Ex-Adobe AIR developers

Hi,

I’m studying the usage of different game platforms and It would be a great help that if ex-Adobe AIR/Flash game developers (I hope there are some :) ) could answer this simple question.

It would be awesome if you can leave a comment the biggest advantages and disadvantages of your choice.

Thanks!

Hi @ksvslk
As a long time Flash/Flex/Air animator/developer during it’s hey day using Flash tech for animated TV and web series, MMO games, casual games, Flex sites and mobile apps and games I was very much invested in the Flash ecosystem for many years and was very disappointed when Jobs forced Adobe to kill it. Looking back on it now it was great tech but it also had some serious kluges. I still miss the vector assets but maybe SVG will fill that void.

I really like Defold for the following reasons:
Entity–component–system (ECS) is a superior pattern to any pattern I used with Flash or saw others using in Flash.
It is very cross platform for development and publishing.
It’s focused on 2D but you can still do some 3D.
The engine performance is excellent.
The Defold IDE will only take you about 40 hours of solid concentration to master. Once you learn the pastern of the IDE and the code architecture, everything in Defold is logical and the docs are excellent.
There are lots of good code examples on github.
The forum is the best forum I’ve ever seen.
Defold native extensions are WAY easier to write than AIR native extensions.
It has solid funding so it can only improve going forward.

I switched to Defold for the following reasons:
Unity has a LOT of overhead for 2D games and has a steep learning curve for the IDE. After being so invested in the Flash IDE I’m reluctant to invest a lot of time in a heavy IDE.
Cocos2D has erratic documentation and inconsistent methodology.
libGDX takes more steps to publish cross platform.
Corona is on it’s last legs. Corona was the engine I used before Defold because it was developed by ex-Flash engineers and it had no dependent IDE.

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I’m also ex-flash developer, and I would like to say that Defold is awesome Engine, I recommend you read this: Defold for Flash users

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I also used to make Flash games. Defold is better in almost every way. Except animation. I miss the timeline!

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I hear you! A timeline and graph editor would go a long way for UI and composed characters.

Anyway, I’ve used Flash when I first started looking at simple game engines. Played a lot with FlashPunk and Flixel at the time. I loved the immediacy of those frameworks.

Defold is great for me simply because it takes out the burden of setting deployment envs and everything is super elegant and fast. Sure I would really love more attention to the editor, but that’s something else :stuck_out_tongue:

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