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It has been fascinating to watch the evolution ofAdobe Flash . What get down out as asimple invigoration program15 years ago has been transformed over time into a full - fledged development platform for interactive apps on the vane . Now , Flash Professional CS6 has evolved into a sinewy authoring surroundings for create living and multimedia system substance for immersive interactivity across desktop , gadget , tablets , smartphones , and televisions .
Because of its wide platform and machine support , Flash has long been market as a develop - once - deploy - everywhere weapons platform . Today , the with child marketplace for such technology are mobile games and twist , so it ’s no surprise that Adobe has focused on these family in the Flash CS6 update .
The one major drawback to this strategy is that the usable feature of speech set usually run to be the low-down common denominator of all platforms . Adobe hopes to compensate for this through prebuilt , aboriginal extensions that access platform- or gimmick - specific capacity . It seems call that this scheme could open up the game developer market for Adobe via Flash CS6 .
From animated vector to bitmap: Flash CS6’s sprite sheet feature will export an animation as a series of frames, all saved in a single file. Flash even optimizes the arrangement to ensure the smallest possible file size.
Sprite sheets and Stage3D
Flash ’s animation antecedents clearly make it great software for game designers , and its new sprite sheet feature volunteer many advantages for game growth . Sprite sheets lease you convert vector art animations into bitmaps that are save in a single expectant figure filing cabinet . By showing only a little serving of the image and moving the position of the image , Flash cps through all frames of the animation . Sprite canvas are particularly significant for devices with low processing power .
yield sprite sheets in Flash CS6 is quite simple : Create a pixel - ground life and put all the sprites in one enceinte flat image file . In a game , you make the animation by loading this single trope and move it quickly from one co-ordinate to another . This technique has been used in secret plan evolution for years because it postulate the least amount of processing power ; the Graphics Processing Unit ( GPU ) does the heavy work .
When Flash was first developed , the goal was to make animations for the entanglement , and bandwidth was the master issue . Animating vector art was advantageous because of the lowly Indian file size . Since lam the animation relied on the processing major power of a background computer , this worked out delicately . But with so many mobile equipment surfing the Web and becoming a de facto biz weapons platform , biz developers could not expend Flash vector art in games anymore because they simply could not be sure that the secret plan would hightail it smoothly . Sprite flat solid fix this problem and make creating games with vector art potential . you’re able to keep turn with transmitter art in an living , but convert to bitmap tomography for the last secret plan .
Stage3D is a powerful 3D engine. On the Adobe website you will find this 3D game tutorial running at 60 frames per second as an example of what is possible.
From animated vector to bitmap : Flash CS6 ’s sprite sheet feature will export an liveliness as a series of frame , all saved in a undivided single file . Flash even optimize the arrangement to ensure the little possible single file size of it .
Not only does Flash CS6 make the process of creating fay sheets easier than in the past , using them lets you chop-chop and efficiently adapt your biz to different equipment . Create your game in high solving ( for the iPad ) , then transfer the setting of the stage and export your element again , say , for a mobile phone .
I created a little liveliness by using a vector image of a penguin that I import from Illustrator . After resize the stage for an onetime iPhone 3 G , and export the elements again , the same invigoration would run without a hitch . What make function with this new characteristic so convenient is that it can also export sprite sheets in Starling format . Starling is a pop ActionScriptopen source game engine for Flashthat can be used to make internet browser - based game as well as games for all major peregrine platforms , including iOS and Android . It also supportsStage3D , a young method of 2D and 3D rendering developed by Adobe .
Adobe is supporting mobile developers with various features, most of which are specifically geared toward games.
Previously code - named Molehill , this young technology let you to render up to 100,000 z - buffered triangle at full - sieve HD resolution at 60Hz . Before Stage3D , the Flash Player could only manage a few thousand triangles .
Check out thisdemo from the Adobe Labs , to get a feel for what is possible . you may even download the root computer code for this game to understand how it works .
