[casual_games] Wrapper Speeds

[Denis Burger]

Take a  look at Multidmedia's Zinc.
http://www.multidmedia.com/

We've used it to wrap and release several casual games built in Flash.

Cheers,
Denis

-- 
Denis Burger
Insane Play, LLC
denis at insaneplay.com


Hal Barwood wrote:

> Hello:
>
> I'm developing in Flash (8), I'm a reasonably enlightened coder, and 
> performance of my projector app and swf-in-browser is just fine at 
> 15fps and 800x600 dots on both fast XP systems, slow (500MHz) 98SE 
> machines, and various Macs.  However, when I tried wrapping with 
> Northcode's latest Flash-Player-8-capable SWF Studio, speed dropped to 
> approximately 60% of native.  Ouch, that's a huge hit.  So here's a 
> question:  does anyone out there have some info on Flash wrappers, 
> which ones are best (for whatever reasons), and which ones are simply 
> the fastest, etc.?
>
> Hal
>
> Andy Makely wrote:
>
>> I work with Flash every day, so I though I'd add some info to the mix.
>>
>> - As mentioned here previously, Flash handles bitmap images just 
>> fine.  Especially PNGs, which retain all of their transparency 
>> information.  You can even write code to animate using your existing 
>> sprite graphics.
>>
>> - Flash can achieve an acceptable frame rate if coded efficiently, 
>> especially if you are working with a 640x480 screen.  It does get 
>> harder to get good redraw speed from an 800x600 Flash canvas, 
>> especially if you have a large number of animated sprites.  Recent 
>> changes have been made to the Flash rendering code so that 
>> single-frame bitmap assets draw MUCH faster than before.  Scrolling 
>> backgrounds, for example, are no longer a real performance concern.
>>
>> - Flash 8 (the most recent version) does not support MIDI playback of 
>> any kind.  You can convert your MIDI files to MP3, at the expense of 
>> your file size.  You might also be able to build a custom C++ wrapper 
>> that encloses your Flash movie, and perhaps get MIDI playback working 
>> via the C++ libraries, but it's probably not worth the effort.
>>
>> - You can get Joystick support via commercial Flash projector tools 
>> such as mdm's Zinc.  Flash does support all keyboard and mouse input.
>>
>>
>> I definite understand the concern for not wanting to rebuild the game 
>> again.  Flash may not be an option in this case, but many folks have 
>> found that it is a viable casual game platform.
>>
>> -- 
>> Andy Makely
>>
>>
>> On 2/8/06, *Jeff Helfand* <jeff at nevadainteractive.com 
>> <mailto:jeff at nevadainteractive.com>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>     Also, we had considered Flash, however, for two
>>     reasons, it just didn't make sense.
>>
>>     1. All of our sprites and backgrounds were created in
>>     Photoshop.  Recreating them as vector graphics given
>>     our time frame and resources is not an option.
>>
>>     2. The new version of the game has two new worlds and
>>     nine different power ups.  The pace when reaching
>>     those levels is much faster.  According to benchmarks
>>     I have read, Flash will have performance issues.  It
>>     is also mouse driven.  I could be wrong, but can't
>>     risk it due to development time constraints.
>>
>>
>>
>> -- 
>> andy makely
>>
>>
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-- 
Denis Burger
Insane Play, LLC
denis at insaneplay.com