For Flash Camp Hawaii 2013...

1. USING ADOBE GAMING
TOOLS FOR EDUCATION
Joseph Labrecque
2013 Flash Camp Hawaii

2. JOSEPH LABRECQUE
Senior Interactive Software Engineer | Adjunct Faculty
University of Denver
Proprietor | Owner
Fractured Vision Media, LLC
Adobe Community Professional
Adobe Education Leader
Adobe Certified Expert
Adobe Certified Educator
Former Adobe Influencer
Author
Lynda.com | Peachpit Press | Adobe Press | Packt Publishing | O’Reilly Media | video2brain
Artist
An Early Morning Letter, Displaced | Shivervein

3. HERE’S THE PLAN
• Talk about Stage3D – some history
• Introduce some Stage3D frameworks
• Basic Starling project setup
• Feathers setup and theming…
screens, components, and layouts
• Adobe Scout overview
• Educational examples

4. STAGE3D: GPU ACCELERATED FLASH
Flash Player 11.x & Adobe AIR 3.x

5. SOME HISTORY
• Adobe shows off Molehill at MAX 2010
• Lots of excitement around 3D in Flash!
• MAX 2011 - Stage3D made available with
Flash Player 11 and AIR 3.
• Mobile support for Flash Player was
coming soon.
• November 2011. Fffuuuu…

6. RECENT HISTORY
• 11.1/3.1 – bugfixes and stuff…
• 11.2/3.2 – Stage3D on mobile AIR
• 11.3/3.3 – Texture Streaming
• 11.4/3.4 – Concurrency & Telemetry
• 11.5/3.5 – Shared ByteArray
• 11.6/3.6 – readGraphicsData()
• 11.7/3.7 – GameInput APIs

7. FLASH PLAYER 11.0 AND AIR 3.0

8. PRONGHORN!
• Flash Player and AIR “NEXT”
• ActionScript 4!
• Flash Builder 5!
• Betas available around MAX 2013!!!
• Early 2013 Roadmap - Fffuuuu…

9. SHAME ON ADOBE
:(

10. 11.8/3.8 - RECENT ADDITIONS
• BASELINE_EXTENDED : 4096×4096 texture
support
• Rectangle Textures in BASELINE and
BASELINE_EXTENDED
plus…
• Recursive stop on MovieClip
• StageVideo on AIR desktop
• GameInput APIs

11. AUGUST ROADMAP UPDATES
Flash Player and AIR "Irving" and "Jones"
Adobe is planning its next two releases for late
2013 and early 2014. These releases continue
to focus on premium video, gaming, security,
and stability.
• ActionScript concurrency for mobile (beta)
• iOS 7 support (depends upon Apple schedule)
• Support for Mavericks
• Support for Windows 8.1
• XXHDPI icon support for AIR Android

12. FUTURE EXPLORATIONS
• Mobile Workers – Threading on mobile
• “Molehill 2” – Stage3D Improvements
• Integrated 2D/3D physics
also…
• Improved iOS compile time
• Reduced iOS file sizes
• Android Key Lime Pie and iOS7 support

13. ADOBE GAMING SDK
Starling, Feathers, and more…

14. GAMING SDK?
The Adobe Gaming SDK provides an essential
collectionof frameworks, code samples, and
learning resources that worktogether to help
developers create and deliver ActionScript
games across multipledevices.

15. GAMING SDK 1.2
• AIR SDK 3.8
• Starling
• Feathers
• Away3D & Away Builder
• DragonBones
• FlashCC [CrossBridge]
• GamePad Support, Native Extensions,
& ATF Tools

16. FLASH IS FOCUSED ON GAMING
But what about apps?

17. ADOBE ROADMAP FOR THE FLASH
RUNTIMES
Adobe believes that the Flashruntimes are
particularlyand uniquely suitedfor two
primaryuse cases: creating and deploying
rich, expressive games withconsole-quality
graphicsand deploying premiumvideo.
This focus does not mean that existing content
will no longer run, or that Flash cannot be
used for content other than gaming and
premium video. However, it does mean that
when prioritizing work, gaming and premium
video use cases will take priority.

18. BUILDING AN APP WITH STAGE3D
With the Gaming SDK? Yes.

19. WHAT DO WE NEED?
STARLING
• Sets up the GPU stuff for us.
• Build a Starling instance.
• Load in Feathers!
FEATHERS
• Implement a theme.
• Apply a ScreenNavigator
• Decide upon a Layout or two.
• Build out the content.

