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http://www.insideria.com/2008/07/the...ctionscri.html
This is a Colin Moock article that someone post in the as3 forum and i though it would be interesting to discuss it here
We have talked about many of those things but the news is, seems that adobe is working on making some things in as3 as easy as they were in as2, like stuff to handle the removal of clips completely
Funny that Colin sems to thinks as me, just because you can do all in oop doesnt mean you should to.
well there was big furstration to all those who are more visual orientated - and have not a coding background (like me).
I felt and do still think that the cs3 release is a shidty release
and I fully agree with his list:
and it is not the language who is at fault,- but the bad release of CS3 which makes it almost impossible to get into as3 but also a pain in the ass to code with.Quote:
1.) The removal of on()/onClipEvent() from Flash CS3 makes creating simple interactivity hard.
2.) Getting rid of loaded .swf files is hard.
3.) Casting DisplayObject.parent makes controlling parent movie clips hard.
4.) The removal of getURL() makes linking hard.
5.) The removal of loadMovie() makes loading .swf files and images hard.
6.) ActionScript 3.0's additional errors make coding cumbersome.
7.) Referring to library symbols dynamically is unintuitive.
8.) Adding custom functionality to manually created text fields, to all movie clips, or to all buttons is cumbersome.
9.) The removal of duplicateMovieClip() makes cloning a MovieClip instance (really) hard.
I hope the next CS4 release will finally do justice to scripting back in the IDE,- because as of now I do all my coding in FlashDevelop even though I´d like to do it more in the IDE.
Excellent post by Colin, i hope Adobe finally starts to listen now that more and more people raise their voice.
That said the one function to remove content which they add with the new flash player (and which only works in few cases) is way too little, way more has to be done to fix things.
I havn't been on this forum for a while, but it's good to see people are making the case regarding problems with AS3. I took a look at AS3 2 (?) years ago, and within 5 minutes realised it was a 100 times harder to set things up with it then it was with AS2, but at the time everyone was saying "oh that's cos it's a REAL programming language"...yeah whatever....all I know is that AS3 makes you work real hard to do real simple things, at least things that take seconds in AS2 to sort out, and I don't call that progression.
I know I'm not the intended audience, but here's my thoughts
Ridiculous. The syntax has changed, but it's not like the new way is harder or makes less sense. It makes MORE sense, and it's more flexible.Quote:
1.) The removal of on()/onClipEvent() from Flash CS3 makes creating simple interactivity hard.
Maybe. I don't see what's so hard about removing references, but if an "automagic" solution actually worked I wouldn't object.Quote:
2.) Getting rid of loaded .swf files is hard.
Good. Child objects shouldn't be directly controlling parents anyway.Quote:
3.) Casting DisplayObject.parent makes controlling parent movie clips hard.
Laughable.Quote:
4.) The removal of getURL() makes linking hard.
New way is better. More intuitive, and more flexible.Quote:
5.) The removal of loadMovie() makes loading .swf files and images hard.
Completely false. I realize that the article came to the same conclusion.Quote:
6.) ActionScript 3.0's additional errors make coding cumbersome.
No, not really. Proper datastructers for collections are a much better solution than magic methods which interpret built up Strings.Quote:
7.) Referring to library symbols dynamically is unintuitive.
Through the IDE, yes. This is not AS3's fault. Extending classes to achieve this is dead simple.Quote:
8.) Adding custom functionality to manually created text fields, to all movie clips, or to all buttons is cumbersome.
Hard, but not really hard. I wouldn't object to having a DisplayObject.clone method if it was fully type aware.Quote:
9.) The removal of duplicateMovieClip() makes cloning a MovieClip instance (really) hard.
@5TonsOfFlax: yes you rather sound like a programmer but as someone who got introduced with AS as scripting language rather than a programming language AS3 wasn´t that welcomming to that many designers.
Actionscript once was something where one could quick and dirty script and rapidly get results with the combination of scripts and visuals. CS3 doesn´t offer that the way most were used to- instead often it takes literally dozen lines of code to archive something that was done before with just a line.
Dont get me wrong on my programming side I do indeed welcome many of the AS3 stuff- but it was just ridiculous hard to get into it- not something I was used to before with flash- and still at times I am not even motived trying out stuff in AS3 because I need to code so detailed and lots of basements in order to let it run at all.
