Flash Gaming

[MagicPants]

The only FLASH games I play are Tower-Defense Games, so I don't know if this problem is in every Flash Game. But somehow they are incredibly slow onto the PC. My Machine is old but even at the modern DualCore of my buddy, these Games are just slow if the onscreen Action is heavy. Full CPU Usage always. I don't know if flash is just the wrong plattform for such games or the games are just bad coded, I don't know. I haven't found a good TD-Flash game yet without (later ingame) slowdowns included.

So I wonder, how these Games would run onto the Pandora?

The last tower defense game I played was gemcraft. It's pretty well coded and doesn't slow down on later levels. Tower defense games generally just have to many bullets/missles/arrows flying around on screen in later levels.

Try "The Last Stand 2" as well, it's zombie survival defense.

 

[God Ginrai]

Why do people keep making flash seem impossible? Adobe got rid of the licensing for Flash, so any Flashplayers should skyrocket in development from here on. I think it is a very great possibility for the Pandora, you just have to give it some time.

-God Ginrai

 

[sindbad]

Licensing was never an issue. Both the swfdec and gnash developers have stated that it will not affect development much, as all the specs were known before. Neither will the existence of the pandora.

Swfdec is the best all around player right now and it's still crap. Gnash has somewhat better scripting but lousy video. Flash 7.0 features are mostly complete in both and only the absolutely most used 9.0 stuff sprinkled around.

Video sites work and that's about it. It will take a long, long time to get a full implementation working as flash is a complex piece of software. Don't dream games on flash too soon.

 

[fusion_power]

NO. Firefox is already ported to the pandora.

Really? With or WITHOUT Image-Zoom? One of the most important things are missing in (older) Firefox Browsers was built-in Zoom for Text AND Images. VERY usefull onto a mobile device AND a reason why I would prefer OPERA onto the Pandora.

Oh, and all the years, the ARM Architecture exists, Adobe never had the Idea to release a Full Flash Player version for this Architecture? Nothing? Nada? Why? Don't they like ARM?

 

[Svartalf]

Why do people keep making flash seem impossible? Adobe got rid of the licensing for Flash, so any Flashplayers should skyrocket in development from here on. I think it is a very great possibility for the Pandora, you just have to give it some time.

-God Ginrai

Did I say that it was impossible? No. What I said was that the proprietary one from Adobe (which DOES need licensing and under some cases money paid up front for the porting over- there's just no royalties...) was unlikely to be obtained and GNASH isn't it right now. At rollout time (Release of MK1's), the odds of full-on Flash support capable of playing games right isn't looking terribly good. Later on's another story, but right now there's no credible proprietary answer that won't cost someone cash to make happen and the FOSS stuff's not ready yet.

Oh, and all the years, the ARM Architecture exists, Adobe never had the Idea to release a Full Flash Player version for this Architecture? Nothing? Nada? Why? Don't they like ARM?

Oh, they have it. Nokia ships the N770 and N800 with one that works- and it's ARM. But Nokia PAID for that to happen- and specifically and only for the N770 and N8x0 units. While they talk about "Open" for the new stuff, the only thing that's open enough right now is the specs (which will help GNASH greatly...)- there's no link to get a generic ARM version of the same player that's with the Nokia MIDs. Until there is, one can assume that it's no cost to distribute, but there's a licensing cost to get it over to the platform (which is actually more common than one would think in the industry...).

 

[crazedover]

NO. Firefox is already ported to the pandora.

Really? With or WITHOUT Image-Zoom? One of the most important things are missing in (older) Firefox Browsers was built-in Zoom for Text AND Images. VERY usefull onto a mobile device AND a reason why I would prefer OPERA onto the Pandora.

Oh, and all the years, the ARM Architecture exists, Adobe never had the Idea to release a Full Flash Player version for this Architecture? Nothing? Nada? Why? Don't they like ARM?

Firefox 3 is what has been ported, I think.

 

[God Ginrai]

NO. Firefox is already ported to the pandora.

Really? With or WITHOUT Image-Zoom? One of the most important things are missing in (older) Firefox Browsers was built-in Zoom for Text AND Images. VERY usefull onto a mobile device AND a reason why I would prefer OPERA onto the Pandora.

Oh, and all the years, the ARM Architecture exists, Adobe never had the Idea to release a Full Flash Player version for this Architecture? Nothing? Nada? Why? Don't they like ARM?

Firefox 3 is what has been ported.


Where do people keep getting the idea that FireFox is already ported to the pandora? When did the devs say that? All I remember about Firefox is that MWeston, craigix, etc. saw FireFox 3 running on an OMAP processor at TIDC. I don't remember them saying that TI handed them the ported version, or anything to suggest that it is ported to the Pandora.

-God Ginrai

 

[javaJake]

It'd be pretty silly, frankly, if Firefox 3 wasn't ported to the Pandora, especially when it's one of the items mentioned on the main website.

