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Adobe Flash professional vs Eclipse vs HTML5 for android apps [closed]

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I have been using the flash pro for 6 years now, and I find it very easy to create any kind of application and game (except 3D ones). The flash pro says that is can compile cross platform natively in Android (and iOs too), so am in a dilemma (or trilemma), should I use:
1. The flash pro IDE which I know very good
2. Should I learn Eclipse which I hear is ideal for Android apps or
3. Should I make the app with HTML5, jquery mobile, etc and compile it with PhoneGap?
The app I was to develop is quite simple, it has a list of POIs, categories, (from online database) and it shows them on map (flash pro may have to use stageview for that), so the graphic processing required should be minimal. It may also cache some POIs when downloaded on phone.
Please answer the question in relation to:
- Speed/responsiveness of the app
- How much "native"/professional the app will be
- Feature-wise, would all the features be there
- Debugging
Thank you,
Panos

You are always going to be able to get the best results with the most native approach (eclipse) as long as you can handle the IDE and language. You have a good deal of experience with flash and if you don't have much or any with Java you may have trouble getting into using Java.
Here's a simple breakdown though:
Flash:
Great for apps that serve as a web frontend.
Supports most common android features.
Doing anything heavy in processing or too custom tends to get bad performance.
You are abstracted from what the app is really doing and therefore have less control.
Java:
You are using the native language and therefore can use android to it's fullest extent.
You will find plenty of help for any problem you run into and it's much easier to debug more complicated apps.
Better performance in most app usages, especially for more complex apps.
Not cross-platform though you don't seem to care about that.
PhoneGap:
I have no experience for this but I would assume it's similar to the Flash approach.
Probably really good for Web Frontends.
The choice is really just dependent on what you feel would best suit your current knowledge and goals for the app.
I would strongly recommend just learning Java and using Eclipse as it will always be as good and responsive as you can design it.

I want to build a video game app for android and ios, but I'm worried about where to start [closed]

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I tried researching these topics but I'm a little bit torn on where to start.
1: my native language is c++ so i looked into using Qt, but I'm worried I wont be able to implement stuff like the android keyboard or the iOS game center that uses achievements and in store app purchases, etc.
2: I want it to be a 2D game with a scrolling background that uses touch and drag controls (kind of like angry birds), achievements, leaderboards, in store purchases, and be able to make it free with ad support.
3: I read a few iOS programming books my friend had so I know objective C also.
4: I could probably pick up java easily.
5: I read a bit about javascript programming but didnt do any programming in it.
6: I watched some Qt tutorials but none of them seemed to cover game development.
So if I make it in Qt will I still be able to use the elements described above?(game center etc.)
If I make it in objective C on a virtual machine will I be able to port it over to android in any possible way?
And what is/are a good tutorial to get me started learning how to make a game like this with these kind of elements in it? (whether it be in Qt or something better)

If you don't know where to start, I would strongly recommend going native in either iOS or Android. Make the game perform well on either one, and you can have a successful app. So many people try to make something generic that works across platforms, and end up with something really mediocre or worse.
If your game is a success, then it will make it to the other platforms either by you or someone else getting to work on those.

If you are looking to invest in this, I might direct you to check out the Unity engine which has support for Android among other devices.
I mention this because you bring up porting over the game from iOS or to iOS. The Unity engine supports multiple platforms, and will make your life easier if you end up trying to deploy your game across all mobile platforms.
It has a free version to try out if you are interested. The android and ios plugins however will cost you more.
http://unity3d.com/

Qt for android has the software keyboard functionality. I recommend you start with Qt 5.1 or necessitas (for android). The game center might be accessible using objective-c++.

Look at Cocos2d-X. It's a C++ port of Cocos 2D that supports iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and several other platforms. We used it at Bionic Panda Games with good results.

2D cross-platform game engine for Android and iOS? [closed]