All in all I would say that the CS3 IDE is useless for programming at all- and a failure for the visual orientated scripter (working with stage graphics and code).
Yeah, I get the frustration. I can't do anything except the most rudimentary tasks with Flash itself. I find the IDE completely unintuitive and it's almost like it was intentionally designed to frustrate programmers. So I can sympathize with the feeling of "why on earth doesn't this work the way I expect it to?". But in this case, the AS3 way is objectively better for all the metrics that matter to me.
I must say I'm honestly surprised that you found AS3 hard to get into. You're one of the people on this forum whose programming ability I have the highest respect for.
i find it sadening to almost again funny getting degree that each time someone says something negative about AS3 or other aspects of the flash platform "evolution" others who like those things seem to automatically think: "Ok, this surely comes from a script kiddy who can´t get anything done in code".Quote:
Originally Posted by 5TonsOfFlax
maybe I was to ambitous as my first AS3 stuff was this (first ever as3) and it felt like forever programming and learning every little detail- even more as I was forced to do everything in the freaky flex environment (neither Flash or Flex really welcomed AS3 back then)- no stage no movieClips pure hell at first. And I always thought that if just the syntax wasn´t that bloated (event triggers for buttons, data/event types,...) I´d be so much faster.
If I´d have done the same in AS1/2 (in Flash 8) it would cost me perhaps a few days but with AS3 it took me weeks as i was reading up every function I needed and finding out that I had to write it in 40% mode lines of code.
it was not such a nice first confrontation and that´s why I say it was pain in the ass to get into it. I miss the days when I could create in just 15 minutes a working and useable prototype in Flash- with AS3, the useless IDE and the pile of errors I got at first this is not the first choise atm. for prototypes.
AS3 is usefull for performance intense stuff like 3d, bitmap manipulation, binary, physics and the alike - but for quick stuff for now I´d rather go back to as1/2 - and that´s mainly because I can better work with Actionscript 1/2 and the IDE together - as my roots are still the one of a designer even though I get into more and more into scripting stuff.
Well, there are a LOT of script kiddies who can't wrap their heads around code. But mostly I think it's just that people expect other people to be more or less like themselves. If someone has trouble with something that seems easy and natural, the natural assumption is that they're either inexperienced at it, or incapable of "getting" it.
In truth, I recognize that there are simply different skillsets, and people are attracted to one or the other. It's the schizophrenic nature of flash's current state that is throwing the math nerds in with the art nerds in one classroom.
something like that yes ^^Quote:
It's the schizophrenic nature of flash's current state that is throwing the math nerds in with the art nerds in one classroom
which reminds me in the past there were more resources for flash regarding how to animate and draw,- now (the newer stuff) its more focused on scripting with AS3 that´s at least my impression.
I have lost a lot of respect for Colin now, that post is crap.
NO ONE IS FORCING YOU TO USE AS3!
if you want crappy event model and simple functions then use AS2. I don't want Adobe dumbing down AS3 and sacrificing speed for people that "just don't get it". I mean seriously, complaining about getURL, it takes 2 mins to create your own getURL class.
I've been developing in C# for the past week and realize how good it is to have a proper OOP language. AS4 couldn't come any faster for me.Code:package com.malee.net {
import flash.net.navigateToURL;
import flash.net.URLRequest;
public function getURL(url:String, window:String = null):void {
navigateToURL(new URLRequest(url), window);
}
}
import com.malee.next.getURL;
getURL("http://www.AS3rulesAndAs2Sucks.com");
I am the messiest coder out there...really. I never use any proper OOP methods (the only thing I do neat and tidy is always use external include files with everything in functions, but they are all spaghetti coded together). My eyes have a tendency to glaze over when I start reading articles on hardcore code and my maths is awful. Yet I personalyl Love AS3 compared to 1 / 2.0, since I made the jump over I get so annoyed now when I have to not use it.
I really don't get how AS3 has seemingly changed everyone's workflows so much, my project files look exactly the same (with some 'addChild's instead of 'attachMovie's and a 'eventlisteneres' instead of 'onEnterFrames'). Are some of you saying "AS3" to mean "fully object orientated AS3 and possibly developed in Eclipse / FD"?
