17 replies to this topic

[openstar42]

Hello,

It seems to me that casual games need to be playable in Flash to get millions of plays, make decent ad revenue and attract players to buy the Android/iOS version?

Perhaps I am outdated.. and, if so, please someone educate me. I searched around on the topics of monetization and gaming site acceptance of HTML5 games, but found no reassurance that HTML5 is yet a serious platform for investement of my time and ideas. Sorry to sound so dramatic , but I have left my job (wife got job across the country, so we moved) and I do now have time and skills to invest. I do now have a chance to 'go pro' (minimal money expected to begin with - I am realistic) and these are serious considerations.

I have a long history of meddling with GameMaker and I do like it. However, concerned about the viability of HTML5 based games, I have played around with Stencyl recently. It has inbuilt gaming site API and advertising features - but I cannot get along with it. The model doesn't seems to suit the type of strategy games (e.g. Tower Defense / Harvest Massive Encounter) I want to make.

Are there plans for GM to soon be able to export to Flash? I read even Adobe are moving their development tools towards HTML5 and away from Flash - but, even so, it seems to me that billions of hours are spent playing Flash games and mere thousands are spent playing HTML5?

Thank you for reading!

[Nocturne]

Flash will be around for a while yet, but people are slowly but surely moving away from it. HTML5 is definitely the future as far as web media is concerned and if you know where to look there are many, many ways to monetise your games made this way. Many of the big flash portals now accept HTML5 games (Kongregate, for example) and there are sponsorships available too if you look hard enough and cultivate your social skills a bit too! As for GM porting to flash? Nope, not going to happen...

[openstar42]

Thank you for your reply, Nocturne. Apologies if you think I sounded rude, it's just that I've looked into this quite intensely and got similarly intense trying to clearly express my worries.

I've spent a couple of days struggling with the Stencyl interface, wondering hard why it seems so promising and intuitive - yet rarely and barely seems to glue together to produce the game models I want. On the other hand, I have years of experience with GM (on and off) and it suits me very well. Therefore, I suppose I came here a bit desperate, looking for some sort of reassurance that GM is a worthy vessle for investing working weeks and $$$ (well, actually £££, since I am British ).

Out of interest, I clicked to play your Pixel Blast game on Kongregate. Unfortunately, it wouldn't play in the first two browsers I tried - Internet Explorer 9.0.8 or Firefox 13.0.1 (with NoScript add-on, but I turned that off). The wolf logo appeared, but no actual way to get into the game in FF or IE. Hopefully this is just me, but since I was previously an I.T. Manager - I would have hoped I could fix it! The game did work fine in Chrome 19.0.1 though and I thought the game was great once I realised using the direction keys aswell as the mouse was so important!

Personally, I think I will stick with development in GM, alongside other non-game related development work. I was somewhat reassured by your positive outlook, although less when seeing a HTML5 game work unreliably on Kongregate ! Please don't think I'm saying it's your fault the game did not work for me in some scenarios - I believe this is just the nature of cross-browser compatibility.

Thanks again. Bye for now.

[Nocturne]

LoL! I don't know why you think I thought you were being rude!!! Not at all!

Anyway, my PIXELBlast game was made on a previous version of GM (not Studio) and it was far less compatible than the newer versions and Firefox also has issues with iFrames and HTML5 (Kongregate use iFrames to show the games). Also, bear in mind that HTML5 is a fledgeling technology and as such, until all the browsers adapt and have more or less the same specifications, it is natural that some browsers work better than others. In fact, some BUILDS of the same browser work better than others... However I strongly believe that this will change and there are already people that are making a living from their HTML5 games (our own beloved Local Mod, TrueValhalla for one).

PS: I have updated versions of my games here (made with GM:STudio) if you fancy another look : http://nocturnegames...TML5/index.html

[openstar42]

Yes, can confirm Pixel Blast works for me right away in FF and IE on that site. Thank you.

[dannyjenn]

Perhaps I am outdated.. and, if so, please someone educate me. I searched around on the topics of monetization and gaming site acceptance of HTML5 games, but found no reassurance that HTML5 is yet a serious platform for investement of my time and ideas.

Incorrect... HTML5 is the newest / most awesome browser-based programming out there. It's just that at the moment it isn't the standard, so as Nocturne said, it does not behave the same way on all browsers. And it's still in development so not all features even work. And there are still people out there using older IE browsers hich don't support all (or any) of the HTML5 tags / new JavaScript. But everything is moving in that direction... for example, YouTube. It used to run the videos in Flash, but if you disable your Flash and go to viw a video then it will still play... through HTML5.
And like you said, Adobe is moving in that direction. However, I wouldn't at all say that they are moving "away" from Flash... more like, focusing on both. And they'll most likely even somehow combine the 2... let the user make something in Flash but export it as Flash and HTML5 in the same program. This is because for various reasons Apple has chosen not to allow Flash to run on the iOS and Adobe doesn't want that huge part of their market destroyed. Flash is hardly outdated though.
That being said, a GameMaker which exports to Flash would be a complete waste of time. The only advatange it would have over exporting to HTML5 would be that games would be playable in older browsers... and since everything is moving forward then that soon will no longer even be an issue.
Also they probably can't legally do it. Flash is a proprietary format and as far as I know you can't legally make something that exports to it.

Edited by dannyjenn, 22 June 2012 - 12:23 PM.

[openstar42]

Hello dannyjenn,

Athough it seems surprising, it is legal to create software which creates Flash files. For example, SwishMax does it. Info on the freedom of licensing is here http://en.wikipedia....i/SWF#Licensing Wikipedia, I know - but true!