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I've worked for some time with Unity3d and found it's 2D part with OnGUI() or GUITextures too clumsy. Also, even a smallest game done on Unity3d is at least 10MB download which is just too much for a 2D game.
So, I'm currently looking for an engine for 2D. I've tried Cocos2D but it's iOS only and I wouldn't like to rewrite everything into another language for Android (so, e.g. Java port of Cocos2d for Android is not an option). Instead, I want to write the code once and with least hassle deploy it on iOS, Android and possibly Windows Phone 7. I have both Mac and Windows.
Just to be more detailed, here are my requirements to the engine:
must be cross-platform
must be efficient
should be C++, Java, C# or Objective C since I'm comfortable with them and NOT Flash, Javascript, HTML5 since I am not a web developer
must have a large community, tutorials, additional libraries which cover most of the stuff you'd have when developing on iOS or Android directly (in-app billing, facebook etc.)
the final delivered package must be not too large
the engine can be free, but I also wouldn't mind paying a reasonable price
I've found the following engines:
Marmalade (and IwGame engine on top of it) - C++, found overall very positive reviews of Marmalade but not sure about IwGame. EDIT (March 2013): Looks like Marmalade SDK now includes Cocos2Dx and some in-built IDE which makes it much better (and costs $150 per year for indie dev which is ok with me).
Corona SDK - Lua (efficiency doubtful), also needs internet connection to compile code
Cocos2d-x - C++, received lots of reviews from developers, mostly positive and many think it's best for 2D
Particle code - Java+Eclipse, found no reviews or comments
Moai - Lua, coudn't find any reviews/opinions on it
Monkey engine - seems to have too few features
Haxenme - it's Flash, I've never used it and don't want to
use Unity3d but with 2D packages like 2D Toolkit
ports of SDL to Android (also here) and iOS - doesn't look to have much support or current development (?)
GLBasic - Basic language, I don't like it
playN - seems to be early in development (?)
Gamvas - HTML5, doesn't look like a mature engine to me
Ignifuga - Python, also doesn't look mature
ORX - not sure if it's still developed (?)
Construct 2 - reminds GameMaker, might be ok for rapid prototypes but definitely not for industry-level games
XNA and then port the game using ExEn (would need Mono Touch to port to iOS and Mono for Android to port to Android) - C#, and is probably more thought for folks coming from Microsoft products like xBox (I come from Android). Also, those Mono tools cost $800 in total for small developers
Impact - JavaScript, uses HTML5. I'm not much into JavaScript (e.g. preferred C# on Unity3d), also not sure about efficiency since it runs in the browser (?)
GameMaker - own scripting language GML and I actually remember this one as a tool for non-programmers. Has it actually grown into a real engine, I mean for serious development?
AppGameKit - C++, yet seems to be still pretty new. Haven't found any reviews on it
use Cocos2D and Objective C to develop for iOS only and then make an APK for Android out of it using Stella SDK. Has anyone done this? I'm pretty sure there will be limitations, and how about Google's in-app billing, AdMob and Facebook integration on Android?
Moscrif - JavaScript, looks like it's more for former web-developers
Starling - Flash 11, i'm not much into Flash
ND2D - not yet 1.0, does it have many features?
So, I'd be happy if you could comment from your experiences with the engines and suggest which one in the list (or anything else that I've missed) is the best for the described requirements. I also may be wrong with my first impressions about some of the engines.
I'm currently thinking of Marmalade+IwGame as the best option but since I don't have much info about Cocos2d-x and Particle code, I am not really sure about it.
Thank you!
EDIT (June 2013): So far I made 2 cross-platform 2D games and used Unity3D with 2D Toolkit plugin for both. For the game with simple GUI I used a simple self-made GUI system based on Unity's own. For more complex one (e.g. where GUI elements can overlap) I used the NGUI plugin. Recently 2D Toolkit added some more classes for GUI which is very handy since one had to use 2 different systems for texture atlases when combining NGUI with 2D Toolkit. I'll definitely try that one in the next 2D game. The main reason for choosing Unity3D for 2D games was that I already was deep into Unity3D both in terms of experience and accumulated code snippets for re-use. Also, I purchased Unity3D pro (with Android Pro and iOS Pro) for 3D games and it made full sense to just pay additional $60 for the 2D Toolkit to get 2D games also covered. I so far don't regret my decision, it seems to have been optimal for my case. The only thing which gave me headache was adding social features with the Prime31's plugins (Android & iOS social plugins) but I assume that their bugs are not the fault of Prime31 but of Twitter/Facebook instead, so I probably would see the same bugs on any other engine or plugin.
EDIT (Jan 2014): I guess with Unity 4.3 the answer to my question is pretty obvious now: the Unity's new sprites system and maybe also 2DToolkit totally beat anything else, especially for people who have (like me) been on Unity for a while and purchased the Pro version with add-ons.

