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[BlueSweatshirt]

Adobe owns Flash entirely, and can do whatever they want with it. Therefore it's closed, right?

Personally, I'm more excited for alternatives to Flash. Why is this? Because you won't need Flash Player to play games. Not something against flash player, but it's that I believe it much more accessible if the browser already supports what you're trying to do.

[aeiowu]

what if unity could port to HTML5?

[Skofo]

That would be pretty sweet, actually. I have been staying away from Unity because of its proprietary plugin.

[Core Xii]

Flash is a pretty open standard. The file format is documented, and there is an open source compiler. Not 100% open, as there are restrictions on how you use the spec, and some undocumented features in the Flash Player, but all in all, pretty good.

No.

Just because it's been mostly reverse-engineered does not make it an open standard. Flash is proprietary.

[Tuba]

Pretty cool.. still useless for more complex games but looks perfect for card games, board games and interactive banners (those stupid punch the monkey things). Adobe might lose a big market here.

[nikki]

still useless for more complex games

quake II in html5 

[Tuba]

still useless for more complex games

quake II in html5 

Damn, I forgot about that.

[synapse]

The web is not a damn gaming platform.

I guess the multi-billion dollar web-game industry should just quit, then

[Melly]

Core Xii, you sound more like you resent the popularity of Flash games in general for some reason. Why should it bother you? Did you make an executable game similar to a Flash game and the Flash one was much more popular or something? To state that people should develop games such and such way is just as bad as when you state how people should live in general.

Oh, did you know Mac doesn't have right-click either? My goodness, their users must be incapable of doing anything! And I find it amusing how you seem to state that simple Flash games are invariably crappy. I guess good gameplay is directly dependent on processing horse-power.

[Glaiel-Gamer]

Flash is a pretty open standard. The file format is documented, and there is an open source compiler. Not 100% open, as there are restrictions on how you use the spec, and some undocumented features in the Flash Player, but all in all, pretty good.

No.

Just because it's been mostly reverse-engineered does not make it an open standard. Flash is proprietary.

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/swf/

i'm pretty familiar with this document after writing an c++/opengl decoder/renderer
seems pretty open to me

[Core Xii]

Core Xii, you sound more like you resent the popularity of Flash games in general for some reason. Why should it bother you? Did you make an executable game similar to a Flash game and the Flash one was much more popular or something? To state that people should develop games such and such way is just as bad as when you state how people should live in general.

Heh heh, no. I'm just voicing my opinion about what people should do; Whether they actually listen to me is of course completely up to them. I resent the popularity of lots of things, like Windows, tobacco and neurotoxins used in food products as sweeteners because I believe they are harmful trends on the whole, just like Flash.

I can appreciate what they've accomplished to this point, but now it's time to evolve.

Oh, did you know Mac doesn't have right-click either? My goodness, their users must be incapable of doing anything!

I resent Mac just as much :D

And I find it amusing how you seem to state that simple Flash games are invariably crappy. I guess good gameplay is directly dependent on processing horse-power.

A simple game by definition lacks depth and is therefore crappy. No simple game could ever hold the interest of a complex PC player like me for long. I'm sure more casual gamers can entertain themselves on Pong and Tetris for years and years...

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/swf/

i'm pretty familiar with this document after writing an c++/opengl decoder/renderer
seems pretty open to me

In June 2009, Adobe launched the Open Screen Project, which made the SWF specification available without restrictions. Previously, developers couldn't use the specification for making SWF-compatible players, but only for making SWF-exporting authoring software. The specification remains incomplete, however, as it does not include any details regarding Sorenson Spark.

I guess it is sort of open then, but that's not good enough for me. A specification is either 100% open or it's not to be called such. No half-assing open standards!

[bateleur]

It's not that much harder to make a real desktop application that's in every way better than a web game.

Sure, but who's going to play it? The point of a web game is that you don't have to install anything or do anything other that click "Go!".

Fair enough if you don't like Flash, but web games generally clearly have a valid role to fill.

and then we end up back in the same position as we are right now with Flash - it's not part of a globally accepted standard, so it -might- work depending on what you're using to view the page?

I see what you're trying to say here, but actually you have this precisely backwards!

Flash is a global standard. The problem with Flash as a standard is that it's proprietary and closed and therefore anyone using it is at the mercy of some future stupid decision by Adobe.

However, there's a balance to be drawn between open standards (generally a good thing) and having stuff that's finished, working and does what you want (also generally a good thing). Flash is arguably the world's first truly portable computing platform (or was briefly until Apple decided to be @sshats). If you think even for a moment that an open standard for such a thing could ever be developed in a way that would result in widespread adoption, you know mercifully little about design by committee.