Anyways back to my game I must finish tonight; which is full of AS3 code all over the timelines of animations and all sorts of other things I have been doing since flash5 :)
ChrisError x
From my experience most of the people who see no mistakes made at all in the transition from one language/player/ide version to another are usually people coming from other oop based languages like java who earlier felt like flash was awkward and unintuitive to use as it was before. Cause it was not what they knew from their previous experience in other fields.
On the other side people more coming from the design sector or learning flash and with its language coding showd the world what rapid prototyping really means. Many years have passed and meanwhile all major middleware engines have support for high level scripting and prototyping features. At the same time newer languages are overall going more and more higher level, allow more functionality with less code and less managment work on content creator side.
While many additions and changes in the Actionscript language and player setup were for the better, many also made it loose a lot of its rapid prototyping capabilities (again, can only be understood by people who were used to kick out stuff rapidly with the flash way in the past).
Few clients actually understand why some things take way longer to create than in older flash versions now.
I´m a bit of both worlds, coder and designer, i was one of those for whom flash and AS was one of the first steps into creating interactive content, later i then had a programming education so i also know about when oop approaches are an overall better fit.
But then this what Render said is the main point to me:
"AS3 is usefull for performance intense stuff like 3d, bitmap manipulation, binary, physics and the alike.."
I totally agree but then to me its like: hey, if i have to do things compeltely like in a Java/C# type workflow, why shouldn´t i use those and end up with way better coding tools and way more performance and other features at hand?
Heck, i can use XNA and unity and do things that are impossible in flash even if one combined all the good sides of all flash 3d apis together and coded some more years on em.
Flash just doesn´t have the performance and lacks many other things lower level and more complex languages/technologies have, so it shouldn´t try to get to them purely on the language similarity/complexity side.
Flash to me always had the advantage one could create things more intuitively and in shorter timespans than in other technologies/languages. I feel like its more and more loosing such sides, to me its gettting more and more like a wannabe java clone, i see few reasons to use it like that.
I also don´t think Adobe´s solution of bringing out more and more tools and that way splitting up the users and the cooperation abilities more and more is a good solution.
oh, come on man, that is the lamest "argument" of em all.Quote:
Originally Posted by mr_malee
Many features are only available with AS3/F9 export and with the way Adobe does things it will not change to the other direction. If everything was available in AS1/2 export then less people would moan. Also even then if the majority of flash users are unhappy with something then they can raise their voice, sure they could also just give up after a while and instead go to something else.
Also i think, and Colin pointed that out,too there´s a misconception,when people ***** about the evolution of flash its not just AS3 or AS3 meant in particular, its often many other things that changed at the same time, like introducing a seperate coding app instead of developing the one in the flash ide further propperly, changing the way the garbage collector and other parts of the player work etc etc.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mr_malee
this is funny, very good example. For the point that: yes, sure, everyone can code a class there to get ease of workflow functionality here, then there, then work on a big framework of many such classes. Hey, why am i using flash again? It should come with ease of use and quick creation time workflow and classes out of the box.
Ok, so why are you using flash now?Quote:
Originally Posted by mr_malee
@tomsamson: the only reason why I still stick with flash is because it has a thicker connection with design tools. If it were like Java, XNA and alike I wouldn´t care at all- coding is not my orgin. The whole script stuff is extremely boring to me if it isn´t connected somehow with visual tools.
Lately I enjoy alot maxscript (the scripting language in 3dsmax) because it helps me creating visual stuff quicker, more effecient and in a way others haven´t before. Its dirty scripting and and the code is ok for me as long as it does what I want (even though I improve and the code gets better and better).
With each AS3 project however I have to take deep breath because I know it wont be a quick and smal project - nothing quick and dirty.
I'm developing in both languages now as that's what is required.
What I want to know is why people constantly have to have everything made "easy" for them. You get a function:
bob.removeBobForever()
what does it do behind the scenes? You will most likely never find out. Isn't it better to be able to understand what you are doing? even if its just 3 more lines of code. Developers are getting lazier and lazier.
and most of the new features in AS3 are language features, the stuff people are complaining about.
So what exactly is it that makes everyone want AS3 (apart from speed execution), if you want that, then don't complain about the changes.Quote:
Run-time exceptions
Run-time types
Sealed classes
Method closures
ECMAScript for XML (E4X)
Regular expressions
Namespaces
New primitive types
DOM3 event model
Display list API
Handling dynamic data and content
Low-level data access
Working with text
to render: yup, i totally see it like you and to me its like this now: if i have a bigger game in mind that is fine to do mostly codeside only and requires hiigh performance or hey, i´d intend to bring it to 360 i´d go for XNA/C#.
