Shun the nonbeliever!

Okay so there’s this kid at school that doesn’t think you can make games with flash. he took a summer course on flash, so he thinks he knows everything about flash and from what I can understand all they went over was animation. However he is an over achiever and so he tried some scripting and what he tried didn’t work. He then asked his instructor if Flash could be used to make games and such (apparently that’s what he was trying to do), and here’s the kicker. The instructor said Flash isn’t meant, nor is good at making games in.

So either way, in high school we have this class called SLC and its sort of a small group talk the fill in the other half of our lunch period, and there was a bit where we said what we hope to do as a job. I said I would like to do aerospace engineering while doing some indie game development on the side. And the kid (may I add is a know it all asshole) says “Oh, well have you ever done anything in making games because if you haven’t you wouldn’t like it”. I then said, in fact I have made some basic games in Adobe Flash, and he goes on to say that Flash is not good for game development.

So for the next 2 weeks have this entire argument, and even against immense amounts of evidence, he still feels flash cant be used to make games. His only argument is oh well you can pass a reference to a scene. I’m like huh? He gives the example that when in halo you get to a certain spot a grunt throws a ‘nade at a car. I’m just stunned that this person who is a full set of classes ahead (freshman doing non-honors sophmore classes) in math and science just can’t even understand the fact that you need to know the subject before fighting about it.

And here is the real kicker, he didn’t know FPA was in flash.

Well here’s what I thought could convince him:

• I would make a game and get it sponsored.

• Put a copy of with on a disk with a paper listing the balance of my money made from it.

• Then I would take it to him and tell him “Suck it, B*!”

But as my game is getting closer to done, I wanted to figure out what would make him fully convinced. So I realized I could get others’ opinions on the matter.

So please, if you could talk to this person, what would you say to him?

Tell him to check out Kongregate.

Then tell him that the vast majority of games on here are made in Flash.

Show him the Shootorials.

I believe he has never been to the internets.

Show him Notessimo. That alone could convince him how epic flash can be.

Take him to your local computer, open any decent flash game on any browser, play a few levels/rounds and then right click on the game and show him the “About Adobe Flash Player” part. Repeat until it sinks in.

Or this. That should work.

Then again, the Shootorials would make your entire argument for you.

Ah, options.

I believe you should just say did your retarded millions of people make flash games every day, tell him to go F*** himself, then walk away.

People argue over the dumbest things to protect their ego. Obviously he is insecure and you are attacking him personally by trying to tell him he is wrong. He knows you are right, but be the bigger person and simply drop it and spend your time doing something more productive.

So please, if you could talk to this person, what would you say to him?

“There were games before Halo.”

—

Dragon’s Lair was basically a laser disc with cues for player input that would change scenes. Someone wants to talk about a technology only being good for animations and unprofitable for games, see if you can find how much money that game made.

Truthfully the kid is of little concern, there are enough games made in flash to convince anyone that games can be made in flash, even 3d games can be made in flash nowadays (show him Alternativa3d’s demos) and with flash player 10’s GPU integration it can stand with some of the more graphic intensive games (though it is still lacking).
I’m more concerned about the teacher who said it wasn’t designed nor is good at making games, it’s a shame, while it’s true that flash wasn’t originally designed for making games, all of the recent additions are almost entirely to facilitate game making in some form or another, and it’s good enough to make any games you are likely to make on your own (or with a small team).

Originally posted by ColbyCheeze:

People argue over the dumbest things to protect their ego. Obviously he is insecure and you are attacking him personally by trying to tell him he is wrong. He knows you are right, but be the bigger person and simply drop it and spend your time doing something more productive.

Yea well I’m just multi-tasking. When I finish my game which I was already doing I’m showing him it. Of course he is of little concern, but we two are rivals in just about everything, scratch that, enemies. Everyone else hates him and many would like to see him admit he was wrong.

And as for his teacher, he was a volunteer college student, don’t know his major though.

Also a lot of your ideas would not work on him. Since it is obvious he knows he’s wrong, he will try to keep the truth away from him (sounds like Oedipus Rex, eh?) so you need to take things to him, he wount let you take him to something. But yea you little comments will help.

Cloud_9ine wrote:

Everyone else hates him and many would like to see him admit he was wrong.

From the sound of it, that probably won’t happen. If he won’t admit that Flash can be used to make real games despite all the evidence to the contrary, I don’t think one more game is going to change that. You might as well just ignore him.

email him the link of the game, take screen shots during each of the processes of making the game. and when the game is done tell him to right click and point out that it says flash player 10

yea pretty much

The instructor said Flash isn’t meant, nor is good at making games in.

He has a point. It isn’t. Notice how people complain about the terrible lag in so many games? Anytime you have lots of particles wandering around, everything lags. Why? Because Flash scripting is bulky and inefficient. Even efficient algorithms run inefficiently in Flash.

It works. But not well. Computers are fast enough that there’s no reason that these very, very simple games with extraordinarily simple graphics should have _any difficulty running on any computer made in the last 10 years. Even a basic game of pong has a noticeable amount of lag in response at certain points.

Flash is fantastic scripting software, but it’s terrible for games. He never said it can’t be done. He said it isn’t meant to and that it isn’t very good at it. I’m not certain on whether it was meant to or not, but you all have seen the evidence that it is NOT good at it. At all.

Well I did know that flash wasn’t great for games (although hopefully by the next version of AS it will be more efficient and with native graphics acceleration), but in the way he was tell me was that games can’t be done in flash! We were really arguing about whether flash is best/better for games, he was arguing the side that you cant possibly make games in flash.