As you say, GM exporting to Flash would make the games playable in older browsers. Also, I can think of a few other reasons right away:-

• Performance. I'm fairly sure performance of Flash games will be better than HTML - at least for one more year. Performance is priority #1 for a lot of games. No doubt the Chrome browser, for example, is better than others - but will Microsoft make Internet Explorer match the standards of other browsers? They do not have a good history of such improvements.
• Compatibility. As well as people with older browsers, HTML games will not work for people who have Javascript disabled for security. A lot of people will probably not know about this or bothered to fix issues and will go play a Flash game instead?
• Piracy Protection. Arguably, I think Flash games are more secure. Less chance your code will get stolen and reused in another game
• Established game sites. All the big sites and advertising companies are big on flash - and I'd bet they will support Flash better than HTML for at least one more year.

There could be more, but I think those are good reasons for wanting Flash export - seems logical to me if they already export four other formats already. Bye for now

***

These January 2012 performance scores actually prove most of my assumptions about performance are wrong!..
http://pacoup.com/20...l5-performance/

Edited by Weird Dragon, 24 June 2012 - 08:45 AM.
Two posts merged.

[True Valhalla]

Please do not double post (read the rules).

Yes, there is definitely money to be made with HTML5, but you're still looking at a very small market compared to Flash. This is a fledgling technology - so of course there are both upsides and downsides to that.

Personally, I'd recommend learning more and sticking with GM.

[Derme]

Hello dannyjenn,

• Performance. I'm fairly sure performance of Flash games will be better than HTML - at least for one more year. Performance is priority #1 for a lot of games. No doubt the Chrome browser, for example, is better than others - but will Microsoft make Internet Explorer match the standards of other browsers? They do not have a good history of such improvements.

Microsoft have already announced that they plan to drop support for all plugins in the next revision of Internet Explorer for Windows 8 (This will mean no Silverlight, Flash, Unity WebPlayer in IE), so HTML5 will be the only way forward there.

In Apple's plans for iOS 6 there are improvements in HTML5 support, especially in the area of sound.

I personally think its past time to consider Flash 'dead'.

[YellowAfterlife]

Microsoft have already announced that they plan to drop support for all plugins in the next revision of Internet Explorer for Windows 8 (This will mean no Silverlight, Flash, Unity WebPlayer in IE), so HTML5 will be the only way forward there.

In Apple's plans for iOS 6 there are improvements in HTML5 support, especially in the area of sound.

I personally think its past time to consider Flash 'dead'.

If I remember correctly, recently it was announced that Flash Player will be coming to Windows 8 after all.
While flash target would, without a doubt, be a good thing, it'll take not less than same time as initial creation of GameMaker:HTML5 did, plus is going to introduce more problems, since AS3 is strongly typed (weak typing slows the things down, because a lot of additional type comparison code is inserted upon compilation), and AS2 does not have sufficient speed.
One cannot easily guess, where Flash is going in next years, so it could be somewhat risky to bet on it, especially considering amount of work required for.

[Derme]

Microsoft have already announced that they plan to drop support for all plugins in the next revision of Internet Explorer for Windows 8 (This will mean no Silverlight, Flash, Unity WebPlayer in IE), so HTML5 will be the only way forward there.

In Apple's plans for iOS 6 there are improvements in HTML5 support, especially in the area of sound.

I personally think its past time to consider Flash 'dead'.

If I remember correctly, recently it was announced that Flash Player will be coming to Windows 8 after all.
While flash target would, without a doubt, be a good thing, it'll take not less than same time as initial creation of GameMaker:HTML5 did, plus is going to introduce more problems, since AS3 is strongly typed (weak typing slows the things down, because a lot of additional type comparison code is inserted upon compilation), and AS2 does not have sufficient speed.
One cannot easily guess, where Flash is going in next years, so it could be somewhat risky to bet on it, especially considering amount of work required for.

As far as I'm aware, Flash will still work in Windows 8, but not in Internet Explorer 10.

[Terrified Virus]

I believe HTML5 will be the future of web games. Flash has been around for a while, but it starting to slowly die out. New only-HTML5 websites are coming in. In fact, people have made money already with GameMaker just using HTML5!

[True Valhalla]

In fact, people have made money already with GameMaker just using HTML5!

I heard those people are extra sexy and also awesome and stuff.

[Terrified Virus]

In fact, people have made money already with GameMaker just using HTML5!

I heard those people are extra sexy and also awesome and stuff.

lmao

[Nocturne]

In fact, people have made money already with GameMaker just using HTML5!

I heard those people are extra sexy and also awesome and stuff.

Awww... that's cute! Your mum is so kind to tell you that stuff TV.

[True Valhalla]

In fact, people have made money already with GameMaker just using HTML5!

I heard those people are extra sexy and also awesome and stuff.

Awww... that's cute! Your mum is so kind to tell you that stuff TV.

Sorry, only your mum tells me I'm extra sexy.

[kburkhart84]

In fact, people have made money already with GameMaker just using HTML5!

I heard those people are extra sexy and also awesome and stuff.

Awww... that's cute! Your mum is so kind to tell you that stuff TV.

Sorry, only your mum tells me I'm extra sexy.

Somehow, I saw that comeback from a mile away.

[Terrified Virus]

I could see this happening the moment I wrote "In fact, people have made money already with GameMaker just using HTML5!"

Yes, I was referring to True Valhalla with that statement.