If i want to target several platforms and need high performance and also the comfort to create visual things in visual creation way where appropriate and at the same time have a flexible coding environment i go with unity3d.
If i want 2d content fine for the web that doesn´t have to achieve wicked performance or use nice 3d capabilities and i have a smaller budget or shorter development time, in those cases flash is fine (then in AS1/2 creation way).
So yeah, that´s why i see very few cases where it would make sense to use flash and code in AS3, so that´s why i wondered and asked :)
to Malee: Maybe you feel like its laziness, but to me its not about laziness, its about getting more done in more enjoyable way in less time.
Since i´m an indy usually running on shorter timeframes/budgets per project it makes a huge difference if i can work 3 months on a basic flash 2D game with rudimentary physics and/or 3D and/or a few bjects moving around (rudimentary compared to what´s possible in other technologies) or i can create something way more impressive in way less time with a more enjoyable workflow.
If that´s laziness in your eyes then fine, i´m glad to be lazy in your eyes :)
When one codes in AS3 flash can´t technologically come any close in performance or features to other technologies with similar time intensive workflow, so there´s no use to me for using the workflow introduced in newer flash platform versions.
I worked on several AS3 projects and each took considerably longer than a similar project would have taken with AS1/2. Who pays for this, why use flash for this? With AS1/2 many things weren´t nice, but with AS3 many things that were nice about flash in first place got very unconvenient to use or are not usable at all anymore.
I wonder each day about people working on papervision 3d projects. Why don´t these people take one hour to check out other technologies and see what they could do with similar code there?
I´d like to get what people appreciate in flash when those things making flash stand out are lost and it becomes a java clone and the workflow is like developing a Java or C# app more and more,too, but its difficult for me to see.
sure, its hard at the beginning, but as you grow and advance through development you start to build up a library. Most of the features missing "or changed" in AS3 can be replicated using your own custom classes. And when you do so, you learn more about what is going on.
In saying all this, if Adobe can keep towards OOP standards whilst still keeping speed execution the same and provide support for these "easy" methods then I don't have a problem. I have a problem when the performance of the player is sacrificed so someone can rest easy that all their dirty references placed all over the place can be cleaned up using 1 line of code. That's what gets me frustrated.
learning what´s going on is great, ideal if every client says: wicked, a project takes twice as long now, but that´s fine cause you learn better what goes on behind the scenes and sure, we understand you first have to create your own framework or get used to using one made by someone else for the next 4 projects.Quote:
Originally Posted by mr_malee
Reality bites.
Again, i have no sympathy for getting something sold where its intended that i work on my own framework to make it propperly or smooth workflow allowing manner like. Adobe has to deliver this out of the box.
I understand you get frustrated, flash has sucky performance, it gets raised a tidbit each version and we were trained to yes, you have to manage more yourself, code in lower level ways, take some decission making work off the poor garbage collector´s shoulder etc.Quote:
Originally Posted by mr_malee
You know what? That´s all nonsense. Sure, strict typing leads to better performance, not auto type and what not all conversion leads to better performance. Generally speaking any work you as content developer do instead of letting the interpreter/player do it leads to better performance.
But come on, have you seen the unity demos? Do you know that most of those were coded in plain javascript?
What the heck Adobe?!?
Yes, no, instead of Adobe PROPPERLY raising the perfomance instead of spreading hype statements, we as developers should be scared: "oh noes, i hope they don´t add a single line delete for sure command like flash 5 had, that would decrease the already laughable performance again!".
To me it feels like we finally arrived in bizarro world, not just believing the hype slogans and arguments but also actively pushing them for so long that many don´t even question the reasoning anymore.
Oh, one more thing i have to add: Now Adobe is adding one command that only works in some cases and then will soon hype up another tool, thermo,hooray, have another tool for creating GUIS. Then they will say they listened to the users.
Am i in the minority here when i say develop flash ide further propperly instead of trying to sell more and more seperate apps which make it more costly and time intensive to create all sorts of flash content? I feel like its becoming more and more cumbersome to combine things made with one tool with things made in the other the more tools come into the mix.