LibGDX is one of the best engines I've ever used, works on almost all platforms, and performs twice as fast as cocos2d-x in most tests I've done. You can use any JVM language you like. Here's a 13 part tutorial in Java, and here's a bunch using jruby. There's a good skeletal animation tool that works with it here, and it has baked in support for tiled TMX maps as well. The ui framework is awesome, and it has a scene graph and actor style API similar to cocos2d scenes, sprites and actions. The community is awesome, updates are frequent, and the documentation is good. Don't let the java part scare you, it's fast, and you can use jruby or scala or whatever you like. I highly recommend it for 2d or 3d work, it supports both.

I've worked with Marmalade and I found it satisfying. Although it's not free and the developer community is also not large enough, but still you can handle most of the task using it's tutorials. (I'll write my tutorials once I got some times too).
IwGame is a good engine, developed by one of the Marmalade user. It's good for a basic game, but if you are looking for some serious advanced gaming stuff, you can also use Cocos2D-x with Marmalade. I've never used Cocos2D-x, but there's an Extension on Marmalade's Github.
Another good thing about Marmalade is it's EDK (Extension Development Kit), which lets you make an extension for whatever functionality you need which is available in native code, but not in Marmalade. I've used it to develop my own Customized Admob extension and a Facebook extension too.
Edit:
Marmalade now has it's own RAD(Rapid Application Development) tool just for 2D development, named as Marmalade Quick. Although the coding will be in Lua not in C++, but since it's built on top of C++ Marmalade, you can easily include a C++ library, and all other EDK extensions. Also the Cocos-2Dx and Box2D extensions are preincluded in the Quick. They recently launched it's Release version (It was in beta for 3-4 months). I think we you're really looking for only 2D development, you should give it a try.
Update:
Unity3D recently launched support for 2D games, which seems better than any other 2D game engine, due to it's GUI and Editor. Physics, sprite etc support is inbuilt. You can have a look on it.
Update 2
Marmalade is going to discontinue their SDK in favor of their in-house game production soon. So it won't be a wise decision to rely on that.

You mention Haxe/NME but you seem to instinctively dislike it. However, my experience with it has been very positive. Sure, the API is a reimplementation of the Flash API, but you're not limited to targeting Flash, you can also compile to HTML5 or native Windows, Mac, iOS and Android apps. Haxe is a pleasant, modern language similar to Java or C#.
If you're interested, I've written a bit about my experience using Haxe/NME: link

V-Play (v-play.net) is a cross-platform game engine based on Qt/QML with many useful V-Play QML game components for handling multiple display resolutions & aspect ratios, animations, particles, physics, multi-touch, gestures, path finding and more. API reference
The engine core is written in native C++, combined with the custom renderer, the games reach a solid performance of 60fps across all devices.
V-Play also comes with ready-to-use game templates for the most successful game genres like tower defense, platform games or puzzle games.
If you are curious about games made with V-Play, here is a quick selection of them:
Squaby: a tower defense game
Chicken Outbreak: a platformer like Doodle Jump
Blockoban: puzzle game
Crazy Elephant: a game similar to Angry Birds
Snowball Mania: multiplayer action game
Blitzkopf: brain game
(Disclaimer: I'm one of the guys behind V-Play)

Here is just a reply from Richard Pickup on LinkedIn to a similar question of mine:
I've used cocos 2dx marmalade and unity on both iOS and android. For
2d games cocos2dx is the way to go every time. Unity is just too much
overkill for 2d games and as already stated marmalade is just a thin
abstraction layer not really a game engine. You can even run cocos2d
on top of marmalade. My approach would be to use cocos2dx on iOS and
android then in future run cocosd2dx code on top of marmalade as an
easy way to port to bb10 and win phone 7

I find a nice and tidy Wave game engine few days ago. It uses C# and have Windows Phone and Windows Store converters as well which makes it a great replacement of XNA for me

and what about LibGDX from BadLogicGames?

