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BoMToons
So many times, it happens too fast...you trade your passion for glory. Don't lose your grip on the dreams of the past, you must fight just to keep them alive.

Age 43, Male

Software Engineer

Somewhere in Nevada...

Somewhere in California..

Joined on 11/29/05

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What's next capitan?

Posted by BoMToons - May 17th, 2016


Deterministic Dungeon is out there and has been doing great! (after 2.5 weeks it's nearing 500k plays across the web at the time of this post). Big thanks to @TomFulp for featuring it on the NG front page!

There are a couple bugs, and a few balancing issues, but overall I <3 the game and would really like to do a more fully fleshed-out sequel for mobile. It's the kind of game you want to idly play for a few minutes throughout the day.

With that in mind I've been reconsidering tech for the mobile port. Here are my current opinions on my options:

1. Starling - great mobile performance, big + for also playing well in web browsers as Flash. Great support and community + plugins. FREE! Downside: No console porting and PC/Mac/Linux support is a pretty big hassle for Steam. Shaders are resource intensive and not a very robust library. 

2. Unity - Great cross platform (+ console) performance and mobile support. Great community, lots of plugins, lots of cool special fx available with shaders. Kinda FREE, but not really. Downside: Web Unity is kind of a joke now, also Unity is not intuitive for me - the workflow is clunky compared to what I'm used to, and the 2D stuff still seems somewhat forced. 

3. OpenFL (+haxe) - (I just started messing around with this) - Familiar code/workflow - similar to starling. Cross platform performance (windows, mac, ios, android, flash, html5, etc.). FREE! Poor community support, fairly complicated setup (needed outside help to get the bugs worked out with compiling for various platforms) - Some features don't work across platforms. Doesn't have very good workflow tools (someone has a dragonbones implementation working, but it only works with outdated old versions of dragonbones [2.2]).

4. GameMaker Studio - This is the easiest for me workflow-wise (meaning I can bang stuff out as fast in GM as in Flash). It has cross platform support + consoles + windows/mac etc. Downsides: Costs money, needs extra plugin for skeletal animation (can't use dragonbones/Flash), noticeably missing a good web-browser export (has html5 but I don't trust it yet).

So yeah, there's no KILLER app yet for all export targets that also blends well with Flash animation tools (important to my workflow). Unity is probably closest with OpenFL being promising, but needing more examples, community, and support. That said, if GameMaker had a .swf export, and better integration with Flash animation tools, it would hands-down win for me. I prefer it over the others SO MUCH because of how intuitive it is for my workflow I can't praise it enough!


Here's an anim for upcoming Good Knight Story content update:

1405066_146350126521_lockanim.gif

Here's the final wedding cake pic I promised in my last post:

1405066_146350129263_n.jpg

Next up is finishing another web game I'm stoked about! (also, summer time and getting back into eating right and exercising!)

What's next for you?!


Comments

i`d go with unity - not done much other than flash but it seems to be good :)

Unity just doesn't gel with me for some reason... it takes me forever to get anything working with it...

congrats on your game! I havent had a chance to mess with it thoroughly. We still have Pico Day people at my house so i've not really had the time to sit at the computer much. SOON.

As for the summer, hopefully getting back into making things again and rewarding it with a trip in september, been meaning to go somewhere unusual like Jordan or something.

You're always going cool places... make sure to wear some Jordans in Jordan.

Maybe after you finish Barfbarians (and your other stuff) I could figure out a way to throw a large sum of money at you for some programming...

I'm off of Barfbarians (see my last news post) - so working together may not be totally out of the Q!

I'm all the community support you need for OpenFL ;)

Yes, except you only use Haxepunk or Flixel or whatever framework...

game maker - art / animation side is tedious but it now seems to be the best option just now... either way good luck also what was barfbarians being developed in?

Barfbarians was being made in gamemaker.

Have you actually used Starling? Would you recommend it? I've always been worried about mobile performance...

Yes, it runs super fast on mobile, many great and successful mobile games have been made with it. Don't be afraid!

I used AS3 and just directly exported too mobile for my Last Egg Alive. But without starling it can lag quite quick so it was a mission to keep it down. I think Unity seems to be the best standard for mobile going forward and always seems to beat most other things when you compare the games.

Yeah, straight exporting from flash with lots of optimization can work ok on newer devices, but really still isn't viable for older stuff. Gotta use starling for mobile.

Great points! Thinking about switching to Game Maker from Unity purely for the reasons you mentioned! Thanks again for the great info

No prob, I love it!