Contests to move Flash web game to mobile

I think you already knew, but there are actually 3 contests supported by Adobe.

It seems Adobe is ready to spend some money to answer to Steve Jobs :

"There are more games and entertainment titles available for iPhone, iPod and iPad than for any other platform in the world"

"Flash was designed for PCs using mice, not for touch screens using fingers"

I was pretty busy fighting with Flex4 and LCDS these months, so I'm more than happy to spend some times on Mobile games!

2 things to keep in mind :
1- It's for Flash Player 10.1 and, right now, there isn't a lot of devices updated to Android Froyo yet (apart Google Nexus One) so it will be hard to test on real device. On Kongregate, you could even increase your chance to win if you release an AIR version...using the private beta one available (read 'not public released yet'
I don't know why Adobe doesn't wait 2 or 3 months more to launch these contests...the egg or chicken dilemna ?
2- It's AS3 (at last!) and, right now, Flash builder 4 is the best tool to code on AS3...but, unfortunatly, the so waited "Flash Builder integration" in CS5 is very hard to use (it's more a hack than a feature!)

Pro Android Flash Games books

It seems a book related to AIR games on Android is coming soon.
Pro Android Flash Games: Developing Flash Game Apps for Android-based Smartphones and Tablets

Author : Scott Janousek, Jobe Makar
Release date : December 2010

More related to RIA (apps), another book will be released one month before
Pro Android Flash: Building Rich Internet Flash and JavaFX Apps for Android Smartphones and Tablets

Author : Stephen Chin, Oswald Campesato, Dean Iverson
Release date : November 2010

HTC Desire incomplete UAProf ?

Since I finally won't buy an iPhone for my wife, I'll buy her the HTC Desire.
Everywhere you'll see it's Flash Lite 4 enabled (even Mark said so), but I was unable to confirm this using its official technical details nor its uaprofile.
WURFL to the rescue ? ...nothing on the FLite part :(

It will be again hard to detect Android Flash Lite 4 enabled phones it seems ...

Forum Nokia Online Flash Lite Packager quick review

From Alessandro, the Forum Nokia Online Flash Lite Packager is back.
It's not exactly the same (you can't package to NFL nor choose the S60 version) but you can download the generated source and choose you own UID.
I got a 404 Error (doh!) trying to generate a test sis but I was able to download the source.
I find one MAIN problem :
CAPABILITY ReadUserData

I already fight with this problem so, for now, I'll still use my own packager.

Did Adobe miss something in 2007 ?

I first would like to be clear:
I know you can see my posts like rockets against Apple.
Yes, a lot of things make me upset against Apple.
Yes, iPhone has a very great UI, so much that I was about to buy an iPhone for my wife...but I canceled it yesterday (boycott mode on)
But NO, I'm not a PRO Adobe, I'm just trying to choose the best path, as a developper, I must follow in the coming months/years.

For what could be seen as my own moral, I can't follow Apple path, sorry.
But, at the same times, I'm really asking myself if Flash is the future.
If you read some of my other posts, you'll see how much I hate to fight with bugs on Flash Lite, how much I dislike to be unable to talk with the OS and how I'm afraid when Adobe drops the low phones market to focus on smartphones only. (And I won't talk about the heavy AIR for mobile).
I already said "flash on every screen" was a dream. It recently became "develop one, release to many" which is also a dream, from my point of view (close to Steve Jobs' point of view about optimized code I think).

And so I read this post on Wired : did Adobe really miss the iPhone train 3 years ago ?
Like every post on the web recently, it's not neutral since Corona competes with Flash. But it should be something I must be aware of.
If I focus on Flash technology, I must know if Adobe decisions are good or not.
It's not the first time someone critizes the Adobe strategy about mobiles.

I personnaly like Flash for its ability to make something great really fast.
But I personnaly think Android is the future. Flash will be soon on Android so we'll see how it works, even if I already started to develop on Java for Android.

So, finally, will Flash become a prototype tool ? If so, I really think Adobe should start to think about code export (Flash to Java, Flash to ObjC...) but I read a post on an Adobe blog (sorry, can't find the link) it isn't an option.

2 years ago, I was waiting for Adobe to make an useful Flash mobile solution. Flash Lite 3 was near to succeed...
I don't know what is Flash Lite 4 (apart to be AS3 based, at last) and I know Flash 10 won't be a solution for my main target : phones, not smartphones.
Perhaps Adobe is right : smartphones are the future. But, for now, I'm making money from Europe and India's gamers, on standard phones.

So, again, wait and see.

Steve Jobs is still trying to kill Flash

On Apple website, Steve Jobs is still trying to kill Flash.
But, times after times, it becomes more and more stupid.

The first part of this hate-letter is the perfect introduction of what you'll read after : perfect non-sense! "Hey Adobe, we almost raised you so ... shut up and call me Dad/God!" ;)

We see here Steve Jobs has one and only enemy : Flash.
How can you honestly say Flash is closed and IPhone is open? Seriously...I still don't realize he actually said this !
I really like how it uses the delayed date of release of Flash 10.1 for mobile.
And for video, I can't read another word from him when I saw QuickTime.
But be cool, every website will soon reencode their videos to H264 since Steve Jobs asks it.
And it's not more honest to say actual web games won't work on touch screen....Of course, they won't work...they were MADE for mouse based play!
Let us me make games for touch based systems and you'll see....
(on this point, I'm actually testing a LOT of touch games and I could say a very few are really enjoyable...)

So, skip all these parts and jump directly to the 6th!
It's certainly the only interesting one (if you forget it's from Steve Jobs) because we can really gain something from it (the previous ones were only Adobe-Apple war rockets)
In fact, it's more than just Steve Jobs asking us if Flash (for any platform) is REALLY interesting....but at this question, I'll return "and what about Java ?"
So:
Are you for middleware or not ?
Are you for develop one and release everywhere ?
Are you for optimized code or for 'work-everywhere' code ?

Look at video game which are developed to be able to release a PC, PS3 and X360 version from the (almost) same code...they are slow and far to be optimized...
It reminds me the time of MSDOS, with the 3DFX version of the game or the Gravis version....everything made in pure ASM.....

Interesting...really...I think everyone should think about it BEFORE to make a choice...
Else, you can skip this stupid letter and go back to what you LOVE to make what ever it is, Flash or IPhone games, I don't mind. Just take pleasure to make them.

Flash Lite 4 AS3 reference

As stated in a comment on my previous post, the FL4 livedocs is available from 1 month now.
While testing Flash Builder 4 (I won't comment here about the good and bad thing of this product), I noticed you can filter the AS3 reference to one or more runtimes.
Flash Lite 4 is one of them !
Good thing if you dev in Flex but want to port it to FL4 (I know, it should be Slider's job).

So, we now have all the docs....We're now waiting for Slider and FL4 based phones (HTC Desire?)