[Ask YC] Flash vs Shockwave vs Flex for games

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=203864

by arjunlall • 18 years ago

19 22 18 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Does anyone have any recommendations for a platform to use for creating an online 2D arcade game?

I have read that Shockwave has the fastest rendering engine but there is very little documentation for it.

I have used Flex before and am good with Actionscript, but would probably prefer using Shockwave's Javascript. Also, price isn't too much of an issue, I would rather spend a bit more now than regret it later.

Thoughts?

ALee• 18 years ago

FYI: In the new Adobe Director, they created a really sweet 3D racing game. http://blogs.adobe.com/shockwaves/2008/02/

RWilson• 18 years ago

I looked for books on Director 11, but couldn't find any. One advantage of Flex would be the ample documentation and blog posts around the web, which I didn't see for shockwave. It does seem, though, that (documentation availability aside) Shockwave would be better for the purpose.

neovive• 18 years ago

For a basic 2D arcade game, Flash with Actionscript is probably the best option at the moment for gaming and animation. Shockwave is a very old technology that was seemingly abandoned by Macromedia/Adobe in favor of Flash. Actionscript has seen all of the innovation and creative energy in the past 10 years and was the reason Adobe bought Macromedia. Flex seems geared more towards forms-based applications. It would likely be more difficult to build a game in Flex/MXML than using the standard timeline approach in Flash.

reitzensteinm4• 18 years ago

Actually, if he knows how to code, and he's doing anything more complex than Space Invaders, I think Flex is definitely the right choice. You don't have to use MXML with Flex - your entire project can be in Actionscript.

I just finished up Robokill (http://www.rocksolidarcade.com/games/robokill), and doing that in the Flash IDE would have been a nightmare.

Incidentally, Flash development tools are very poor. Full of subtle bugs (both compiler and runtime), things get broken all the time randomly in the frequent flash player releases, and there have been multiple year long petitions to get Adobe to fix simple bugs. But if you're going where the customers are, it's a necessary evil.

arjunlall4• 18 years ago

Wow, I think Robokill might have sold me on how smooth graphics with Flex can actually be.

I posted earlier about how I made one ball bounce around the screen in Flash and it wasnt silky smooth, but the polish on Robokill looks fantastic.

Any tips/tricks for Flex game development? Are there any game frameworks? My previous Flex work was a RIA and it seemed that Flex took care of all the frame drawing for me, do you handle things any differently when making games (ie something like bitblt)?

ardit33• 18 years ago

wow... robokill is pretty good.

iamelgringo• 18 years ago

++Karma level for Robokill. I just spent the last hour thrashing my wrists on your game. Good job. It was a blast.

flashgordon• 18 years ago

I had mentioned this earlier. Flex is amazing for this. Coming from a pure C++ background I had no difficulty learning it for implementing some custom remote monitoring UI for our games. The documentation is quite comprehensive and the learning curve is not too steep either. If you know javascript or have some knowledge of functional programming it makes it a lot more easier.

arjunlall4• 18 years ago

So my only issue with Flash/Flex is performance. They are both amazingly easy to use, but even just making a simple ball that bounces around the screen pong style isnt silky smooth. (The framerate is set at 60) Im worried that if just one ball isnt silky smooth, 100 objects moving at the same time would look bad.

Based on the nature of the game I am developing timing needs to be very precise, Im also very picky about choppy graphics.

nostrademons• 18 years ago

Flash.

I really want to say JavaScript just to be different, but JavaScript has timing/performance issues that can be a pain to work around. And you can forget about embeddability: security considerations prevent most social sites from letting you embed JavaScript code in their pages. It gives you mad geek cred if you do a good game in it, though.

rtf• 18 years ago

Another vote for Flash. FlashIDE and Flex aren't the only options too, haXe (http://haxe.org) is quite viable as well and has a lot of features and flexibility that make it my first choice. With swfmill the graphics can be made as svgs.

Malcx• 18 years ago

Our current project is a multiplayer 3d flash/as3 game: http://www.ultrakillz.com/play/

Unless you're looking to do something pretty powerful you'll be fine with flash rather than shockwave, especially if you already know some ActionScript. (AS3 is somewhere between Javascript and Java for complexity depending on how you choose to use it)

Flash has better penetration and far more documentation/community support than Shockwave.

In terms of the dev environment, the above game was coded using eclipse to edit AS files and compiled through the Flash IDE, although you could use Flex to compile instead...

Roll on flash 10 - UDP support!

cousin_it• 18 years ago

Definitely not Shockwave, it's dead. I code ActionScript in a simple text editor, compile to Flash with MTASC http://mtasc.org (open source).

The best Flash games don't stray from the sweet spot, defined by 2D graphics and high responsiveness. The best Flash platformer is N http://www.addictinggames.com/ngame.html , the best 2D shooter is Ownage Burst http://thestylemachine.com/ownage , the best Flash game overall is Samorost2 http://amanita-design.net/samorost-2/ .

ordinathorreur• 18 years ago

I'd go for a combination of Flash and Flex myself, but I already own both. You can use Flash to export an asset library and then build the game as an ActionScript project, which you can compile using the free Flex compiler. If your assets don't need any timeline based animation, then just go down the Flex SDK route as you'll be able to embed those assets into your project with pure ActionScript.

I wouldn't recommend going down the Flex framework route so don't code it in MXML. You don't need the extra weight of the framework for something like this, an ActionScript project will do just fine. Also note that the next Flash Player has support for hardware acceleration and you can already download a version of the Flex compiler to target this new version. I guess that choice would also depend on how CPU intensive your game is going to be, when it would be released and what group of people you'd be targeting.

avinashv• 18 years ago

Does anyone know any good resources for game development in Flex, then? A good book, website/blog etc.?

[Ask YC] Flash vs Shockwave vs Flex for games

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