faceyspacey's Forum Posts

  • I think it all comes down to business reasons that will truly excite people. Maybe newbs will be more excited, but you'll capture a lot more serious professionals that have demanding clients if you create a build functionality using flash canvas.

    As you may have saw, I got sound working very well using Sound Manager 2. Here's the latest link:

    mcgraw-hill.faceyspacey.com/rocket-blast-3-v12

    And I'm on the verge of solving the flickering completely by injecting the images into the flash canvas swf using loadImage(), which the swf than caches. I.e. I'm pretty sure the flickering is happening cuz of the loading of content.

    Ultimately, the user experience in this particular game is nearly as good as the HTML5 one. The space blasters demo I did, which is very fast, also works very well.

    So maybe it wont support all the cool new upcoming features, but brother most the games in your arcade will work using flash canvas just fine.

    Your platform is perfect kids' education games, and all publishers in that world require it to work in IE<9. ALL OF THEM! And will for 3-5 more years. That's just the deal in the public US k-12 education system, and probably k-12 everywhere.

    There is big money here, and you're missing out on a huge opportunity. I've concocted a very solid solution here. Maybe it doesn't support 100% of the things you can do with C2, but it does support the 80% most common use cases. I'm getting a lot of help from the developer of Flash Canvas. I'm sure we can improve it more for the needs of C2. You go to great lengths in various articles you've published to state how C2 works in like 24 environments (i.e. in your benchmarks article). I'm not sure why you don't want to add such a large percentage of computers to your roster, specifically a percentage that could end up being disproportionately large in terms of the total C2 game players if the education market took a liking to your platform, which they could and will, especially after I make 200 games with your platform for one of the biggest textbook publishers. Like, 10-15% use IE<9 below on most sites, but in the education market it's between 30-50%.

    I honestly may be interested in funding this stuff being added to your build process. I know you have your path, and tons of cool stuff you want to do. So this is just annoying bullsh*t. But dude, C2 is literally made to make the sort of learning games I'm making for young kids. It's a perfect fit. I mean what if an entire school district or textbook publisher came to you and said they wanted to make C2 the exclusive tool for making their games, and they'll bring a ton of developers to start using it, what would you say?

    It would only be good for C2, and much of the work, research and testing will have already been done so you just need to generate more pristine less hacky and more integrated versions of the code I got.

    I know it goes against the mission statement you've been sharing with the world for so long, but if it's working tight enough, and doesn't take much time for you to integrate, I don't know how you can deny it as a smart business decision. If it took tons of time, fine, i get it. But this may actually be extremely easy for you. For example, here's all the code I needed to add (besides the library) to make SoundManager2 work with its hidden swf:

    jsfiddle.net/7Uvm9

    and of course I have conditional HTML tags triggering this only for IE. Check the source here:

    mcgraw-hill.faceyspacey.com/rocket-blast-3-v12

  • I know about the solutions in the native wrappers. In this case, I'm actually not looking for polyphony, but simply no delays in audio playing in browsers on mobile phones, or at least in iOS safari.

    It would be nice to have Pode's solution part of your C2 build process.

    Pode, you available for hire? I'm on a very tight deadline of tomorrow. You want to help me with your audio sprites solution? Email me at jamesdvo@faceyspacey.com. I PMed you, but I'm not sure you saw it.

  • do you have any code to share for that? I'm about to implement your solution in the other thread? is the caching code the there cuz it didn't seem like at the time you had implemented.

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  • So for those of you who've been tracking my ventures into making IE<9 work with Construct 2, i recently got audio working with Audio.js:

    kolber.github.com/audiojs

    But because I had to hack it to use its functionality that creates unnecessary dom and flash elements for every sound, it was horribly slow and the sounds had a lot of delay.

    So today I decided to replace it with Sound Manager 2:

    schillmania.com/projects/soundmanager2

    I wrote a lot simpler code to make the connector, here it is:

    jsfiddle.net/7Uvm9

    And you can see it in action here:

    mcgraw-hill.faceyspacey.com/rocket-blast-3-v12

    So again, my guess is that soundManager 2 is simply faster and doesnt require creating tons of elements on the page. Basically it's designed to be called via javascript to trigger flash sounds, whereas Audio.js is designed to turn <static> audio elements already on the page into flash audio players.

    My last thing to perfect IE<9 using flash canvas is to prevent some flickering and blinking. If anyone has an ideas of what to do to stop it, I'd greatly appreciate it. Previously when I first got it to work using the Space Blasters demo, i thought it was because the game was so action-packed and fast paced. But now I have a very simple game with very little animation, and very slow animation at that. So I'm wondering if there is anything in C2 itself I can do to make the game basically appear simpler and smaller to Flash Canvas??

  • i'll check out your thread.

    ps. im about to try SoundManager2 instead of audio.js int the IE flash canvas solution. i think it will make the audio faster.

    ps. how did the Web Storage thing go for caching audio?

  • Anyone have a an audio sprites solution for C2 to make audio not so poor in iOS safari?

    Ashley, you building this into C2 any time soon?

    Edit by Ashley: audio sprites are no longer necessary with iOS 6, you do not need to use them any more.

  • Here's the demo:

    mcgraw-hill.faceyspacey.com/rocket-blast-3-v11

    The remaining issues I need to solve are:

    -stop the flickering at the beginning while the assets are being loaded (the flash canvas shouldn't show until all assets are loaded)

    -audio needs to be more responsive

    That game has a bunch of game-related bugs. Don't judge the game, just the audio basically. I'll post an updated game with the game related bugs fixed in a day.

