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May 4, 2009 10:57 PM UTC
Answered

What does a user need to have installed to play an AS3 game?

Hi,

I made an AS3 game in Flash, then distributed it to friends, with the a note that they'll need the flash player installed to play it.

Turns out only the people who had Flash installed (the whole program) could play it.

I later tried to run it on a pc which had the flash player and the shockwave player installed, but that didn't work either.

What am I missing? BTW, this was all done with CS3.

Thanks for your help.

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Muzak
MuzakCorrect answer
Inspiring
May 7, 2009 11:30 PM UTC
Muzak, interesting, I'll give that a try, but shouldn't having a flash player installed enable the OS to recognize it?

Nope, because the Flash Player is a browser plugin, so if they'd throw the swf in a browser window, it would display.

So you could pass along an html file with the swf, but that's just cumbersome. swf's are not really meant for distribution and/or for use on the desktop, that's what standalon projectors (exe) and now AIR are for.

12 replies

Known Participant
May 5, 2009 12:02 AM UTC

This might sound silly, but did you publish as a .swf? Or are you trying to run the .fla?

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May 7, 2009 10:36 PM UTC

calvintennant, yes, I published as a swf (with the other files mentioned above).

Thank you for your feedback.

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Muzak
Inspiring
May 4, 2009 11:54 PM UTC

swf is not a recognized file type by the OS, unless you have Flash CS3/CS4 installed.

To make the game available to "anyone" make it into a projector file (standalone exe).

You can do so from the File -> Publish Settings (in the Flash IDE).

Another option is to make an AIR application instead of a a Flash swf.

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May 7, 2009 10:35 PM UTC

Muzak, interesting, I'll give that a try, but shouldn't having a flash player installed enable the OS to recognize it?

Thank you for your feedback.

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Muzak
MuzakCorrect answer
Inspiring
May 7, 2009 11:30 PM UTC
Muzak, interesting, I'll give that a try, but shouldn't having a flash player installed enable the OS to recognize it?

Nope, because the Flash Player is a browser plugin, so if they'd throw the swf in a browser window, it would display.

So you could pass along an html file with the swf, but that's just cumbersome. swf's are not really meant for distribution and/or for use on the desktop, that's what standalon projectors (exe) and now AIR are for.

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Michael Borbor
Inspiring
May 4, 2009 11:00 PM UTC

Most likely you only need a minimum flash player version e.g. FP 9.0 or higers, is this game somewhere on-line?

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May 4, 2009 11:44 PM UTC

That's what I thought, but no, I tried it on my daughter's pc with just the flash player & it would not work.

No, it's not online. I actually would like to put it on my website, but first I have to have a clear understanding of what it needs to run.

Thanks for your advice.

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Michael Borbor
Inspiring
May 4, 2009 11:49 PM UTC

Weird, are you using file dependencies, external assets, fonts? Are you

publishing your project as a .swf, .html, .exe?

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