on Oracle's plans.

chipsy 17y ago

The more I work with Flash the more I see glaring faults that will probably never be resolved: -Lousy internationalization(showstopper language-specific input bugs have remained unfixed for a year+) -Inconsistent API access(For example, you can load a Sound from a ByteArray, but not a Video.....), new features are arbitrarily exposed via one of the Flash IDE, AS3 APIs, and MXML and not necessarily the others. -Default fonts fall back on system fonts. Hence many swfs render text incorrectly, sometimes illegibly, on platforms lacking the fonts they were built for. -Major performance variations across platforms. Using lots of alpha transparency for your game? Then say goodbye to Linux, because alpha is absurdly slow on that platform. (Plus to rub salt in the wound, since there's no palettized, colorkeyed transparency, that's kind of the only option for most layered effects.) I have this dim hope that the JVM will somehow reemerge as a strong browser gaming platform, as it has great modern languages and tons of libraries and infrastructure - putting it technically well ahead of any other option I know of, but MS played that crucial king-maker role for large-scale deployment of Flash early on; nothing points to that scenario ever happening for the JVM. So if you want to reach the largest gaming audience possible Flash is still going to be "it" for the foreseeable future.

johnnybgoode 17y ago
Interesting info. What is your opinion of the prospects for browsers with canvas, O3D, etc. as a gaming platform?
- chipsy 17y ago
  There is a strong possibility that a platform using Javascript and some combination of canvas/O3D/other APIs will emerge in the next decade. But it will take a while and not all the pieces are visible yet, because you need to support several I/O components beyond fast graphics to have a really credible game platform: -user file system access, low-level networking, swf or jar-style data & code bundles -input devices: keyboard, mouse, gamepad...graceful coordination of input between the rest of the browser and the game is needed. -sound and music, preferably with abilities to do runtime sound generation and processing Missing one of those isn't necessarily a showstopper, with the right kind of game, but together they put severe constraints on what can be built and how easily it can be distributed. Flash has very gradually and awkwardly added some degree of support for all of these things, but its origins as a graphic design and animation tool still pollute the design, even with the major refactor of Flash 9 and Actionscript 3. The JVM platform is a lot more self-consistent and it has solutions for all of this stuff right now, hence why I'm more hopeful about it than a Javascript-based solution, or another plugin like Unity.
  - johnnybgoode 17y ago
    Thanks for the response. I wonder what percentage of users will have the JVM installed in the future; maybe it depends on Oracle's plans.