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LordZod
06-24-2006, 12:10 PM
I'm developing a game for children that involves point and click gameplay and some keyboard interaction. The game will have relatively simple 2D animations.

I've been recommended to use Flash 8 and Zinc (Zinc allows you to compile he flash file into an exe).

I was wondering what you guys think of Flash for game development.

Does anyone in the industry actually use flash to create non-browser games?
What are its limitation in terms of performance?
What are its limitation in terms of functionality?
Any compatibility issues?

I guess I’m just paranoid that Flash won’t have the performance I need (even for a simple 2D game).

Any thoughts or opinions would be helpful.

Thanks.
geon
06-25-2006, 04:30 AM
For point-and-click you don't need performance.

I even saw a full platformer written in flashscript. Worked well. (Actually it sucked almost 100% CPU time from my system. But lowering the priority in the task manager solved that, and the game ran just fine anyway.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N_(game)
Ed Mack
06-25-2006, 01:42 PM
I've used flash a lot in the past. It is perfect for you. Probably half it's users are making exes, it isn't up to good 3d, but is really great for 2d, any functionality you need will be there and its compatability is great (no hardware requirements really, just an ok cpu).
Morgan360
06-30-2006, 02:21 PM
I wouldn't hesitate to use Flash for this. Full-screen performance is fine for what you need (and can be improved on low-end systems via turning off smoothing).

And while Zinc may add some useful things, you can make executables without it. Flash alone can make standalone games for both Mac and Windows, no matter which platform you create on.

I tend to prefer Director, which includes the power of Flash (.swf import) but also has a very useful language (Lingo) of its own. It too can make standalone games for Mac and Windows, even if you only own one platform. (This didn't use to be the case but it is now.)

At the moment, however, with Director's future unclear from Adobe, I might suggest sticking with Flash.