Multiplayer Game Dev Contest - Play Entries! page 4

EpicGameAds: I sent you a PM, it would be great if I could get a (private) reply.

Replied :)

I believe the distinction is that haxe outputs AS3, so that is not a problem.

This is not actually correct. HaXe produces a swf that could theoretically be made using AS3 (and some alchemy), but it produces no AS3 itself.

Let’s look at a spoken language as an example. English is one language, French is another. They have different words and different syntax, but you can produce the same meanings with either of them. English would be equivalent to AS3, French would be equivalent to Haxe, and the meaning of a sentence would be equivalent to the swf you produce.

When I speak French, I am producing meanings, not English. Likewise, when I write Haxe, I’m oputting a swf, not AS3.

I would suggest the following change to the rules text:

…targeting Flash Player 9+ and AVM2+, not using any Adobe Premium Features.

AVM1 is the virtual machine that AS1 and AS2 use, AVM2 is the one that AS3 uses. Likewise, anything that compiles to a swf uses one of these.

I give up :P I asked Chris from PlayerIO (Qrious) to answer this for us. I’ll do my best to refrain from any technical questions going forward :)

This is not actually correct. HaXe produces a swf that could theoretically be made using AS3 (and some alchemy), but it produces no AS3 itself.

So what’d happen if you used a decompiler on an SWF programmed with HaXe.

The decompiler would produce AS3. Assuming it was a decompiler designed to produce AS3. If it was a decompiler designed to produce HTML it would probably throw some errors. If it was a decompiler designed to produce HaXe it would produce HaXe.

Just to add, the language that is interpreted/JIT compiled by the AVM is called ActionScript Bytecode (ABC). There is no AS3 or HaXe in your SWF. The ActionScript Compiler (ASC) converts AS to ABC. Similarly, whatever the HaXe compiler is called would convert HaXe to ABC. Logically, a decompiler converts ABC back to AS or HaXe.

On that note, you could write your game in Swahili if you had a program to compile it to ABC.

Yeah – there was some confusion in terminology and things got a bit muddled. Chris is writing up some clarifications for the contest page. As I understand it, the intent is to make sure you don’t trigger any Flash Player Premium Features. These happen when you export from Unity, and for certain conditions with Haxe (and probably some others too – I don’t know these details I’ll admit). Saying that you had to use AS3 was a simple way of ensuring this, but if we’re going to have a little more flexibility I think that’s the condition they want to stay under. Again, I’ll let the rule clarifications come out to be sure though.

IIRC Haxe can be set to generate actual AS3 code, instead of a swf…so the point is kinda moot.

Originally posted by Amibtious:

IIRC Haxe can be set to generate actual AS3 code, instead of a swf…so the point is kinda moot.

Unity could in theory do the same thing, after all, it does output XCode when compiling for iOS.

Fair enough – as I understand it, the main point is not trigger Flash Player Premium Features. Semantics aside, that’s the important part.

Originally posted by Phoenix00017:

Fair enough – as I understand it, the main point is not trigger Flash Player Premium Features. Semantics aside, that’s the important part.

Fair enough. Although looking through Adobe’s page on premium features, either…

a) only revenue the developer gains is subject to the 9% tax (as the portion of revenue going to the hosting site could be considered a fee) ^{[1:Licensing Royalties]}
b) not-getting a license to use the Premium features will cause the application to automatically downgrade to using software Stage3D, rather than hardware. ²

WOO! I am so entering this. First contest I’ve entered, and I know I’m going into it an underdog, but I’m psyched nonetheless!!
Has there ever been a large contest like this, with this many big companies?

The IGF has an annual contest. It’s on the third day of the GDC. First place gets the same cash prize. But it’s not half as big as this one, which also includes additional goodies!

Does using the newest flash player count as a Premium Feature? Because I think it’d be really awesome to allow right clicking in the game to attack, but that’s only available on the newest flash player which decreases commercial selling since most people don’t have the newest flash player.

Originally posted by Feffers:

Does using the newest flash player count as a Premium Feature?

No. Premium features are specifically hardware accelerated Stage3D and Domain Memory.

Specifically, hardware accelerated Stage3D and Domain Memory BOTH used in the same project. Using one or the other on their own should be fine.

Originally posted by Feffers:

Does using the newest flash player count as a Premium Feature? Because I think it’d be really awesome to allow right clicking in the game to attack, but that’s only available on the newest flash player which decreases commercial selling since most people don’t have the newest flash player.

Whoa, you can right click in Flash nowadays? Awesome.

Bump so someone who hasn’t seen this may see it :3

Haha, thanks Feffers. I’ll go ahead and sticky it so we don’t have to keep bumping it. :)

I’m still not sure if I’m going to make a game for the competition, but non the less, this has made me experiment with multiplayer games for the first time :) Already made some good progress on real time stuff.

Some people don’t have a right mouse button…. Don’t forget that.

Also, I’m curious if there is a good primer somewhere for how to implement the multiplayer and databases aspects? I’m sure I can put together the front end and single player parts, but have yet to see how the multi player connections need to be put together.

Definitely take a look at the example games they provide. Sure, I might admin they have some pretty bad logic placement (code is kinda ugly) but it is a good start.

Or you can check out GDR’s source code for some really really basic interactions between the server and client.

You can also check out the Getting Started page which shows you how to connect and set everything up.

Also, didn’t know some people don’t have a right mouse button. I’m sure most people do though.

Thanks for that info. I hadn’t gotten around to signing up yet, with other random paid work getting in the way. Now for the task of converting my unfinished AS2 project into as3….

um… the player.io info says the visual studio c# version to download needed for their development environment is the green box… but there is no green box on that download screen…. I also see none labeled as c#. Does anyone know which is the best one to install?

(macs have pretty much always come with only single button mice, unless that has recently changed— the standard functionality to use a ‘right click’ option for most translated programs from pc versions needing right clicking functionality was shift-clicking)