20. STARLING
2D Stage3D Framework

21. STARLING SETUP
• Import the Starling classes.
• Declare a new Starling instance.
• Optionally set Starling to handle lost context
and multitouch.
• Instantiate a new Starling instance, passing
in both a main class and the stage to bind it
to.
• Start up the instance.
import starling.core.Starling;
private var starling:Starling;
Starling.handleLostContext = true;
Starling.multitouchEnabled = false;
starling = new Starling(Main, stage);
starling.start();

22. MAIN STARLING CLASS
• Import the Starling Sprite class.
• Have the main Starling class extend
Starling Sprite.
• We are now ready for Feathers.
import starling.display.Sprite;
public class Main extends Sprite {}

23. FEATHERS
User Interface Components for Starling

24. FEATHERS SETUP
• Import a Feathers theme for use in the
app.
• Wait for the Stage to become ready.
• Instantiate a new Feathers theme within
the main Starling class once the Stage is
ready.
• Feathers is now ready and skinned.
import feathers.themes.FeathersTheme;
this.addEventListener(
Event.ADDED_TO_STAGE, onStageReady);
new FeathersTheme();

25. FEATHERS SCREENS
• Similar to mobile Flex Views.
• Many individual Screens.
• Use with a ScreenNavigator.
• Optionally bind Screen controls to
Feathers components like TabBar or
ButtonGroup.

26. FEATHERS COMPONENTS
• Similar to Flex components.
• Buttons, Callouts, Headers, Lists, Loaders,
Labels, Steppers, Panels, Pickers, Radios,
Checkboxes, Containers, Sliders, TabBars,
TextAreas, TextInputs, Toggles, and
more…
• All GPU accelerated through Starling!

27. FEATHERS LAYOUTS
• Lots of similarities to Flex layouts.
• Horizontal
• Vertical
• Tiled (rows/columns)
• Anchored
• Lots of options for each!

28. ADOBE SCOUT CC
Next-Generation Profiler

29. EH…

30. ADOBE SCOUT CC
• Advanced Telemetry
• Frame Timeline
• Session Info
• Trace Log
• ActionScript
• DisplayList
• Stage3D

31. MEMORY ALLOCATIONS
• Allocations
• Top-Down
• Bottom-Up Functions
• Bottom-Up Objects
• Deallocations
• Filter Garbage Collected Objects

32. REAL-WORLD EDUCATION EXAMPLES
Personal Experience

33. VIDEO STREAMING
• Allows video upload, transcode, and
management within a controlled
environment.
• Dealing with video – retains the need for
Flash Player in video editing and playback.
• Using RTMP and HLS for streaming to both
Desktop and Mobile targets.

34. VIDEO TRANSCODING
• Transcode “brain” which monitors
servers, gathers data, transcodes and
manages video files across servers.
• Built with Adobe AIR as a headless app.
• HandBrake and MediaInfo via
NativeProcess API.
• Installed as a Windows service.

35. INTEGRATED HARDWARE
• AIR works well with a variety of hardware
including multiscreen projection systems.
• ANEs make extending AIR across platforms
very possible.
• Native Process APIs allow us to work with
and command other applications.

36. MOBILE APPLICATIONS
• Apple iOS, Google Android, Amazon Kindle,
Blackberry TabletOS and BB10!
• Apache Flex still works quite well. In fact,
Flex 4.10 and AIR 3.8 have HUGE
performance boosts for mobile!
• Stage3D libraries like Starling and
Feathers are there if desired.
• Workflow is brilliant!

37. GAMING!
• Game development is a great way to teach
computer science and programming skills.
• A lot of the problems solved in gaming can
be applied to other applications.
• “Gamification” – Check out LevelUp for
Photoshop CC.

38. WHY LEARN/TEACH ACTIONSCRIPT?
• Are any faculty or students possibly
motivated by money? Maybe.
• A recent study places ActionScript as the
#1 language in mean household income.
http://bpodgursky.wordpress.com/2013/08/22/updates-to-
language-vs-income-breakdown-post/

39. IMPACT ON COURSE CURRICULUM
Times have changed…

40. TEACHING FLASH
Courses taught:
• Animation/Interactive [Flash Professional]
• Programming [Flash Builder]
• Mobile [AIR for Android]
DVD and Online Training:
• Learn By Video [Peachpit]
• More incoming ;)

41. ANIMATION WITH ANIMATE
Animation/Interactive course to use
Edge Animate:
• Easier to pick up
• Made for the native web
• Directed workflow

42. MOBILE AIR TO PHONEGAP
Mobile course to use PhoneGap and
PhoneGap Build:
• Mobile AIR covered in another course
• Focus on web technologies
• Part of new mobile track

43. FLASH CONDENSATION
Two Flash courses merged into one
Flash Platform overview course:
• Basics of motion
• Interactivity
• Gaming
• Programming
• Mobile

44. FLASH PROFESSIONAL CC
• Rebirth of the product [HELLCAT!!!]
• I’ve been working with it heavily.
• Adobe plans to target SWF, AIR, Canvas,
and much more… natively.
• Flash is awesome again!

45. SECOND THOUGHTS… MAYBE.
• Flash Professional CC turns out to be really
awesome – increased focus in web targets.
• The Flash Platform is expanding into all
sorts of areas – mostly thanks to Stage3D
and 3rd party frameworks and tools.
• PhoneGap is much more difficult to learn
and use than mobile AIR.
• Animate is dependent upon knowing other
tools to do anything advanced.

46. IN CLOSING…
Flash (in various ways both old and new)
is still strong for education and for all!

47. THANK YOU
Twitter: @JosephLabrecque
Email: Joseph.Labrecque@du.edu
Web: http://JosephLabrecque.com/