Thermo may be nice, but why isn´t this functionality added into the flash ide?
Having a propper coding tool is nice, but why isn´t the one in the flash ide developed further propperly?
Is it because all users asked for this or because its simply more profitable to dictate splitting it up more and more is better?
the point is it´s not elegant executed,
because elegant would be something inbetween - something the coder fraction could live with and on the other hand the scripter fraction as well.
Personally I do think that adding eventlisterners to buttons for example is not elegant done- it all creates lots of code for a very simple type of action. I actually never use buttons on screen anymore (for testing purposes) in AS3 because I hate writing up all those eventStuff and their assigned functions. Instead I came up with a class where I can quick and dirty bind functions to key-strokes. But in the end this means I can´t work the quick way I always was used to in flash anymore- with button assets.
I guess the bottom line is:
there are people that are happy with AS3 alone,- and others not because they rather would like to see that thight intergration of IDE and actionscript of the past.
i just can´t understand why someone would code AS3 in flash when he could code in similar way in something else and get way better results.
On the coding side with most coders i talked to its the case they make their own wrapper classes and frameworks for simplyfying many things and bringing them quite close to AS1/2 in actual usage. So what´s the point then? :)
If its for performance gain, again, don´t believe the lies that propper performance gain can only be achieved by letting the content creator do more and more of the work the plugin/interpreter/technology should do for him.
That Adobe isn´t able or willing to do it doesn´t mean its technically not possible. As prooven by many contender technologies.
If you enjoy coding in AS3 purely for the joy of AS3,don´t write wrapper classes that simplify it to be usable like AS1/2 etc, fine :)
Anyway.
A) i agree with render. i think that in adobe's rush to become compliant and produce an industry standard language they have destroyed the very best thing about flash...the IDE. i know the IDE was not in anyway perfect but it could have become something revolutionary.
B) it is foolish to believe that the flash player is faster because of AS3. The player is faster because they re-wrote it.
its actually also very debatable if it is to be considered "faster" if the thing only runs faster because they removed tons of things that now the content creator has to care for on his side.
The slogan "faster, performs better" would only be more than a hype lie if it achieved way better performance while the content creator can do the same things in the same way and having the same or more "comfort" features at hand where the content creator has to worry about less things cause the player/interpreter handles them nicely.
Seeing how the hardware requirements are constantly raised and coding comfort features dropped one by one i´d actually say regarding that the performance ratio of the flash player is going downhill. Especially compared to technologies with similar hardware recommendations.
Yes, script x can now run y % faster. But on which system at which cost?
Hm.
but how many people actually tweak their stuff like that,- right now I have the impression that like 90% of the developers code in so called AS2 (usually as1 style)- and the rest in Flex/AS3.
I have no actual numbers but that is my impression seeing online stuff and flash projects here on FK.
Wouldn´t it then be reasonable to think that AS3 failed for the previous Flash masses?
Quote:
Originally Posted by renderhjs
Again, i think the majority of flash users are mad about way more parts of what makes up the "evolution" of the "flash platform" other than just AS3.
But yes, i think the majority of the flash platform userbase is unhappy with AS3 and the general evolution direction of the platform and therefore its a fail if they don´t act quickly to address the issues.
I think there surely were internal debates whether this or that change will alienate a big part of the existing userbase and i´d guess it was considered acceptable thanks to expecting a gain of many new users coming from other fields.
Problem is now more and more people who would do "highend" content in flash terms rather go and make much more highend content in other technologies shaping up. Also probably way more people disliked the "evolution" than expected before.
Flash has many great sides, would be said to waste many of them or make em inaccessible to the majority of users as its done more and more now.
As one more note sometimes i also have the feeling that the more focus was put on things like mxml,flex etc the more people came in into the flash platform development and evolution circle who came from way other fields and while bringing in new ideas and other nice things many of those seem to probably not have gotten what all was actually good about flash and hence maybe they don´t realize in some cases what they destroy while adding/changing something on another end.
