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[Glaiel-Gamer]

Hm, hadn't heard of that, that's pretty impressive. How about particle effects, though? Does Flash do that well?

If you do it right

http://lab.glaielgames.com/cam1.htm

[december]

Also alien hominid only made money after they ported it to their c++ engine.

Flash might be a good start at marketing your game, but there is hardly anyway to monetize it.

don't underestimate how good it is to get your prototype up fast to work out design

[Paul Eres]

Just played the game. The motionblur-like effects in that game are pretty nice, I hadn't seen that done in Flash before. Perhaps it's just that most Flash games are so incompetently made that my impression of what it can do was skewed downward.

That particles example is very nice too, but the frame rate seems low (though that may just be an illusion, it's hard to measure frame rate directly by eye).

I would still say that for very large games, GM still seems better, if only for distribution reasons -- once Flash games get beyond a certain size (50mb+) waiting for them to download each time you want to play it is impractical. A game also doesn't immerse the player as well without full screen mode and dedicated resolutions (although maybe Flash could do full screen too and change the screen resolution too and I just haven't seen it).

[Glaiel-Gamer]

I would still say that for very large games, GM still seems better, if only for distribution reasons -- once Flash games get beyond a certain size (50mb+) waiting for them to download each time you want to play it is impractical. A game also doesn't immerse the player as well without full screen mode and dedicated resolutions (although maybe Flash could do full screen too and change the screen resolution too and I just haven't seen it).

Large flash games don't get over 50 MB in size, and by the point that you need that much data most people will be pulling it from the server.

And again, flash CAN do full screen (you just need to enable it in the HTML, or hit ctrl-f in a standalone). Youtube does this when you hit their fullscreen button.

And yes, your impressions of flash are skewed down by the huge amount of crap there is.

Also for large projects, wouldn't it be better to just code it from scratch in c/++? That is obviously the most optimal and it's the direction I'm heading.

some other impressive flash (not mine):
http://www.closier.nl/playground/railaway_express.html

[Paul Eres]

That one does look really nice. I didn't know ctrl-f fullscreened Flash games, I'll have to try that.

There's one last thing that is annoying about most (all?) Flash games to me: the right mouse button brings up some menu specific to Flash. Does that mean you can't make games where both the left and mouse right button interact with the game? That kind of limits mouse control if so.

[Paul Eres]

Oh, also: can you use game controllers / joysticks with Flash? Or is it limited to keyboard/mouse?

[Alec]

Would someone be willing to teach me flash?

I'd like to play around with it, but I have no idea where to start.

[Glaiel-Gamer]

That one does look really nice. I didn't know ctrl-f fullscreened Flash games, I'll have to try that.

There's one last thing that is annoying about most (all?) Flash games to me: the right mouse button brings up some menu specific to Flash. Does that mean you can't make games where both the left and mouse right button interact with the game? That kind of limits mouse control if so.

Ya right click ALWAYS brings up their menu, but you can control what appears in that menu (other than Settings and About Flash Player XX.XX.XX, those are always there).

Ctrl-F will only fullscreen games you download, not ones on the web.

[Glaiel-Gamer]

Oh, also: can you use game controllers / joysticks with Flash? Or is it limited to keyboard/mouse?

Not directly but there's hacks and you could always bind gamepad keys to keyboard keys (I do that with the wiimote every now and then, its fun)

[Paul Eres]

re Right mouse button: Hm, that's still pretty annoying. Many of those games in that video would not work as well without the mouse being able to use both buttons. But there are probably ways around it, like holding down a button and clicking to emulate the RMB.

Would someone be willing to teach me flash?

I'd like to play around with it, but I have no idea where to start.

Ditto. I want to learn Flash too, but I want to learn it from people (like Edmund and Glaiel-Gamer) who actually know how to do all these nice things with it, but whenever I look for Flash tutorials they're always written by the guys who make those horrible typical Flash games.

[Alec]

Ditto. I want to learn Flash too, but I want to learn it from people (like Edmund and Glaiel-Gamer) who actually know how to do all these nice things with it, but whenever I look for Flash tutorials they're always written by the guys who make those horrible typical Flash games.

Yeah!

I can pay well, for I am of noble blood...

Blood Omen quote, lol

[Craig Stern]

Oh, also: can you use game controllers / joysticks with Flash?

No, unfortunately--that's one of my few complaints about it.

[Glaiel-Gamer]

I'm willing to help as in be a reference if you have questions but I don't really have the time to teach someone the ins and outs of flash from beginning to end.

BTW can gamemaker do dynamic sound?
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/466032 

[Paul Eres]

Blood Omen is great. It was really creepy too, with pretty interesting characters (especially those enemies you had to kill that were associated with those pillars). I need to replay it one day.

As for Dynamic sound, if you mean moving a sound effect from the left to the right speakers depending on your position in the game, and 3D sound in general, sure, you can use the FMOD or BASS libraries with Game Maker.

[Paul Eres]

Could you describe how you learned Flash, Glaiel? Did you just learn everything yourself based on the reference manual, or did you learn by example, or etc.? I.e. what would you suggest is the best way to learn it?