Stage3D was introduced in Flash Player 11 to leverage the GPU for hardware-accelerated 3D rendering. It offloads rendering tasks to the GPU to achieve higher frame rates and more detailed 3D scenes. The Starling framework is a 2D graphics library built on top of Stage3D that provides a familiar display list API. Starling Feathers is an extension that provides reusable UI controls. The Adobe Gaming SDK packages these technologies along with tools to simplify game development.

2. Contents
Before Stage3D
About Stage3D
Starling framework
Starling Feathers extension

3. Contents
Demo mobile game app
Getting started with Starling
Adobe Gaming SDK
Adobe Scout

4. Contents
Adobe Texture Format (ATF)
eBooks
Other resources
Games showcase

5. Before Stage3D
Typical Flash display list
Stage
Instance
SWF file’s
main class
Display
Display
Object
Object
Container
Display
Button TextField Sprite MovieClip Object
Container
Sprite
Source: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/quickstart/display_list_programming_as3.html

6. Before Stage3D
Problems
Till Flash Player 10, 2D & 3D objects are
rendered using software mode.
CPU is over-utilized.
FP10 can take up max. of 4,000 triangles for 3D
scenes to maintain acceptable performance.
Detailed 3D scenes was not possible.
Source: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/how-stage3d-works.html

7. Before Stage3D
Problems
Imagine a scene from Epic Citadel rendered using CPU only?

8. Before Stage3D
Problems
10 minutes later…

9. About Stage3D
Introduced for desktop since Flash Player 11.0 &
AIR 3.0
For mobile since Flash Player 11.2 & AIR 3.2

10. About Stage3D
Actionscript
3D frameworks
2D frameworks
(Away3D, Alternativa3D, etc
(Starling, ND2D, etc)
)
Stage3D
OpenGL, OpenGL ES 2.0, DirectX
GPU
Source: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/how-stage3d-works.html
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/introducing_Starling.html
http://readwrite.com/2011/10/05/adobes-strategy-to-distinguish

11. About Stage3D
Advantages
Leverage on 3D hardware acceleration
Offload rendering tasks to GPU
Achieve higher frame rates (30 – 60 fps)
More detailed 3D scenes
Source: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/how-stage3d-works.html

12. About Stage3D
Disadvantages
Have to be extra careful when mixing regular Flash
UI (flash.display.*) with Stage3D.
Limited to Shader Model 2.0 (latest version is
4.0), due to requirement to target multiple
platforms.
Smaller no. of Shader registers available due to
older version of Shader Model being used.
Source: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/how-stage3d-works.html

13. About Stage3D
Special stage layers
StageVideo (bottom-most layer)
Stage3D[0]
Stage3D[1]
Stage3D[n]
Stage (top-most layer)
Source: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/how-stage3d-works.html

14. Starling framework
Actionscript port of Sparrow framework for iOS.
Developed on top of Stage3D API.
Available for desktop and mobile.
Meant for 2D game development, but has other
uses too.
Source: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/introducing_Starling.html

15. Starling framework
Advantages
Easy to learn
Familiar API e.g. flash.display.Sprite starling
counterpart is starling.display.Sprite
Similar API useful when updating existing projects
to Starling.
Source: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/introducing_Starling.html

16. Starling framework
starling.events.EventDispatcher
starling.display.DisplayObject
starling.display.DisplayObjectContainer starling.display.Quad
starling.display.Button starling.display.Sprite starling.display.Stage starling.display.TextField starling.display.Image
starling.display.MovieClip
Source: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/introducing_Starling.html

17. Starling framework
More advantages...
Event model
Lightweight
It’s free!
Source: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/introducing_Starling.html

18. Starling framework
Disadvantages
Layering issues (when using either StageVideo or
regular Flash display list objects, or both).
Need to look out for “Resource not available”
errors (can be solved by Object Pooling).
Need to watch app file sizes, especially when
deploying to mobile.
Spritesheets are limited to 2048 x 2048 pixels.
Source: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/introducing_Starling.html

19. Starling Feathers
extension
Lightweight skinnable, extensible UI controls for
Starling framework.
Cross-platform, with various themes available for
both desktop and mobile.
Provide screen transitions similar to mobile view
transitions.
Provide UI controls commonly found in mobile apps
e.g. header bars, scroll/table views, switches, etc.

20. Starling Feathers
extension
Useful layout functions.
Useful for creating quick prototypes.
Useful for creating “Settings” screen for apps.
Prefers AS3 Signals over Events.

22. Getting started with
Starling
Tools
Adobe Flash Builder 4.7
Eclipse with FB4.7 plug-in
FlashDevelop
FDT
Adobe Flash Professional CS6

23. Getting started with
Starling
SDKs
Adobe AIR SDK 3.2+
Adobe Gaming SDK
Pre-packaged with Adobe AIR
SDK, Starling, Feathers, Away3D, essential native
extensions and ATF tools
Flash Player 11.2

24. Getting started with
Starling
Frameworks/Libraries
Starling framework
http://gamua.com/starling/download/

25. Getting started with
Starling
Optional tools (but very useful)
TexturePacker (for creating spritesheets)
GlyphDesigner (for creating bitmap fonts)
PhysicsEditor (when adding 2D physics to games)
Tiled (widely-used level/map editor)

26. Adobe Gaming SDK
http://gaming.adobe.com/technologies/gamings
dk/
Convenient package that contained all SDKs &
tools needed to start making games!
Just need a free Creative Cloud account.

27. Adobe Scout
http://gaming.adobe.com/technologies/scout/ind
ex.html
Next-gen profiling tool for Flash Player and AIR.
Able to profile apps running in mobile devices.

28. Adobe Texture Format
(ATF)
Traditionally, games use uncompressed formats like
PNG for game graphics.
GPUs do not know how to handle image formats like
PNG and JPEG natively.
Images are stored into CPU memory instead.
Better to use GPU memory, but right type of
compressed textures must be used for each
platform.
Source: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashruntimes/articles/introducing-compressed-textures.html

29. Adobe Texture Format
(ATF)
In order to target multiple platforms, various
textures must be prepared for each platform:
DXT for Windows and Mac OS
ETC1/DXT for Android
PVRTC for iOS
ATF can wrap all these formats into one file!
Source: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashruntimes/articles/introducing-compressed-textures.html

30. Adobe Texture Format
(ATF)
Available from FP 11.4/AIR 3.4 onwards
Links
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashruntimes/articl
es/introducing-compressed-textures.html
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashruntimes/articl
es/atf-users-guide.html

31. eBooks
Introducing Starling
Available for free at O’Reilly
http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920024217.do

32. Other resources
http://gamua.com/starling/help/
Starling framework website “Help” section
Gotoandlearn.com
Starling video tutorials
Bytearray.org
Tutorials, tips

33. Other resources
Hsharma.com
Video tutorials, tips; Creator of Hungry Hero open-
source game
Tomkrcha.com
Tutorials, tips

34. Games showcase
http://gaming.adobe.com/showcase/

35. Conclusion
Please donate!
http://gamua.com/donate/