Check out Loom (http://theengine.co) is a new cross platform 2D game engine featuring hot swapping code & assets on devices. This means that you can work in Photoshop on your assets, you can update your code, modify the UI of your app/game and then see the changes on your device(s) while the app is running.
Thinking to the other cross platform game engines I’ve heard of or even played with, the Loom Game Engine is by far the best in my oppinion with lots of great features. Most of the other similar game engines (Corona SDK, MOAI SDK, Gideros Mobile) are Lua based (with an odd syntax, at least for me). The Loom Game Engine uses LoomScripts, a scripting language inspired from ActionScript 3, with a couple of features borrowed from C#. If you ever developed in ActionScript 3, C# or Java, LoomScript will look familiar to you (and I’m more comfortable with this syntax than with Lua’s syntax).
The 1 year license for the Loom Game Engine costs $500, and I think it’s an affordable price for any indie game developer. Couple of weeks ago the offered a 1 year license for free too. After the license expires, you can still use Loom to create and deploy your own games, but you won’t get any further updates. The creators of Loom are very confident and they promised to constantly improve their baby making it worthwile to purchase another license.
Without further ado, here are Loom’s great features:
Cross platform (iOS, Android, OS X, Windows, Linux/Ubuntu)
Rails-inspired workflow lets you spend your time working with your game (one command to create a new project, and another command to run it)
Fast compiler
Live code and assets editing
Possibility to integrate third party libraries
Uses Cocos2DX for rendering
XML, JSON support
LML (markup language) and CSS for styling UI elements
UI library
Dependency injection
Unit test framework
Chipmunk physics
Seeing your changes live makes multidevice development easy
Small download size
Built for teams
You can find more videos about Loom here: http://www.youtube.com/user/LoomEngine?feature=watch
Check out this 4 part in-depth tutorial too: http://www.gamefromscratch.com/post/2013/02/28/A-closer-look-at-the-Loom-game-engine-Part-one-getting-started.aspx

I've tried AppGameKit, It's both c++ and Basic.
It's very easy to code 2d games in the Basic varient, with physics, collision and heaps more.
It's also in active development, and really cheap (65$).
The main problem is that it's really hard to compile for Android (you need to download heaps of files and follow difficult guides and things like that)
My opinion is that it isn't yet good enough for commercial use, but is good for indie programmers
It's got a medium size community

I currently use Corona for business applications with great success. As far as games go, I'm under the impression that it doesn't provide the performance that some of the other cross-platform development engines do. It is worth noting that Carlos (founder of Ansca Mobile/Corona SDK) has started another company on a competing engine; Lanica Platino Engine for Appcelerator Titanium. While I haven't worked with this personally, it does look promising. Keep in mind, however, that it comes with a $999/yr price tag.
All that said, I have been researching Moai for a little while now (since I am already familiar with Lua syntax) and it does seem promising. The fact that it can compile for multiple platforms, not limited to mobile environments, is appealing.
Multimedia Fusion 2 is also a worth contender, considering the complexity of games produced and the performance realized from them. Vincere Totus Astrum (http://gamesare.com) comes to mind.

Recently I used an AS3 engine: PushButton (now is dead, but it's still functional and you could use something else) to do this job. To make it works with Android and iOS, the project was compiled in AIR for both platforms and everything worked with no performance damage. Since Flash Builder is kinda expensive ($249), you could use FlashDevelop (there is some tutorials to compile in AIR with it).
Flash could be an option since is very easy to learn.

Corona SDK free alternatives [closed]

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I tried corona sdk free edition, i really liked it. The problem is, that im not so good developer to use corona paid edition for my small project, i'm aware that i'll not earn my money back. Are there any free alternatives, like Corona? I'd prefer lua scripting, proper IDE and some other cookies.
Question two: Is there any way to publish app made with corona free edition on android market? Maybe there are some companies that provide publishing apps if i share my source with them.

Moai is open-source and uses Lua. I love Corona and put out an iPhone game I developed using it, but I'm planning to explore this new option for my next project.

We switched our studio from Corona to Moai last week. Corona is good for beginners learning Lua but has significant performance limitations that we could not overcome. It took me a week to port our Lua code over and write an extra management layer but overall we are much happier with an open source platform like Moai. I had a couple of questions on Moai which were answered promptly in their forums.
What finally pushed me over the edge was the Moai game Crimson Pirates which was #1 last week. See this video and download the game to see what I mean by performance in Moai. You couldn't write a game like that in Corona and get good performance.
Not sure if the Corona/Flash connection is a good thing. Flash may be popular but it's held in very low esteem by most game developers. When I challenged Walter on the performance issue, he didn't have any good answers. At least with Moai if I don't like the performance I can look at the code myself.

You may want to try Gideros Studio, which is free, and has an IDE. It includes some goodies like font creator and texture packer also.
If you send an email to the developers, I believe they'll also help you with your project.

There are Corona, Gideros, Moai, and LÖVE. Here is a review.

The other SDK's mentioned are also Lua-based and work much in the same way as the Corona SDK, however, Corona has had lots of time to mature, and is co-founded by Carlos Icaza and Walter Luh, both of whom are pioneers in the mobile industry (they have worked for Macromedia, Adobe, Apple, the list goes on, etc. etc.)... In fact, they've had their hands in industry-leading software that many of you probably use on a regular basis (Illustrator, Photoshop, the list goes on...)
The Corona SDK is also growing an amazing pace, so you can be confident that it's going to stick around for a while.
And to answer your final question, no, you cannot build for distribution using a trial membership with Corona. The trial, however, does not expire.

