Okay,
I'm and unemployed student and i want to make a game for one of adobe's mobile game contest for android phones and flash 10.1
Well, although i have cs4, i dont have cs5, and dont have the money to upgrade or buy a test phone.
So i was wondering is there still anyway to emulate testing on the android platform with flash 10.1 games, or am i out of luck.
I have the android sdk and eclipse plugin, is their by chance a way i can test the swf's from there.
Edit: I might have a possible solution. I have recently learned that the Device Central in the cs5 might not expire after 30days, which would be really helpful if i can at least still test out the swf's, but just not use flash cs5. Of course i wont know for sure until a month for now ( just installed cs5 ), but im gonna ask on the adobe forums to see if i can get a faster response, and thought there might be some people who might want to know about a answer.
There are 2 things that I could recommend:
Read this post which runs through testing a SWF with the tools you already have. Not only that but it looks like the SWF can be compiled with CS4. http://www.flashmobileblog.com/2009/08/12/flash-development-with-android-sdk-1-5/
If you feel like you must have CS5, check the rules and regulations for the contest you might be able to download the trial version of CS5 which usually is good for 30 days.
Related
I'm looking to explore the possibilities of publishing apps in Flash cs5 although, I was concerned with a the limitations or hidden pitfalls of using flash for this purpose. I'm designer and illustrator with some coding experience.
What is the ease of deployment for Android and the app store? is there any post flash stages that I would need to know about?
Thanks,
CS5 should work fine, but there are a few caveats: You will need to update your AIR compiler to the latest version, or you will not be able to make iPhone5 compatible apps.
Hopefully you are on Windows, because in this case you can use FlashDevelop to publish your apps, and pair that with Flash CS5 for the art. I'd recommend this build process even if you are on a mac. But since Flash Develop is windows only, you'll need to run parallels or bootcamp or something to let you run the windows app. That will make development harder, but not impossible.
So: CS5 is OK. It does not support publishing apps out of the box (you need at least CS5.5 for that) But there are good (free) solutions avaiable that will pair with Flash CS5.
I'd recommend getting Flash CC. If you are doing simple programming than CC would be fine and the code editor is somewhat better than previously, but more importantly things will mostly just work rather than issues you get when trying to setup and build with old versions of the Flash software and trying to publish to new versions of device software.
i have asked this question before but the answer received was not applicable in my situation. I searched the net and still unable to find anything. I have a game in flash actionscript 3.0 and i would like to put it on my htc hero - android phone. Are there any tutorials that state on how to do this please?
thanks.
You can do it using Flash CS5. There is an option to start a new "AIR for Android" project. You can use the code from your existing game. You may have to tweak parts of an existing game because mobile devices are less powerfull, and have different inputs like touchscreens, virtual keyboards and menu buttons.
Generally speaking, you want to make a standalone apk using the Adobe Air paradigm (i.e. you do not put a .swf on the device).
http://www.adobe.com/products/air/sdk/
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/devices.html
Adobe will be rolling Android support into Flash (using the Air paradigm) starting with CS5.5 to be released in Q2 2011; the public beta they released in November 2010 (for CS5) is no longer available: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashpro_extensionforair/
No tutorials come to mind. If I were to search Google, my luck would probably be as good as yours.
I have been recently writing a mobile application using Adobe's Preview of Flash Builder Burrito. There is a project creation option in there to create an Action Script Mobile Application which is exactly perfect for what you are asking in your question.
I assume that the Actionscript game is written by you so you will have no problem moving it into the project created by Flash Builder Burrito.
In fact, I think Adobe just released the final version of Flash Builder Burrito, and you can download it as a fully functional free 60 day trial. That should be more than enough time to bundle up your game and deploy it to the Android app store, or just debug it on your own phone for yourself. Adobe also gives out free licenses for students, and unemployed developers.
Hope this helps. Let me know if you have any trouble it should be very straight forward to wrap up your game and get it on your Android phone.
Has anybody blogged about this comparison, or does anyone want to give it a shot here? Would be nice to see some reasoned thoughts on Adobe AIR on Android vs. the "native" Android SDK (in Java).
Edit: Despite few views and no answers, I'm leaving this question up here since it's a topic that needs to be covered at some point... but if it gets no attention I'll delete it in a few days.
I think it's ultimately very similar to the question of whether to use AIR or Java for a desktop application. Ultimately it comes down to three points:
Does AIR do everything you need? Obviously the android SDK gives you complete access to device capabilities, but AIR purposely doesn't, in order to stay portable. For example, AIR may not support intents, at least initially (I don't think Adobe has announced yet one way or the other). Also, AIR requires Android 2.2. If those limitations are troublesome, regular android SDK may be best.