What's AS3? :pQuote:
Originally Posted by mr_malee
I think the less idiosyncratic a language, the better. AS1's handsome cousin, AS2 (really just AS1 in a linen suit), is a garbled mess of confusing linguistic contradictions. And the fact is- you're all built atop that foundation; at least as far as Flash is concerned. A kink in your pipeline that doesn't slow you down a bit isn't worth whatever caused it. I mean, at the height of its verbosity, you're typing an extra line of code or 2. THAT slows you down? It really sounds as if you're phrasing your problem in terms of AS1/2 as opposed to committing to the change.
The issue is that there's not a quantifiable way to say that one language/environment is easier to learn than the other. Most here seem to think AS1/AS2 is easier/better for prototyping... but I don't see a way that you can distance yourself from your experience and comfort. Insomuch, I wonder how a nodal visual programming language for interaction in the IDE would be received. Certainly that would cater to the designer crowd.
Anyway, I think the IDE being backfitted to support older versions of ActionScript nullifies most complaints. The language evolved because there was a demand for it to do so. So why not choose a different platform that boasts a more robust language, etc.? Ubiquity. Even with both vm's it's still a relatively small chunk of software and I think penetration is somewhere around 137%!!!
^ yes.
Everyone knows the reason is penetration so what's the point of bringing this up all the time.Quote:
Originally Posted by tomsamson
Almost 1 billion people have Flash player installed.
Now how many Xboxes did they sell again?
I hope only thing Adobe listens is money :)
If F9 users are still using AS1 or 2 that means they could do same thing in F8 too. Why upgrade/buy a tool you are not going to use? If F9 doesnt sell as well as F8 did, its a failure. People who enjoy AS3 so much aint gonna use it anyway, they can simply get things done for free using other ways. People who could use F9, like designers and non-programmers, do not use its most important new feature - AS3. Again, whats the point of buying F9?
Adobe could drop AS3 completely from F9 IDE without anyone noticing. For AS3 users they only need to upgrade Flex and for AS1/2 users F8 is enough.
AS3 may or may not be great language and improvement over previous versions, but it does not exist in separate universe. Most important feature any Actionscript version needs to fulfill, is how well it combines with Flash IDE. When previous versions of AS were logical additions to Flash (Movie Clips, buttons, frames, timelines, code attached to symbols), AS3 uses entirely different ideas that may make sense inside language but are completely out of Flash IDE. Creating new AS3 itself is all good but Adobe failed to attach AS3 into Flash IDE same way AS1/AS2 was. Language was changed, IDE was not (F9 IDE is 99% same F5 was) and that means those 2 are constantly clashing.
Colin also puts this link to a interview with some adobe engineer
http://www.fitc.ca/video/2008/Toront...tid=1564557060
Well, sure you can have your own hacks to get some things back,not use oop, build your own library, whatever, that was my first though too, the problem was that each day something new appear that makes my stuff useless, like for example, when as3 came out they say how to remove a loades swf nullifing it, removing from the display list, whatever, and then surprise, the cg dont work, then adobe mades that that System.GC stuff,cool, and then cames that 'a clip is not marked for deleting if the sound he is playing is not finished'... and i had to adapt my .removeBobForever each day untill i realise that the way things are going this will have no end
'No one is forcing you to use as3', True, but if things keep going that direction its just a matter of time for as2 being deprecated
And about that interview...at 15 minutes, more or less, the fat guy say that they had to rewrite the player because 'make changes in the player was awesome', and i was...wtf?? So the new player was made not focusing on what the user base wants but focusing in adobe guy's incompetence?? I belive the reason as3 is so distant from flash is because it was made for flex,the flash help now is oop style, as the fat guy say 'bla bla bla if they learn how to use classes bla bla bla'
So even those of you that say as3 is not that bad because you can make your own stuff, you kind of disagree with adobe too
as3 is good / evil debate still going, how long has as3 been available to code with now ?
I'm still in the middle I think. My 3rd as3 project has to be finished by the end of this week, so I'd say I've had a good play with it.
Parts of as3 are great, big chunks of it feel like jumping through hoops for some weird reason.
As Mr M said, once you've built your framework it's all good to go. Just sometimes it's a painful birth making those parts of the framework ( Working with sound for example seems quite drawn out, I still haven't worked out how to do something simple like a swf wide mute ). Buttons and movieclips seem to be a lot lot more fiddly to use now, which along with preloaders, is weird as they're core components of what makes Flash flash.
