The big news from Adobe’s white paper release today was the announcement of ActionScript Next, a new version of ActionScript. But that wasn’t all that was discussed. Adobe also covered other important topics, some of which have needed addressing for some time.
Adobe is fully focused on creating a robust business around gaming. This includes, but is not limited to, the following:
- Formalized game developer program
- Game services
- Fully productized support that enables developers to leverage C and C++ code and libraries in their Flash based games
There’s no further information available on any of these points so far, but speculation is already ramping up. Game services could mean anything from highscore APIs to fully featured portals or an ad network, any of which would give strong competition to existing services such as MochiMedia. We’re predicting built in tools for handling microtransactions, though.
Flash Player 11.2 release is upcoming, and includes:
- Mouse-lock support
- Right and middle mouse-click support
- Context menu disabling
- Hardware-accelerated graphics/Stage 3D support for Apple iOS and Android via Adobe AIR
- Support for more hardware accelerated video cards (from January 2008) in order to expand availability of hardware-accelerated content.
- New Throttle event API (dispatches event when Flash Player throttles, pauses, or resumes content)
- Multithreaded video decoding pipeline on the desktop which improves overall performance of video on all desktop platforms
Following FP11.2, two more versions of Flash Player are schedule for this year. Codenamed ‘Cyril’ and ‘Dolores’, they appear to be focused around performance increases and 3d streaming options.
Google Chrome is to get its own version of Flash Player, running within ‘Pepper’, Chromes new plugin API. This will run on any version of Chrome, even Linux, the idea being that Pepper standardizes the environment that plugins run in. Flash will otherwise be discontinued on the Linux OS.
Adobe also believes Flash will remain the primary video playback solution for websites, basing their conclusion on the DRM abilities of the platform. Interestingly, they also mention that the streaming technology and the DRM options will be brought to more platforms “in native formats” – this can only mean mobile platforms, and therefore Adobe would appear ready to partner with other video plugin providers.
Finally, Adobe says they remain “committed to the television space”, and note that they “will continue to optimize our technology for TV hardware that enables great video and gaming experiences.”
You can read the full paper here for more information. What do you think – is ActionScript Next the way forward? How about those new ‘game services’? Post a comment below.