Are you looking to make something that would be well-suited to doing in Flash? If you're planning a design-heavy app with animations, video, sound, or the like, then building it in Flash may be significantly easier than using Java. On the other hand, if your app will be pure code using only standard visual components, then it might not make a lick of difference which platform you use. Or on the gripping hand, if you'd have existing Flash animations or the like, then trying to shoehorn them into a Java app will be bothersome.
Are you targeting other platforms besides Android? If so, AIR may be a big win, as the same app content should run on windows, mac, linux, and later on, other devices that plan to support AIR, like Blackberry, some TVs, blu-ray disc players, etc. If you are only targeting Android, AIR may lose some of its appeal.
I hope that helps some. Realistically, unless you're effectively locked out of using AIR because you need something it doesn't give you, or effectively locked into using AIR because you're doing design-heavy work and you need the tooling, then I think the pros and cons of the two SDKs are largely questions of convenience. Either platform will work, so it's merely which will get you to the finish line the fastest and most reliably.
One issue to consider is compatibility with Android devices. Both fancy smart phones and cheap phones run in Android, but they don't have the same capabilities. Even if you application is simple or can be done beautifully in AIR, its relevant to mention that AIR is not compatible to all Android devices.
Some very popular devices currently sold (such as Samsung ACE and other "cheap" devices) use ArmV6 chips, and AIR or Flash are not compatible to this architectures, even when running on Android 2.2 or so.
AIR is interesting because same development works in different technologies, but consider that AIR doesn't run on "old" iPhones either, its only guarantied to work on new technology with big processors.
Check this Adobe link http://www.adobe.com/flashplatform/certified_devices/
AIR should be ruled out in your decision of technology if in your requirements you are targeting as much phones as possible, including those that are not so fancy or new.
I have experience with AIR mostly and little with Android SDK when I was building a native extension to AIR. My biggest hurdle with AIR is it's immaturity, it's bugs, and it's inconsistent behavior. Yes, you can go to the shiny page at adobe.com and see how cool is the AIR... All bright with tons of features which seems to cover all your needs. Yet, once you start building your app you'll find many ugly surprises:
Stage text in not working appropriately. link besides this bug StageText has few other bugs, like behavior in Scroller for instance.
Sound() object doesn't play the stream (it does on emulator only). link
Lack of features like AEC makes AIR useless to whole list of chat applications, as you'll will hear echo and screaming noise. link
Overloaded (and immature for mobile) Flex SDK (I hope folks at Apache will rewrite it from 0 and make it more manageable).
No H264 support on iOS devices: link (yes, I know it's Apple problem, that they want to control HD delivery on their platform, still it's Adobe problem too, as they couldn't fight right to bring their technology to forefront).
Sound object doesn't take variable bidrate (only 44.1KHz is possible). Flash "second generation" Speex codec samples at 16Khz. Now, try playing this back through Sound and you'll enjoy a funny circus. At the end you will need to write your own upsample algorithm.
I'm sure people will add more to this list. So, my answer would be native SDK is more preferable for anything serious. You won't work like a QA person with it - testing countless little examples trying to understand why an AIR feature not working, shuffling internet for answers and looking at AIR bug database... only to find that critical bugs are sitting there from release to release. That is my experience with AIR. Going native SDK makes your application not really "cross-platform", but AIR SDK can't claim this title anyway for anything more serious then couple of "Employee directory" examples. And if you will need to build for the other platform, you will just use native tools for it.
GL.
More or less as it says on the tin.
Before I even contemplate downloading the SDK, I was wondering if there was any way of testing Android apps that I'd write without an Android phone available to me? I'm unsure as to whether or not the tools that come with the SDK come with an emulator like VS does for Windows Mobile.
Sorry if this is a stupid question, but maybe I'm searching for the wrong thing.
Edit I don't suppose there's anything that'll let me write widgets on/for an emulated version of the interface HTC use on the Hero/G2 either is there? Not that it would matter that much.
There's an emulator available as part of the SDK.
http://developer.android.com/guide/developing/tools/emulator.html
I'd add that the emulator is really quite comprehensive. Things like camera previews don't actually display camera data, but they put block animations in their place. All in all it's one of the best mobile emulators I've seen to date. Probably better even than gasp the iPhone simulator.
As said above there's an emulator available,however with larger apps it gets fairly tedious to use the emulator.Its fine for learning the ins and outs but id suggest investing in an android phone once you've got a good grasp of the sdk,it really does make a difference!.
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I've been intrigued by all the android world since I first learned about it and would like to get my hands dirty developing for it. The question that comes to mind is if it's worth buying the unlocked phones that Android sells directly or not.
Those phones (link) quoting the Android page:
Run and debug your Android™
applications directly on a device.
