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natural_criticB837
Brainiac
August 1, 2016
Question

WebGL / WebAssembly Target for Air

  • August 1, 2016
  • 2 replies
  • 4443 views

Hello everyone,

with the Flash plugin on the demise, it would be a great solution for Adobe to offer WebGL or WebAssembly as a new target for the Air compiler. There is already a GPU render mode, so I assume in theory this should be doable. We are currently evaluating alternatives to Flash and there must be a lot of companies in the same boat right now. I assume I speak for many companies saying we would be more than happy to pay a subscription fee for an HTML target (similar to what Unity is charging) instead of spending money hiring new developers for HTML or Unity.

I know WebAssembly is still experimental, but if this idea should turn out to be an option for Adobe, there should be some announcements and a roadmap right now, so that we, the web gaming companies, can properly manage our resources and keep focused on the Air platform instead of wasting money by reimplementing everything.

Please, take our money.

Thanks

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    2 replies

    T
    totallyNoobular
    Participating Frequently
    November 4, 2016

    +1 for web assembly compiler if that is possible.

    P
    piotrk92086443
    Inspiring
    November 5, 2016

    There is a project Shumway .  Currently is not under development, but it is open source right now.

    Shumway is enough mature to run games written in Flash/AS3.

    I see no reason to do AIR compilation to WebGL/JavaScript.  It will be not compatible on many browsers.  This is same idea to write Java compilation to JavaScript.

    We should use advantage of Adobe AIR that is ported to many platforms.  Remember that AIR is rather like JRE then Unity3D that has many languages and compilation to native platforms (accurate to Mono VM on most of platforms).

    User Unknow
    User Unknow
    Brainiac
    November 5, 2016

    I see no reason to do AIR compilation to WebGL/JavaScript.  It will be not compatible on many browsers.  This is same idea to write Java compilation to JavaScript.

    Just check LibGDX

    Colin Holgate
    Colin Holgate
    Inspiring
    August 1, 2016

    You may be mixing up some things. AIR isn't involved in creating Flash plugin content, AIR is for compiling to native apps on Mac, Windows, iOS, and Android. It also wouldn't be needed for creating WebGL content.

    If you are using Adobe Animate as the authoring tool for AIR content, you can take the same FLA and convert it to either HTML5 Canvas, or HTML5 WebGL 2D. Any code you have done would need to be reworked in Javascript, but at the end you have the same export to HTML5 that Unity gives. Really though it's better in some ways. Unity uses Emscripten to convert the engine C code into Javascript, whereas in Animate you're working directly with Javascript, no need for the overhead of Emscripten.

      User Unknow
      User Unknow
      Brainiac
      August 1, 2016

      Colin, you partially right. But your words in most cases can be applied to simplest games like interactive banners.

      When I press Publish HTML5 in Unity3D - I can get the same (with limitations) result as Unity3D Web Player target do. Also I can publish iOS/Android and etc... And in 99% anyone don't care about performance and overheating of JS because huge content anyone don't want to run in the Web. But small games like you can play in Flash - people want to do and want to play.

      So AIR at this time can be used just for standalone (Where Unity3D and UE4 is leading). If it can be used for Web as HTML5 target with the same codebase (like FlexJS can offer) ...

        natural_criticB837
        natural_criticB837Author
        Brainiac
        August 2, 2016

        Yes, what Anton said. Also obviously we do not want to create a new project and write Javascript code in Animate. Instead we want a compiler target from AS3 to WebGL / WebAssembly for existing codebases, just like you could export your Flash project to mobile with the Air compiler.

        Limitiations are fine, we would have the same limitations in other technologies as well, and maybe WebAssembly would allow feature parity at some point.

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