Hacker News Reader

Comment by benrbray | Hacker News Reader

However much Flash was abused on the web, it was an absolute joy to create games and animations with. There aren't any tools I know of today that allow for the same rapid art+animation+code workflows. I've tried using Canvas2D+JS as well as SVG+JS to do some of the same things, and they don't even come close to Flash!

View on HN

Interesting account. I was diving into tech around turn off the millennia and I remember spending all of a day or so in action script and went back to the server side stuff. There’s so much game content around I have to believe the void is being met somewhere? Was this just an easy on ramp for low/no experienced folks? I believe that’s how the dreamweaver and other connected adobe products were positioned.

Yeah, it's really not. That entire segment that Flash games owned doesn't exist any more in the same way that it did.

The closest thing would be the mobile games like Candy Crush and Garden Saga, but even there the tide has passed, and it's too difficult to make anything - King was bought by Activision for 6 billion dollars.

There were several major indie games that started out in Flash and ended up on consoles. Alien Homind, N++, and Castle Crashers come to mind, in particular. They were pretty great games. Castle Crashers on Xbox 360 was a favorite of my roommates.

> That entire segment that Flash games owned doesn't exist any more in the same way that it did.

Really? Or did move to a platform like App Store/Steam. I’ve seen it quantified and there’s a absurd amount of new games posted daily. I won’t argue that the tools in use are easier or better than flash, but developers certainly pivoted or so it seems. From a laymen/consumer perspective, Browsing the App Store doesn’t feel much different that I remember Kongregate or some of the other big flash game sites of the past.

The Flash tool still exists, Adobe calls it Animate now. It exports to canvas/js.

The functionality isn't really the same. Yes, you can export animations, but it's much more difficult to provide the same level of interactive game that Flash did.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com