OpenGL with Flash

[Gloo pot]

Are there any Programms that can convert SWF files to exe's that use openGL, without any extra programms? Plus i need it to also have AS2 Suport.
I searched around but non of the SWF to EXE programms i found said that they used OpenGL.

Anyone got any advice about turning flash games in exe's?

[jason merchant]

I'm not positive, but I don't think there are any. The programs that your talking about that "turn" swf into exe's are incredebly easy to create. Its a simple "embed swf into c++" kind of thing. To make it run with opengl would mean actually editing the swf file and convert it to real opengl or directx calls to a point where its not a swf anymore, but a c++ opengl application, and in that case you might as well forget flash and just code it in c++. So I really don't think your going to find it. The only way your going to get flash to run under opengl is if adobe decides to do it.

[tomsamson]

I'm not positive, but I don't think there are any. The programs that your talking about that "turn" swf into exe's are incredebly easy to create. Its a simple "embed swf into c++" kind of thing. To make it run with opengl would mean actually editing the swf file and convert it to real opengl or directx calls to a point where its not a swf anymore, but a c++ opengl application, and in that case you might as well forget flash and just code it in c++. So I really don't think your going to find it. The only way your going to get flash to run under opengl is if adobe decides to do it.

that´s partially true.
On the one side: Yeah,it takes some serious effort to actually make use of open gl accelerated rendering of swfs,but yeah,on the other side its been done to some extent several times already.
The most powerful and usable way sadly is also the most expensive one:
Several commercial game engines support flash content embedding and to some extent also acceleration that way.Sadly those are quite expensive (as that´s not their main USP,just one of many )
The next closest thing which is free is the mac version of the 8 plugin which in certain browser/os combinations makes use of open gl acceleration.
(Not to the extend i´d wish,but yeah,its a start).
There have also been some non commercial attempts in the past (see http://www.tulrich.com/geekstuff/gameswf.html for example);the most impressive i´ve seen could render swfs with insane performance running fullscreen and one could also turn on funky effects like positioning layers in a swf in 3d space and then rotating that scene around while the movie was playing. Had a great feel for some toon animations
Sadly all those noncommercial attempts i´ve seen suffered from the same problem: They had no or very limited code support,so anything which features lots of code like games/apps wouldn´t run.
Yup,way to go

[Gloo pot]

http://www.globfx.com/products/swfplayer

It is a site that has its own standalone player that can run SWF's with openGL but it doesnt actualy convert it to a exe. I want to sell my games threw my own online store, (not sellling all rights etc etc to a site) so do you think it would be bad if all my Projects needed that player? I would assume it would put alot of people off.

Or maby you may know of somthing similar that i could use, by the way im not to fussed with the price, as long its not incredably high.

EDIT: Just had another look that that site, it doesnt mention anything about AS support. Oh well

EDIT2: Need a good blog site can you recomend one, i feal a real urge to extpress my fealings about this, stange...

[tomsamson]

http://www.globfx.com/products/swfplayer

It is a site that has its own standalone player that can run SWF's with openGL but it doesnt actualy convert it to a exe. I want to sell my games threw my own online store, (not sellling all rights etc etc to a site) so do you think it would be bad if all my Projects needed that player? I would assume it would put alot of people off.

Or maby you may know of somthing similar that i could use, by the way im not to fussed with the price, as long its not incredably high.

EDIT: Just had another look that that site, it doesnt mention anything about AS support. Oh well

EDIT2: Need a good blog site can you recomend one, i feal a real urge to extpress my fealings about this, stange...

that player is one of the non commercial attempts i talked about (in this part of my post: "and one could also turn on funky effects like positioning layers in a swf in 3d space " ),didn´t know the download was still available,its been years since i tried it
Regarding AS support: yup,it has very limited AS support as far as i remember.
I tried several swfs with it back when i saw it the first time and anything featuring more code than simple frame actions and preloader actions wouldn´t run in accelerated mode. That player is quite fascinating from a technical view angle as it shows what great stuff one could do in flash (at what kind of insane performance compared to the normal one) with open gl acceleration,sadly the lack of full fledged AS support also shows that a ton of work would have to go into it before it could replace the normal flash player for anything more applike than a basic animation.
Regarding your request for a blog, don´t know,on what do you want to post?
The lack of AS support in that player (won´t have luck there as it hasn´t been updated in ages and is free ) or the lack of open gl acceleration in the normal adobe player?
If its about that then use the adobe wishform and request opengl support,the more people do that,the better
http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/...orm&product=15
As it looks adobe is stepwise improving the performance of flash as much as possible without heavily bloating the player size. I think with AS3 they´re getting where its not possible to raise the performance much more without adding open gl acceleration,so i think we may see it in one of the next versions.
Right now the only (affordable) way to improve performance of flash content playback is to use one of the standalone wrapper tools which allow to lower the resolution (which in return can increase the performance a lot).
Its no replacement for propper graphic card acceleration,but yeah,it´ll help you regarding performance and you still have full AS support.

[webgeek]

It's not OpenGL accelerated but Zinc is by far the best we have used. All of our downloadable games use Zinc for the EXE.

[chriserrorplain]

[offTopic sorry guys] Webgeek how have you found Zinc produced exes for secutiy? Time based trials and all that? ever done that kinda thing with it?

Chris

[webgeek]

EXEs can be cracked like a SWF, it's just a bit harder. With that said, we have not run into any problems with our registration key based system other then people giving the keys away. Overall, it's just not been that much of a problem.

[Ray Beez]

I would like to think that SWF to openGL is very impossible (or at the very least too daunting of a task) due to the fact that openGL is a 3D system, which uses polygons and lighting to display graphics. Can you imagine some of the complex vector graphics we see in Flash being real-time tessellated into little triangles? What about curves? 3D does not to REAL curves, but only tricks that make it look like there are (unless we're talking about nurbs).

The only way I could see it as feasible is with some severe limitations. For example only 2D "billboard" surfaces. Every movieclip would get converted into a 2-triangle rectangle onto which the movieclip's contents get mapped as a texture.

Retracted. :-D

[tomsamson]

erm..mate did you try that player or read the other posts?
open gl acceleration has already been done ages ago,that player linked here could display any vector/bitmap art in flash animations,it just couldn´t make use of the code
So the limitation is not the display side of vector/bitmap art but porting the whole codebase of the AS language over when doing a custom player.

[tomsamson]

Retracted. :-D