    IF anyone has any tips, let me know. It was done using audio.js from: kolber.github.com/audiojs and flash canvas from: flashcanvas.net. It also works decently in iOS safari with sound.

    Here's the relevant code I made to connect audio.js to Audio object calls made by C2:

    jsfiddle.net/pzRmL

    And to reference how I originally got flash canvas working, you can view my code supplied in this thread:

    scirra.com/forum/topic48639.html

  • Ashley,

    By the way I got audio working:

    mcgraw-hill.faceyspacey.com/rocket-blast-3-v11

    it's using audio.js (http://kolber.github.com/audiojs) with a connector I wrote. It still needs a lot of optimization. If anyone has any advice, let me know.

    Otherwise, I got a quick counter-argument for you, Ashley: by supporting more platforms, you'll be able to segway more people into the future. Many people don't use your solution because it won't work easily in IE<9. You could be a stepping stone for them. Basically the opposite of your argument could be true. By supporting more platforms, you can get more people using HTML5 than otherwise.

    In general, martyrdom rhetoric is always the loss of stubborn individuals. I'm sorry, but you're not really going to make a difference in the whole movement to html5. I mean you could, but it's not worth your time. It would be more beneficial to C2 as a whole to do whatever it takes to get more people on board with it.

    With full IE<9 support, you could get a host of new developers who otherwise passed on C2. Once they're with you, you now got a bigger ship of developers moving to the HTML5 world. They have flash easily working, but overall they're more supportive of the HTML movement. Just think about it, man. What's fantasy and theory vs. reality? Reality is I just need to get the above game a little more optimized and a huge percentage of your games can easily work in IE<9. Now coding in HTML5 first is an option for tons of flash developers that would otherwise stay entrenched in flash for even longer.

    It's all about the segway, man. That's how we'll most quickly and most smoothly get to where we wall want to go where browsers kick ass and are cross-compatible.

  • do u not realize, im dealing with the biggest textbook publisher in the world, and they require this? It's not about philosophically anything. It's about practicality. You may say they're stupid. No, they're right. K-12 public schools in the US stil have a huge numer using IE8 and below.

    I'm gonna get it to work just like I did flashcanvas with or without anyone's help. You're losing tons of traffic and money, even on regular sites with 10% using IE8 and below. They're not upgrading because you say so.

    Where's your common sense, guys? plus this task isn't that hard. the friggin space blasters demo works in ie8, ie7 and ie6 using my flashcanvas implementation. I'll get audio working just as easily. Why you want to miss out on money, makes no sense to me. Guess you don't have a site generating you $10k that could generate your 11.5k, or in the case of the education industry (this is an example), a 13-15k instead of 10k, my brother. 30-50% of browsers in public k-12 schools in the US are IE8 and below. Yes, ur regular site (i.e. not targeted towards k-12 public schools) is at 11% or something, but that's still a significant number.

    You guys are so religious around here. Why not some help, eh?

    Ashley mentioned some things that will cause a problem, which i havent run into yet (and I've now done a whole custom game that worked out perfectly), but I bet i can find solutions for those too. I think it was something with json.

    Anyway the point is this is a fantastic platform. Why not support IE8 and below. It would be a huge selling point. It doesn't mean you can go on newgrounds because flashcanvas only works in IE, not other browsers, but it would mean 100% complete cross-platform support!

  • Ashley, that's not an option when my client (a big textbook publisher) requires it.

    Anyone experiment with getting Audio to work in IE7 and IE8 yet using my solution?

  • Hey guys. it's not too old. I'm still looking for developers. The age range is kindergarden to 5th grade.

    Email me and I'll send you a sample game so you get the idea of the type of games and complexity.

  • what do you mean? how do you suggest we get sound to work in ie7 and 8?

  • You may change your mind after you see how well your game came out here:

    http://linkit.faceyspacey.com

    As far as support goes, I understand it's a major decision you've made in your company to stay away from flash. I'm a web developer. I hate IE. etc. However, in the public US k-12 education system, about 50% of computers are on IE8 and below. Installing anything extra, whether they can do so with or without group permissions is a major barrier. And besides that, my client requires this. So I have no choice.

    ASIDES: I'm pretty sure json parsing can be solved in IE7 pretty easily. Web storage, no, but how many games need that?

    Given the nature of the games C2 creates, you guys are missing out on a great opportunity. C2 makes for a perfect platform to make relatively easy learning games. That's your choice obviously. I just need sound. I'll collaborate with you to make this happen. I'll basically do it if you really don't have the bandwidth. Maybe you don't even want the functionality in your codebase. But if you do, any information you can give me will be greatly appreciated and I'll use it to support sound in IE7 and IE8. I bet it won't be that complex at the end of the day. And even though other IE7/IE8 functionality might not work, my guess is you'll support the 80% of functionality most used.

    ...So I'm about to create 100-200 games on your platform with or without your support. That's not meant to sound bad. I love your platform. I just mean I totally get you have other priorities, but using your platform for education games is mine. The fact that your space blasters game works means that way simpler and slower education games for k-4 children will work perfectly (and without the minor flicker you'll see in my demo). I just need to get sound to work. If you can drop me any hints off hand to get sound working that you can think of, I'd greatly appreciate it.

    Thanks in advance!

  • no, flashcanvas isn't a browser within a browser. That was chrome frame. flashcanvas is just a flash .swf that all school supports.

    now we just need their audio engine to work in ie7 and ie8 and we're golden.

  • if interested PM me.