Part of me does have the view that just prototyping something in as3 is really drawn out, but I think that's just in my head. After using oop with as2, it's not too different ( ie, it's pretty drawn out either way, setting up 4/5 classes before you actually get to see anything on screen ).
So from my point of view, some things are nasty, some nice, the winning factor is the improved performance ( So in effect you can write really lazy code and get away with it a lot more than in as2 :) ), that for the majority of games is really important.
In saying that, it's use the tool you need. Big Bod Says was as2 because I needed to turn it around quicker, and would have been overkill to do in as3, whereas something like Orbs wouldn't be anywhere near the same quality of game in as2.
There you go, a nice long post which really doesn't add anything to the debate.
Squize.
This is a very interesting point. No one I know uses the IDE to code AS3 seriously and the people almost never open it for any other uses.Quote:
Originally Posted by tonypa
It would seem like they're almost going to the direction of Flex for code and IDE for animation.
I still use IDE to do animation .swf's that I import with embed tags to the code but that's the only use of it for me now.
And in my opinion you can script and prototype in AS3 pretty much as well as in AS2. You don't NEED to use any classes if you're not comfortable with them. Just start firing away on the timeline like in the good old days.
I never want to touch AS2 again, it is full of illogical solutions and you have to know all the tricks and workarounds. And I didn't come from Java, I used The Games Factory and AS2 before.
Instead of knowing a bunch of random commands like onEnterFrame, onSomethingElse, you only need to know addEventListener and then you get code completion to show you what events there are available.
Well, this argument is off in various ways.Quote:
Originally Posted by hatu
First of all who comes up with the flash player penetration figures? Adobe? A company paid by Adobe?
How realistic are these penetration figures especially for the latest plugin versions?
Then of course we all know how many factors skew these figures, like surely me alone i´ve already downloaded more than 50 flash players, which counts into the equasion as if 50 people downloaded it.
Next up anyone who has worked on content uisng flash with the usual flashlite/flash for devices flash player knows about performance issues and other limitations; besides these players usually being some versions behind, so again that´s no argument for high penetration of the latest version.
Next up when one uses AS3 and works on content which can be seen as highend in flash terms this usually also means it goes with high system requirements, way higher ones than if one made the same content in other technologies, so one reduces the audience reach considerably.
Next up in which ways can one make money with flash content, same or less ways then with other technologies?
I´d say with other technologies there are comparable amounts and clients for making money with content, for indies even more ways cause its not just as easy to crack content as with flash where every thing you license around gets cracked and spread to many other sites on the web without you making any money off of it anymore.
Well, i could go on, the penetration figures argument is just no propper one when you think it over.
After reading all the other posts i feel like it would already help some if Adobe shipped the next wave of authoring tools with a framework/api that basically allowed the ease of use/quick creation time functionality of previous flash versions out of the box so people don´t have to come with it themselves. For the seasoned coders who want to understand what´s going on behind the scenes instead of just getting magic functionality one liner calls without knowing what´s going on behind the scenes it would make sense that one can have a look at how this and that command works behind the scenes and maybe is a compond of several other calls in the bg.
When I started out with AS1, it was a big aww when AS2 came out, not a big fan of classes (sorry :P). And now that AS3 is out, even though I really am keen about it.....but I am making ok money with what I know till now, so why do I waste my time learn something else to do the same thing....to make money which I already am making by what I do.
Now before bashing about "oo small thinker, small dreams" many developers are too tied up with projects lined up. What do they do? Do they learn AS3 while a deadline is on the head. Sure, its there will and commitment, but who will make the client understand that, except if you are really creative with communication ofcourse ;)
That point does stand that why not go out and learn other harder languages and stuff if this is how Flash coding is.
They tell pretty openly how it's surveyed. It's definitely not based on downloads.Quote:
Originally Posted by tomsamson
http://www.adobe.com/products/player...s/methodology/
But I think everyone agrees that >90% of the people on the internet have Flash player and I agree that Flash lite sucks. I don't think they consider that in the statistics.
Making money is always tough and for Flash it's been getting better every year with Mochiads and sponsorships and who knows what in the future.
Getting your game on XBLA is much tougher than on a bunch of flash portals too, well in the end its just a matter of what you want to do.
I like the idea that almost anyone can play my games on their browser and if I make some extra money then even better.
"No one I know uses the IDE to code AS3 "
I do.
IDE and Notepad++
Chris