Moai is open source, and designed for pro game developers. It needs more work on documentation but if you are experienced you can generally find your way around it, and the forums are good at responding quickly.
Corona is aimed at beginners and is a closed source product. If you are a beginner, you are better off sticking with Corona or GameSalad. Bungie is using Moai. You don't see big studios using a closed source solution like Corona, mostly beginners and indie devs.

Moai! is awesome! It's a great alternative to Corona and if performance is a problem you can always get into the source code and address it yourself.
I've personally contributed to Moai (upgraded Box2D to the latest version). Their team was quick to integrate the changes in addition to some bug fixes. They're moving really fast and it's getting better every day.
At first I was hesitant writing everything in Lua, so I took Moai for a spin by porting on of my existing games on iPhone B.I.T.S Pinball written with my own engine in C++. I was pleasantly surprised that not only was it almost just as performant but MUCH faster to re-implement and cut way down on the code. Lua coroutines are like magical pixie dust.

If you are looking for an open source alternative to Corona, as others have noted, the Moai open source game framework is making a lot of progress and a number of experienced game developers are using it. I switched to Moai in since November and it's basically an open source, high performance game engine with Lua.
Moai might not be suitable for a beginner though. I'd stick with Corona Free edition if I was just getting started, then switch to Moai when you are 100% sure you can create a good game.

the free open-source thing of MOAI is just a (big) added bonus to its capabilities.
It's syntax is similar to corona due the fact they both usa LUA as wrapper, corona has a better number community, tutorials and DOCS are very well spreaded all over the net. Moai just lacks of them if you don't consider the examples on "samples" directory of the SDK and the few examples on their forum. Corona workflow is amazing, i can work with IntelliJ Idea and have both auto-completion on LUA (this works also in MOAI obviously) and Corona itself, plus i can run the output straight on the simulator.exe (time saving!)
Moai is more for advanced people, it's updated on the fly everyday but again, you really should check it and spare some time with it, you won't regret it!

I second the call to check out MOAI! I've done 4 titles with MOAI so far, and won't be stopping any time soon .. MOAI absolutely kicks ass!
Also check out LOAD81, which is a similar effort albeit with SDL as the target environment: http://github.com/antirez/load81

Please note that the Corona platform is totally free now.
Corona Product into page.
They call it completely free! :)

Ruby practical for Android Development? [closed]

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I am trying to break into a bit of development and have been advised Ruby is quite an easy / powerful language to get started on.
My main hope for learning a programming language was to break into mobile development. I have heard Ruby can be used for Android development with the right 'kit' but is this a practical language to use for this or will it end up being a more long winded approach than just learning Java from the get go?

I recently read about Ruboto. You should check it out too!

Maybe you should be looking at http://rhomobile.com/?

Almost all the documentation on android development is focused on Java, and eclipse. While I'm not a big fan of Eclipse as an IDE (bloat); it is what the lot use, so it is what I use.
Where you'll find hardship with ruby is when you have to do something that is atypical.. something that is purely android. It will save you time in the beginning, however as with all high level languages, it will end up costing you more when you need to get "dirty"... The net result will be the same.
I program ruby/rails during my day job and android for my "unpaid". Both are good languages, but there are strings attached with any language.
Keep in mind also that the Android platform is Java supported.. In this you know if there are new features in OS 5..6..n then you can be sure there is a way to access them in Java. Ruby might be quick to integrate them, but then it depends on the developers (us) of Ruby. Also keep in mind that on some older devices 1.x..2.x there may be things that run slow when passed through ruby. (I don't know how it's interpreter works)..
Last note. If you learn Ruby for android, and you apply for a job programming Android, I'm betting they will expect Eclipse/Java not xxx/Ruby

Not very sure of Ruby , but you can surely use JRuby http://code.google.com/p/jruby-for-android/

If your goal is to learn mobile development on Android, I would highly suggest sticking with Java. The Android SDK is Java based, and the majority of documentation and examples (including the official docs) you find will be in Java.
While Ruby is a powerful language, it is primarily used for web development. You may have a difficult time finding documentation, and support when you're not using standard Android language.

It appears that Google mainly supports using Java with Eclipse. While you probably could do it with Ruby, I think your best bet is to just use Java and Eclipse.