When Incoming! was announced last week, many users noted that it looked like a Flash game. An assessment I tend to find myself agreeing with. With its unexpected release today (and seemingly short time to market), a thought struck me that I have decided to float:
Is this the first love child of the unholy union between Flash and WiiWare? Will the industry begin churning out Flash games at unprecidented rates? Will WiiWare quality plummet to unimaginable levels? DOES THIS SPELL DOOM for our WiiWare crusaders?!??!
Tune in for the NintendoLife review! Same bat-time, same bat-website!
I have no problem with Flash games on WiiWare as long as they are decent. As we learnt in the Super Meat Boy interview sometimes working in Flash can be limiting, so I hope it's not just used as an excuse to churn games out for a quick buck... but a good game is a good game regardless of the technology used.
Well, if you read the comments on the Flash thread, you know my take on it:
I've worked under the covers on Flash games written by some of the best Flash game designers in the industry. [...] In short, Flash may not increase the amount of "crap" we see on WiiWare, but it will almost certainly drop the overall quality.
If you ask me*, this was a bad move on Nintendo's part. Nintendo doesn't need faster development time for Indies. What they need is to drop their odd office requirements and start letting garage developers like this guy** work on their platform.
The current rules only serve to drive away a lot of good talent while attracting low-class studios who meet Nintendo's office rules, but lack the on-staff talent to produce a quality title.
That's my 2 cents worth, anyway. I have very little hope for Incoming. Especially coming from JV Games; a company famous for beer pong and WD-40 games.
* I know you're not asking me. Too bad. ** Caspian is an old associate of mine. He and one artist kick out some absolutely incredible stuff. Please support him!
I think the look of Incoming comes more from art direction or artist skills than the underlying technology. I don't think Flash has any specific look to it.
I think the look of Incoming comes more from art direction or artist skills than the underlying technology. I don't think Flash has any specific look to it.
Actually, Flash does have a specific look to it. There are a couple of reasons for this:
Flash is designed around vector graphics rather than the raster graphics used in most 2D games
Many scenes are drawn directly in Flash Studio, which gives the scenes a distinct look based on the tools
The scalable nature of the graphics means that imported raster graphics are usually resized during use rather than being properly computed for the resolution
Flash uses its own rendering engine rather than a hardware accelerated engine. This has the effect of creating distinct scaling artifacts that don't appear in hardware accelerated games. (especially if the quality is set to something other than "high")
Flash has its own font renderer that tends to stand out.
Many flash games are created from common tutorials, thus resulting in many similar engines floating around.
Flash has an odd event system based on frames that has a distinct and interesting effect on animation flow and game logic
Solid art direction and good programming can make most of these issues disappear, but Flash is rarely used when those talents are present in strength. Ergo, there is a "flash look" to most Flash games.
Not that anyone cares, but I have an meeting/interview tomorrow with a developer with Wiiware/Live Arcade/DSiware licenses! Very, very very excited to hopefully begin adding, in any small way, to the NON-crap on all respective platforms/services.
Critical Mass, here I come!
-Swerd Murd
(check my tunes out at www.soundcloud.com/swerdmurd)
I wouldn't put it beyond them to create a flash look with their own engine though. I don't think any comments about "looks like Flash" were about specific Flash artifacts and I don't think a Wii Flash could be without hardware acceleration either.
Chicken+Brutus wrote:
I won't spoil anything just yet, but I DO feel compelled to say this much: you'd be very, very wise to wait for a review before shelling out for this.
Considering you didn't just flat out say "don't buy it" I assume there's SOME redeeming value to it?
Considering you didn't just flat out say "don't buy it" I assume there's SOME redeeming value to it?
I wouldn't particularly recommend making that assumption.
But seriously, I'm aiming to have the review done by tomorrow. In the meantime, if you really have to download some new WiiWare, it looks like Bit Boy might be your best bet...
I wouldn't put it beyond them to create a flash look with their own engine though. I don't think any comments about "looks like Flash" were about specific Flash artifacts and I don't think a Wii Flash could be without hardware acceleration either.
The Internet Browser Flash is not hardware accelerated. Granted, it's not a performance maven, but part of that is the browser's fault. The browser uses a virtual pixel space that gives an 800x600 screen (in 4:3) instead of the actual 640x480. Thus to fill the screen, you need to output more pixels, which takes more rendering time, which predictably kills performance. That's why WiiCade games (for example) are often sized smaller than the screen.
I actually have my suspicions about where the Flash devkit came from. I was in talks with a very large gaming company a few years ago who had a license to modify the Flash engine for the Wii. They had basically taken the core Flash engine and added a few enhancements to integrate it with the Wii hardware. As far as I know, they weren't adding hardware acceleration, just the APIs for controls and other unique Wii features.
]Considering you didn't just flat out say "don't buy it" I assume there's SOME redeeming value to it?
Brutus's review is very interesting. Particularly the lack of options, customizations, or even a proper credits screen. This thing went to market fast. Much faster than seems normal for even JV Games. A prototype kicked out the door perhaps? The question is, a prototype of what?
The browser is a browser, noone really cares about Flash optimization there but if you're going to sell a game based on it you'll most likely need optimization because the Wii just can't handle Flash in software. A long time ago I watched some H*R cartoons on the Wii and they lagged badly. If you're going for a real game situation you'll either need to add hardware rendering to Flash or write your own code. 2D isn't that hard anyway so you can just as well do that.
You're missing what I'm saying. I'm saying that Flash performs badly in the browser because it's running in a less-than-ideal environment. Running as its own program, it will run faster. And the Wii does have enough horsepower to run the Flash rendering engine. Heck, I used to run Flash on "blazingingly fast" 300-500 MHz PCs.
Take it from a guy who's spent quite a bit of time with the browser. There's something seriously borked in the way that browser is implemented. The timings are screwy as all hell, and even doing a simple fill on a canvas can barely achieve 20FPS. Getting up to a full 30FPS seems to be impossible, even though it shouldn't be. Don't get me started about the wonkiness of the events system. (Did you know that the first release of the Internet Channel had a problem where rapid tapping of the A buttons would overflow the event system and cause the controls to get locked out until the button "cooled down"? And by "cool down" I mean, "empty the event queue that's lagging like an international game of SSBB".)
If you're going for a real game situation you'll either need to add hardware rendering to Flash or write your own code. 2D isn't that hard anyway so you can just as well do that.
I'm completely with you on the latter. I've been complaining from the beginning that Flash is not a good platform for WiiWare development. As for the former, I doubt it will ever happen. To my knowledge, Flash has never been hardware optimized on any platform. I'm starting to suspect it's a physical impossibility. Though perhaps the newer Flash 10 engine will help change that. (Not exactly holding my breath.)
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Topic: Incoming! - Flash Game?
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