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[Terry]

Um, so I was under the impression that Adobe AIR was an EXE compiler for Flash. But apparently that's not what it does at all. This is a problem, because I've made my new game VVVVVV in flash, and I want to release it as a downloadable game!

For a few reasons, I'd rather not use the standard flash projector. So I either need to find another way to compile the game to an EXE, or I need to port it to C++, which could be very time consuming.

I have a couple of specific questions to ask, if anyone can help:

 - What is the best way to do what I'm trying to do?

 - How does Machinarium work, exactly? It's a EXE flash game, but it's not a projector. The EXE simply has "Adobe Flash Player 10.0 r32" as its description.

 - Has anybody used Multidmedia's ZINC? What's it like? Will it do what I want?

Cheers!

[Fuzz]

have you tried contacting amanita? they might be able to tell you what you need to know.

[Terry]

have you tried contacting amanita? they might be able to tell you what you need to know.

I think I will, thanks

[Captain_404]

I'd also be interested in doing this. If Once you figure it out, would you mind posting something here to guide the rest of us in the right direction?

[Terry]

Will do. Here's hoping.

First piece of information though; it looks like Zinc is a waste of time. I tried it out and the game ran unplayably slow. (I guess it's possible that this is something the program does to cripple the trial version so that you'll buy the full one, but since it doesn't actually say that anywhere I can only assume the full version is equally useless)

[kiwi]

Quick and easy solution : http://haxe.org/com/libs/swhx
Either that or use C# or C++ or something like that to embed the flash activex and play your swf.

[BorisTheBrave]

I suspect most of these methods are just activeX, or some similar embedding technology, and storing the swf in a data segment of the exe. Nothing's going to work without Flash installed on the system, and as far as protected against decompilation, it's not a particularly helpful move. But I presume the main motivation is just that standalone exe's feel more professional. There's many programs that transform swfs to exe's. In fact, I thought Adobe's own stuff did it..

There are non-Flash-player libraries about there for displaying and playing swfs, but they are not usually drop in replacements. But it might be an easier route than a full port, if you must escape the Adobe universe.

[Draknek]

I have nothing to contribute here, but I'm curious what reasons there are to not use the standard Flash projector.

I presume it doesn't work if you don't already have Flash installed?

[Glaiel-Gamer]

(in flash)
file -> publish settings ->
check "windows projector" and "mac projector"

not sure how in flex, but if you have the debug standalone flash player, you can do file->make projector

also see: adobe air


edit:

I have nothing to contribute here, but I'm curious what reasons there are to not use the standard Flash projector.

I presume it doesn't work if you don't already have Flash installed?

flash projector embeds flash player and the swf into one monster of a thing. Flash player is small though so it never adds much more than 5-6 MB to the size of the swf.

The only reason not to use it is if you need extra functionality, in which case use Air. If Air still doesnt have the functionality you need, then I don't know.

[Terry]

I have nothing to contribute here, but I'm curious what reasons there are to not use the standard Flash projector.

I presume it doesn't work if you don't already have Flash installed?

There are two reasons why I'd rather not use the default Flash projector:

• It's ugly and not user friendly. It has a menu bar with weird settings like zoom, it has the usual right click flash menu thing, it goes back to a window when you press esc - basically, it doesn't behave like a normal application. I've found a way to fix most of this in Windows, but I don't know if I can for Mac or Linux. The far bigger problem, though, is...
• It's not secure. You can extract the SWF file from the projector, which can easily be uploaded by anyone to newgrounds or wherever.

There are also things I was expecting to be able to do with AIR, like write save files locally, which I don't think you can do with a projector... But maybe I'm wrong. I was very wrong about what AIR does

[Terry]

It looks like there are quite a few different SWF2EXE tools like Zinc out there, and I've just tried one called SWF Studio that doesn't have the slowdown problem - though instead has a very very slow loading time that causes the system to freeze. So that's not really an option either. Also, Zinc is the only one that appears to be cross platform, so it's probably the only option anyway.

The Haxe thing looks interesting! I'll look into it - thanks, kiwi

[Glaiel-Gamer]

I have nothing to contribute here, but I'm curious what reasons there are to not use the standard Flash projector.

I presume it doesn't work if you don't already have Flash installed?

There are two reasons why I'd rather not use the default Flash projector:

• It's ugly and not user friendly. It has a menu bar with weird settings like zoom, it has the usual right click flash menu thing, it goes back to a window when you press esc - basically, it doesn't behave like a normal application. I've found a way to fix most of this in Windows, but I don't know if I can for Mac or Linux. The far bigger problem, though, is...
• It's not secure. You can extract the SWF file from the projector, which can easily be uploaded by anyone to newgrounds or wherever.

There are also things I was expecting to be able to do with AIR, like write save files locally, which I don't think you can do with a projector... But maybe I'm wrong. I was very wrong about what AIR does

1. use air

2. you could lock the swf to "localhost". I.E. look up the url, if it's not "localhost/........" then send them to a "fuck you" page.

3. air lets you save files and get rid of the menu and stuff

[Terry]

Ok, hang on - are you saying that I can make a single, standalone EXE with AIR? Because I haven't been able to do that, and I was under the impression that that's not how it works...

[Terry]

2. you could lock the swf to "localhost". I.E. look up the url, if it's not "localhost/........" then send them to a "fuck you" page.

I did that with the offline version of Don't Look Back, but I recently had someone decompile a game of mine and remove the sitelock. I don't think that's really secure if the person playing has incentive to hack it.

[Fuzz]

speaking of this... once you figure that out, might you be able to do something similar for your online-only games?

edit: just remembered something about machinarium: on macs that have machinarium installed, it makes swf files open machinarium by default, without showing the content of the said swf file.

[PlayMeTape]

I'm not very good at all of these hard things, but when you downloaded Meat Boy didn't you get an .exe? So maybe ask Edmund?

[Draknek]

If the main issue is encryption, then maybe the solution is to encrypt the swf before turning it into a projector or to create an executable that wraps an encrypted version of the projector.

[Fuzz]

I'm not very good at all of these hard things, but when you downloaded Meat Boy didn't you get an .exe? So maybe ask Edmund?

That uses a flash projector, which is not what Terry wants.

[Terry]

I'm not very good at all of these hard things, but when you downloaded Meat Boy didn't you get an .exe? So maybe ask Edmund?

I think that was just the usual Flash projector as well

If the main issue is encryption, then maybe the solution is to encrypt the swf before turning it into a projector or to create an executable that wraps an encrypted version of the projector.

Yeah, I think so - unfortunately, I don't think any of those programs actually work for very long...

I was really hoping that there was some way to just compile an Actionscript Flex project to an EXE, but it looks like you can't do that. So it looks like I'm just going to have to port it. Which is... not that scary, really.

[Bennett]

Seems like maybe you could build it as an AIR application and buy Shu lite as a cheap projector. They have a free trial, and the lite version is $45. There's joystick support, and Mac and Windows. That's what I'm planning to try for my Gamma4 project.