[casual_games] Technology Follow-up

[Duncan Gough]

Those stats are very intriguing, especially regarding Java usage.  
There's obviously no clear winner but I get the impression that Java  
is preferable to Flash.

I'm fairly new to all this and although I understand the security  
problems Flash has, can that be negated by the massive install base?  
Sadly it doesn't seem like the security problems are going to be  
fixed in Flash 8 (http://bob.pythonmac.org/archives/2005/08/07/ 
flash-8s-backwards-security-model/) but having seen some of the  
recent player demonstrations, games are going to look good all over  
again.

With regards to Brent's games, I've never really had a problem  
running them in Safari or Firefox. They are noticeably slower but  
it's rare that they don't work or are simply unplayable. I'd love to  
see how AJAX would perform for certain game elements too.

Has anyone tried Pygame? I wrote a couple of games with it last year  
which was great fun. The SDL bindings worked well but getting the  
game into an .exe was less so.

On 10 Aug 2005, at 21:08, Brian Robbins wrote:

> Just to play the Devil's advocate a bit here...
>
> ----
> Check out the dhtml games, if you wish. www.def-logic.com.  
> Currently they
> run best in IE on windows. The mozilla development team have been  
> using my
> games as test cases for improvement to their dhtml engine. Firefox  
> 1.5 (due
> september) will be able to run my games at full speed.
>
> Personally, I think javascript and dhtml are under-rated. They are  
> perfect
> for arcade style games. And since they are browser/platform  
> independent,
> they are open to the largest possible audience.
> ----
>
> Aren't those 2 paragraphs contradicting one another? If they don't  
> run great
> in Firefox, they can't be open to the largest possible audience can  
> they?
> We're seeing Firefox usage as high as 15% on some of our recent  
> launches.
>
> With a ~96% install base wouldn't Flash be the closest we have to a  
> truly
> cross-platform development environment?
> (http://www.macromedia.com/software/player_census/flashplayer/ 
> version_penetr
> ation.html)
>
> I'm a big fan of making things as accessible as possible, but it  
> just seems
> like Flash is that platform right now. I'd love to hear other  
> thoughts on
> this.
>
>   Brian Robbins
>   Director, Online Gaming
>   <http://www.fuelindustries.com/>
>   Chair, IGDA Casual Games SIG and IGDA Online Games SIG
>   <http://www.igda.org/casual/>  <http://www.igda.org/online/>
>
>
>
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