Why would a game developer opt for AIR over Packager?

[witherton]

Have been developing games in Flash for a while and  considering  trying out some application markets.

Most of my games are point and click games, so they would lend themselves to flash environments.

Along with AIR, Adobe offers something called "Packager for Iphone". One of the advantages- from my viewpoint- is that is seems to be compatible with IOS versions preceeding the 3gs. What are AIR's advantages over Packager in developing apps for the iphone?

[Guest · Accepted solution]

Packager for Iphone *IS* Adobe Air.  It is just the beta version of what CS5.5 offers  for ios development.  You simply create your flash game and select the iphone packager as your publisher instead of your standard air deployment.

If you target air 2.6 you will  not be able to deploy to iphone 3g or ipod 2nd gen and below.  Air 2.5 *will* be able to target these.

[Colin Holgate]

However, AIR 2.5 isn't available, and only had a couple of advantages over AIR 2.0 with regard to iOS.

AIR 2.6 has a lot of new features compared to AIR 2.0 (that was used by the packager for iPhone), so if you need to take advantage of any of those new features, you also have to forget about building for older devices.

[witherton]

Thanks, guys. It looks like for a simple game like mine with no filter and built around png files, using an older version of AIR is  benefiical.

[Joe ... Ward]

One thing to consider is that you can't update an iOS app developed with AIR 2 (packager for iPhone) to use AIR 2.6+. So if you ever did want to use newer features or get better runtime performance, you would have to create it as a second app on iTunes.

(This is because Apple does not let you drop support for obsolete versions when you update an app.)

[DachFlach]

Is the Air for iOs Packager in CS5.5 using AIR 2.6 ?

Or do we need to use an external AIR 2.6 packager to get the advantages of 2.6 in iOs apps?

If so..  what is the point of the AIR for iOS Packager in CS5.5?

[Colin Holgate]

People used the AIR 2.6 SDK to be able to build AIR 2.6 packages using CS5. It's built into CS5.5, you don't need to use the external SDK at all.

[DachFlach]

To confirm, when packaging for iOS in CS5.5, it utilizes all the 2.6 and all its capabilities?

Because it gives options for the following:

AIR 2.5

AIR 2.6

AIR for iOS    and more

I suppose the AIR for 2.6 is for desktop deployment. But it does not say that the iOS uses 2.6.

However, it does say 2.6 in the generated xml, so I guess  thats that.

Thanks Colin.

[Colin Holgate]

Yes, exactly. It uses 2.6. The 2.5 and 2.6 are for desktop apps, iOS is just using 2.6.