 

[God Ginrai]

It'd be pretty silly, frankly, if Firefox 3 wasn't ported to the Pandora, especially when it's one of the items mentioned on the main website.

Ooh, does that mean that Quake3 is already ported to the pandora as well?[/n00b]

Do you see the flaw in your logic? It says the pandora has the POWER to handle both FireFox 3 and Quake 3, but that doesn't mean that they're already ported.

-God Ginrai

 

[JakeK]

But I think the liklihood of it happening is pretty high.

 

[Svartalf]

But I think the liklihood of it happening is pretty high.

Heh... Foregone conclusion, really.

Firefox3 doesn't need any substantive work on it's own to be "ported", it just needs some key runtime libs
which don't need "porting"- and it'll get compiled up like the libraries would. In this case, a concern of
memory requirements is in order, but I think we have enough on the Pandora to make that work right.

Quake3 isn't "ported", but it's bloody damn close and if TI's already done the work of making it happen for demos
then it's intrinsically ported or easily portable- it's OpenGL, SDL, etc. in the first place. The only sticking point
over the Firefox3 situation for it would be the ES layer work, which isn't going to be all that hard (If we have
ES 1.1 available, it'll be almost a slam-dunk...). Once you have the slightly modified rendering layer the
rest just is a recompile away.

The bickering about "is it ported or not" is really a bunch of noise about little.

It's a LINUX program.
It's not got silly endian mistakes.
It's not got any platform specific code in it (i.e. Going to a specific device that exists on only a few platforms...)
It has the runtime libs built for it that have the same aforementioned criteria.

If those four things are met, it's already pretty much "ported".

 

[Sphinxter]

Flash is proprietary and should be shunned.

 

[Chip]

Flash is proprietary and should be shunned.

Flash is ubiquitous and essential for an optimum web experience. You may not like it, but if you forgo Flash purely out of spite, you do so to only your own detriment.

 

[Sphinxter]

Flash is proprietary and should be shunned.

Flash is ubiquitous and essential for an optimum web experience. You may not like it, but if you forgo Flash purely out of spite, you do so to only your own detriment.


Yeah, my life is soooo empty without it.

 

[WizardStan]

Flash is proprietary and should be shunned.

NES, SNES, and all other such video game systems are proprietary, and should be shunned. No point in writing emulators then, eh?
MP3, AVI, MPG are all proprietary, wouldn't want an open source system like Pandora to play them.
Sarcasm aside, as has been said many times, Adobe has opened the spec to cross platform developers. If anything, this should be encouraged so that others might take such steps towards open platforms.

 

[waffles]

Flash is proprietary and should be shunned.

Flash is ubiquitous and essential for an optimum web experience. You may not like it, but if you forgo Flash purely out of spite, you do so to only your own detriment.


Yeah, my life is soooo empty without it.

Your life is definetly if you haven't played some of the better flash games, such as the last stand or fancy pants adventure.

 

[Sphinxter]

While waiting for a 64 bit plug-in I quit only to discover it's actually a form of web pollution. I really don't know what I missed when it comes to ?nes, would not give them any money after checking the requirements for third party developers. There are not hot enough open codecs, sad state of affairs that. Why add to the situation? If enough shunned it maybe they would open it up.

 

[WizardStan]

While waiting for a 64 bit plug-in I quit only to discover it's actually a form of web pollution. I really don't know what I missed when it comes to ?nes, would not give them any money after checking the requirements for third party developers. There are not hot enough open codecs, sad state of affairs that. Why add to the situation? If enough shunned it maybe they would open it up.

But... it is open. Anyone can look at the specs and write their own player for SWF files. How much more open could it get?

 

[chad78]

While waiting for a 64 bit plug-in I quit only to discover it's actually a form of web pollution. I really don't know what I missed when it comes to ?nes, would not give them any money after checking the requirements for third party developers. There are not hot enough open codecs, sad state of affairs that. Why add to the situation? If enough shunned it maybe they would open it up.
Sooooo.... you won't give them money because they are evil corporate whores - but you are willing to steal their work for your own amusement. Niiice.

I do buy some games - and I do buy hardware. I've owned literally hundreds of actual, physical carts for Nintendo alone throughout the years - and hundreds more carts and discs for other consoles.

Have I payed for every game I've ever played? No. But I'm not sitting around saying I refuse to give them money because they are evil.

 

[enigmacipher]

Flash is proprietary and should be shunned.

NES, SNES, and all other such video game systems are proprietary, and should be shunned. No point in writing emulators then, eh?

Flash should be shunned, because as said before, it is is a HUGE part of the internet. Without it, internet just isnt *complete*. Because it is so important, having it very proprietary makes internet on devices like the iphone and pandora just not complete.

Of course, from what ive heard, this whole "adobe opening up spec" Should make me want to shun flash less.

VIDEO GAME SYSTEMS can be proprietary, because by nature, they were meant to be played on the system, for the system. Making them proprietary doesn't limit people (unless they are pennyless), in fact it probably improves much of the system quality, and helps to keep the video game economy stable. [/speculation]