Aside

Think of JavaScript whatever you want, but at this point it’s becoming the lingua franca of computer programming. Pretty much every personal computer has one or more JavaScript interpreters (browsers) installed.

The future of Adobe Flash

Posted on Jueves, 23 de febrero del 2012 by miguelSantirso

Adobe has published an article called “Adobe roadmap for the Flash runtimes” that contains a very interesting insight into the thoughts of Adobe about one of their most popular products.

In my opinion, if you are using Flash to develop videogames, you need to read it carefully. Also, if you want to learn about the future of the videogames on the web, it will be interesting for you too.

Adobe roadmap for the Flash runtimes

The key idea transmitted by Adobe is that they accept that Flash is no longer the best option to deploy rich motion graphics in the browser, since HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript have become the best option. However, Flash remains with the same objective it had ten years ago: Enable experiences that would not be possible or feasible without it.

With that in mind, Adobe has decided to focus in two different markets: Gaming and premium video. Also, they have planned an effort to make changes in the Flash player architecture and in the ActionScript language.

In the last part of the document, they detail the technology roadmap for the next year. I would highlight the following features:

Flash Player 11.2 (first quarter 2012)

Better mouse support (mouse lock, right and middle click)
Hardware acceleration for iOS and Android (via AIR)
Support for video cards from 2008

Flash Player “Cyril” (second quarter 2012)

Better full screen support
Progressive texture streaming for Stage3D content
LZMA compression for ByteArrays

Flash Player “Dolores” (second half 2012)

ActionScript workers (multiple threads)
Advanced profiling
Support for video cards from 2005/2006
Better performance for iOS

They also talk about ActionScript “Next”, which will be the evolution of ActionScript 3, almost ActionScript 4. Apparently, they want to add robustness, modularity and maintanability, which is exactly what ActionScript 3 lacks now so that also sounds really well.

All in all, I think these are great news for game developers that want to put their games on the web. I don’t know what will be the “winner” option but, in any case, the future looks promising.

“Creeper World: User Space” — Free game recommendation

Link

Creeper World: User Space

Creeper World: User Space is a great strategy game in which you fight against “The Swarm”, an abstract enemy that slowly creeps against your bases.

Highly recommended if you like strategy games with a focus on resource and terrain management.

Template to preview how the box art of your game will look

Posted on Lunes, 6 de febrero del 2012 by miguelSantirso

Every independent game developer knows that the box art and the icon of the game are of extreme importance to sell more copies. Being aware of that, at pncil we wanted to make an effort in this area and we created a Photoshop template to simulate how the box art will look in the XBLIG marketplace.

I thought this may be useful for other developers, so I am posting it here so you can download it and use it in your projects. Below you can see how it looks and download it by clicking the link at the bottom of the post.