Our new game Orcs and Outlaws (previously called Condition 24) now has it’s own website; http://www.condition24.blog/
We will be updated the site on a regular basis with development and features news. We are planning to release the first game demo over the summer so register on the site for our email newsletter and you will get the download link. Now back to my level design tasks!
Before Unity, Fierce Fun used the Adobe Air platform extensively. It was a great piece of technology designed as a wrapper for Flash applications. It meant you could deploy Flash apps and games on PC and mobile devices – something Flash was never designed for. The original Macromedia Flash was developed as an animation tool for early Web browsers. Before Flash, the Web was a very static place. With the advent of the SWF format, Flash developers could quickly create and publish highly interactive animated content. It spawned a whole generation of Web animators and indie game developers. You could draw original vector art, animate it and add code – all within one tool. In our opinion, even with Flash's many flaws, nothing has come close to it since.
Then Apple came along with the iPhone which famously did not support Flash content. Steve Jobs was extremely critical of the Flash Player – though this had more to do with his ‘closed’ Apple economic ecosystem than any technical issues – a point that most observers missed. Also, Flash’s parent company Macromedia was bought by Adobe and they never quite understood what to do with Flash.
Adobe Air was developer as a cross platform software environment and it was used to package Flash content for PC and mobile devices. It meant that Web developers could finally design and develop content for both browser and PC/mobile platforms.
Over the years, Adobe reduced their support for Air. There were great add-ons such as the Starling library but gradually developers moved to more established development software such as Unity.
In 2019, Harman (a subsidiary of Samsung) took over the continued developed of the Air SDK. With an established backer, it looks like Air will continue to be an option for developers using the new version of Flash, Adobe Animate.
For anyone interested in using Air or Adobe Animate, we have released some of our Air developer documentation. Just to note - some of the older links may not work but you should find other sections useful.
Adobe_ Game_Animation Tutorials
We are truly in the era of cross-platform gaming. With the advent of mobile phones as gaming devices, playing games is not restricted to any place or time. Gaming has become THE ubiquitous entertainment activity – everyone (well almost) is a now a gamer.
Whereas before, game developer’s choice of platform was restricted to PC and consoles - now they must consider Web, mobile, VR and other dedicated devices. In addition, gamers tend to play the same title on many devices , depending on their location and environment. For many game developers and publishers, the only choice is to go cross-platform. Despite the extra development effort in doing this, it substancially increases the likelihood of reaching their target gaming audience.
Planning a cross-platform games project needs to start early. To ensure a smoother and consistent player experience across different platforms, we would recommend using the Facebook SDK for certain app features.
Facebook recommends the following:
- Handle notifications, requests and stories consistently
- Synchronize Game State across platforms
- Encourage people to play on other platforms
For more advice on your cross-platform game strategy, check out this Facebook post.
We recently came across an excellent piece of research from GlobalWebIndex on the current state of video gaming. Some really interesting facts from this research include:
Demographics
Mobile
Console/PC
Spectator Gaming
VR