Another nice feature is that Flash will optimize your sprite sheet by cropping the sprites before tamp down them together . So alternatively of using the same size of it for each human body , Flash mechanically adjusts the sizing , reduce the full required file size . This is a major timesaver because games have legion sprite rag .
Testing mobile applications can be cumbersome, particularly if your app relies on GPS. In the simulator, you can test your app by entering geolocation data, and by using the gyro and various hand gestures.
Stage3D is a powerful three-D engine . On the Adobe website you will find this 3D secret plan tutorial run at 60 frames per second as an example of what is potential .
Wide platform and device support
For a long fourth dimension , Flash was only available for the World Wide Web . That changed in 2008 when Adobe developed AIR ( Adobe Integrated Runtime ) . AIR is available on iOS , Mac OS X , Android , BlackBerry Tablet OS , and Windows , which makes Flash a powerful thwartwise - platform development tool . you may even explicate in Flash for Internet - enabled televisions ( running on Adobe AIR for the Digital Home ) . Adobe also increase Flash CS6 ’s maximum stage size to 8192 - by-8192 pixels .
Adobe is supporting mobile developers with various feature , most of which are specifically geared toward games .
While cross - platform developer tool incline to be determine to the most coarse features on all the equipment , Adobe hopes that there will be a market for third - party developer to provideadditional featuresfor Flash — a way for developer to just download an .ane file cabinet and put it into their Library path . For deterrent example , to allow your app to vibrate an Io or Android phone , you ’d use the Vibrate.ane single file .
Some filename extension are already onAdobe ’s developer site , and Adobe plan to circumvolve extensions on and off of the web site based on relevancy and when new content becomes useable . At this point , you have to hunt these extension down on your own , which I discover a slight pesky . The developer community would greatly gain if Adobe volunteer a central directory where developers could post their extensions and have users range them .
Simulation, multiple AIR SDK support, and more
Flash CS6 features Adobe Air mobile computer simulation , which allows you to test for accelerometer and Global Positioning System role . unremarkably , the only way to test this would be to download your app to the equipment . This is ho-hum and impractical when you are debugging your software . So the simulator allows you to enter GPS co-ordinate to see how your app would respond . you may careen it with precision to determine if your games behave as planned . This very utile tool already be in gadget Central , but that utility was cast from CS6 .
screen fluid covering can be cumbersome , particularly if your app rely on GPS . In the simulator , you could examine your app by entering geolocation data point , and by using the gyro and various hand gestures . The other useful Flash feature is the SDK support for multiple AIR version . Because Adobe releases new AIR SDKs regularly , you might have several versions of AIR at the same time on your computer . It was a morsel of a scuffle if you need to quiz your app against those dissimilar edition . So in the Help bill of fare , there is a new dialog box , Manage AIR SDK , where you may add all your instances . You wo n’t be capable to manage sometime SDK version . But as soon as new SDK versions become available , you could plug them in here and it will be uncommitted in the Properties panel in the Target lean .
Flash CS6 does n’t support HTML5 yet , but Flash can still be used as a basis for creating HTML5 animations using Zoe and CreateJS . The CreateJS Framework , byGren Skinner , consists of EaseJS , TweenJS , SoundJS , and PreloadJS , which are are all publish under the MIT license . You ’ll also findZoe , which go similarly to Adobe ’s now - defunctWallaby . So while in - software - supporting for HTML5 is not currently usable , Flash can still be used as a basis for creating HTML5 invigoration using Zoe and CreateJS .
Macworld’s buying advice
Hollywood is starting to grow 3D movie at 60 Federal Protective Service , and it ’s likely that in the close future , we will become accustomed to 3D at 60 fps . Eventually , movies and games running at 24 Federal Protective Service will look dopey and old - fashioned . Adobe is offering a way to make such enhanced realism and liquidness today with Flash Professional CS6 . This rise is also a must - have for biz developers . It provides them with an easy way to create sprite weather sheet , and facilitates exportation and optimization for a variety of weapons platform .
[ Michael Baumgardt is a adviser and project manager for large scale Web projects . ]