Perfect example: mobile phone software. Ten years ago there were quite literally billions to be made from mobile software. However, attempts to get the mobile companies to agree to a software standard were beyond hopeless. As a result any developer had to port separately to (at least) half a dozen incompatible handsets. This made mobile software unprofitable for most developers and so none of it got developed. Result: no pie for anyone.

[muku]

Oh, did you know Mac doesn't have right-click either? My goodness, their users must be incapable of doing anything!

I resent Mac just as much :D

Let's just say I'm not surprised

And I find it amusing how you seem to state that simple Flash games are invariably crappy. I guess good gameplay is directly dependent on processing horse-power.

A simple game by definition lacks depth and is therefore crappy.

Have you by any chance tried Go? The rules can be explained in a few minutes. The game is incredibly deep.

No simple game could ever hold the interest of a complex PC player like me for long. I'm sure more casual gamers can entertain themselves on Pong and Tetris for years and years...

So you concede that many people entertain themselves perfectly fine with web games, but since those don't suit your taste, you proclaim categorically that "the web is not a gaming platform"? Man, that's unpleasant. I know it's hard to swallow, but you are not The One Arbiter Of Good Taste And Final Truth. Leave it to people to decide for themselves what they like and what not.

[jotapeh]

Oh, did you know Mac doesn't have right-click either? My goodness, their users must be incapable of doing anything!

I resent Mac just as much :D

 

this hasn't been true for over a decade


anyway, back on topic, I agree with bateleur's latest set of assertions

[Schtee]

and then we end up back in the same position as we are right now with Flash - it's not part of a globally accepted standard, so it -might- work depending on what you're using to view the page?

I see what you're trying to say here, but actually you have this precisely backwards!

Flash is a global standard. The problem with Flash as a standard is that it's proprietary and closed and therefore anyone using it is at the mercy of some future stupid decision by Adobe.

However, there's a balance to be drawn between open standards (generally a good thing) and having stuff that's finished, working and does what you want (also generally a good thing). Flash is arguably the world's first truly portable computing platform (or was briefly until Apple decided to be @sshats). If you think even for a moment that an open standard for such a thing could ever be developed in a way that would result in widespread adoption, you know mercifully little about design by committee.

Perfect example: mobile phone software. Ten years ago there were quite literally billions to be made from mobile software. However, attempts to get the mobile companies to agree to a software standard were beyond hopeless. As a result any developer had to port separately to (at least) half a dozen incompatible handsets. This made mobile software unprofitable for most developers and so none of it got developed. Result: no pie for anyone.

A fair, well-made, and reasoned point. I guess I'm thinking open standards, left to software vendors to implement (HTML), rather than proprietary software (Flash, etc).

[Triplefox]

I did a point-by-point feature comparison between Flash and JS back in March.

The main thing that could hold JS back from a bright future is browser fragmentation, but I doubt it'll happen. Right now there's a very high level of cooperation and the standards are moving along fast. The players involved now mostly stand to lose if they repeat the 90's browser wars. Apple doesn't depend on developers for platform success like Microsoft did 15 years ago, they just want a product with an extremely controlled and consistent UX; a standardized Web works towards that. Mozilla is essentially chartered to fight for standards. And Google wants more things on the Web so that it can sell more ads.

On the subject of Flash being open - "partially" open describes it well. The specs are sitting out there, but they are missing certain of the higher-level features with video and networking(which are probably patent-encumbered) and they don't represent all the quirks of the one and only canonical implementation of Flash. The open-source stacks are forced into a perpetual catch-up.

I am very much for the Web becoming a better game platform. I want to reach the biggest audience possible, and I want it to be as convenient as possible. Games are not the kind of thing you should need to install and maintain and troubleshoot, and the way to reach ubiquitous convenient gaming is through a VM, ideally one with an open implementation.

If you're rejecting the notion of convenience, as Core Xii seems to want to do, then you're being a "Technology Tough Guy," a subset of the well-known "Internet Tough Guy." Do you seriously want to make a claim along the lines of: "people should man up and learn how to install drivers and libraries so that they can play REAL, complex games..."?

[pgil]

I resent the popularity of lots of things, like Windows, tobacco and neurotoxins used in food products

At least you don't spell it Window$.

[RabTom]

I resent the popularity of lots of things, like Windows, tobacco and neurotoxins used in food products

At least you don't spell it Window$.

no no, it's Windoze and M$
With apple shutting almost everything out, this could help the platform, since javascript is still in their "okay list" of languages you can use.

[Melly]

A simple game by definition lacks depth and is therefore crappy. No simple game could ever hold the interest of a complex PC player like me for long. I'm sure more casual gamers can entertain themselves on Pong and Tetris for years and years...

I don't think this forum is the right place for you.

[bateleur]

I guess I'm thinking open standards, left to software vendors to implement (HTML), rather than proprietary software (Flash, etc).

This is probably how JS will go... but it still makes me nervous because of what happened to MIDP (the mobile Java "standard").