[casual_games] Why not Flash for 2D games? [was: Developing Games on OS X]

[James Marsden]

Hey,

I've considered using C++ to create fast scrolling 2D action games, as
Flash still isn't fast enough to render detailed sprites and backgrounds
smoothly.

I hunted high and low for tutorials and engines for scrolling 2D games in
Flash, and found Strille's platform engine demo to be the fastest and most
flexible. I've spent around 6 months understanding it, redeveloping it for
AS 2.0, and building in collision detection. I'm pretty confident that the
base level scrolling engine and collision detection is as fast as you can
get it in Flash, but the flash player still struggles to shift graphics
around fast enough.

An example can be seen here: http://www.futurlab.co.uk/games/prism/

The engine can run very fast if the graphics are highly optimised and the
screen area is kept small, but the little touches that make the experience
enjoyable (like easing and special effects) tend to slow it down a lot.

If you have dreams of creating fast paced games in Flash, then it's still
not an ideal platform (although the time saved coding in Flash gives you
plenty of headroom to spend time optimising for performance...)

As it stands I'm not looking to jump into C++ for 2D games, because the
performance/development speed trade off weighs in favour of Flash. I'm
looking at C++ for 3D games.

Hope that helps,

James





> Sorry if this is hijacking the thread but I'm curious why you would go
> from
> flash to a C++ engine for 2D games.