Modify and rebuild the Android
operating system, and flash it onto a
phone. The Android Dev Phone 1 is
carrier independent, and available for
purchase by any developer registered
with Android Market™.
Please note that this device is
intended for development purposes, and
may not include certain features found
on consumer Android devices.
So will it be worth it to purchase one of those as a tool for app testing as opposed to developing and testing just on Eclipse or one of the other IDEs and emulators.
-Have you tried it, do you own one?
I'm assuming they have the same specs as the HTC Dream and the HTC Magic, since they look exactly the same although they have a 'developers edition' custom black design not that I really care about the design for this particular item.
All comments are welcomed,
Thanks in advance.
Update:
I'll leave it open until tomorrow to see if there are any more answers, then I'll just pick the most voted since it's really a subjective question with no good or bad answer.
It depends what sort of applications you wish to develop. I find that the emulators very accurately reflect how things work on genuine devices; you can seamlessly connect to either an emulator or a dev phone using the command line tools, the Eclipse tools, the debugger etc.
Also, while you can flash your dev phone to a new OS version, HTC often lag behind (e.g. there's still no 2.0 image available) and it's much easier and faster to just use the emulators. The emulators also allow you to create and test with different screen resolutions, whereas the two dev phones available are only "standard" resolution.
I find it's quite rare that I need to use my ADP1 dev phone for development -- my rooted consumer HTC Hero works fine for most of the development I do.. allowing me to pull files from the device etc. Though the only reason I use my Hero rather than an emulator is because I've been working on an app that uses audio recording functionality.
However, where having a physical device would help is where you need to do specific stuff regarding the camera, audio hardware, orientation and compass sensors, GPS, wireless network access and so on. Should you need to connect a debugger to work on hardware-related issues like the above, then you would definitely need a dev phone.
Overall, it's definitely worth buying an Android phone for testing and demonstration purposes, but whether it's a development phone is up to your requirements.
If you plan on developing apps that you intend to put on the Android marketplace, it's absolutely critical to test on real hardware. You can get away with developing on the emulator for quite a while, but at some point, you'll want to use a real device.
That being said, you can use any android phone for development. There are some restrictions on locked devices, but if you're simply developing against the SDK, any phone will work. With android, you can install an apk directly on the phone without special permissions, so the only real advantage to a dev phone is that you can install new roms without having to root the phone.
Personally, I'd hold off on purchasing one of the older dev phones. From what I understand, they only support up to SDK 1.6, whereas the Droid and some of the other new phones are supporting SDK 2.0 ++.
Wait for the release of the Nexus One from G. The latest rumors are that it'll be released on Jan 5th. So it's just a week or so.
I think that you need a real android device whether it's the dev phone or another handset but a real phone is primordial. The emulator is great but you can't get an idea about the execution speed of your app until you use it on a real phone.
As said before there are a lot of rumors about the nexus one so wait and see!
As for which phone to buy (assuming you're going to get one) I think ablerman is right. I'd wait until January to see if there is going to be some new hardware available.
With regards to the more general question of should you buy one, I think it depends on what you're doing. For the most part, the emulators are fine. They can emulate GPS (you can even load KML to simulate a path), SMS, phone calls, etc. They cannot however emulate acclerometer/compass/orientation sensor data and actually will crash (actually I believe it hangs...) if you try to run code that relies on it. Also, it's difficult to actually debug phone-call related functionality without the dev phone.
They're good phones, I've used the Dev phone 1 (the G1/Dream) and it's nice. It also is a bit faster than the emulators and if you're writing something like a game, it would be really good to test it on the actual hardware.
All in all, it just depends on what you're writing. They're definitely fun to play with regardless as you can do pretty much ANYTHING you want on them.
Good luck with the decision!
I've been developing with the emulator since June. I've found it to be a very near substitute for the real deal, and it's easier to switch between handset configurations/versions. However, not knowing how quickly my apps will run is a concern for me.
The reason I've personally held off buying a handset is that 2009 was the wrong year to buy one. I have a feeling 2010 will very much be the long-awaited "Year of the Android".
+1 to Christopher and I will add - the emulators are great but having a physical phone will give you instant access to the Android Market to verify publishing, statistics and user comments. I also believe using your own app on a physical phone will help you to develop a better app. You do not need a development phone - but at least one physical phone - absolutly.
FYI. Belgium is one of the few countries where it is possible to buy any mobile unlocked. Indeed, the Belgian regulators forbid the forced bundling.
One more Pros for buying a real developer phone :
HierarchyViewer does not work on user builds (i.e. with devices
available in stores.) This is for security reasons.
See the original thread
Hierarchy viewer can be very useful if you have problems with layout being slow, although I don't think it would worth buying a real Developer phone only for this.
As some people made workaround for that problem : https://stackoverflow.com/a/7801475/62921.