I am glad to see that they’re backing off from discontinuing. I would really, really like it if they would let me buy it outright instead of subscribing.
I’ve mentioned this on here before, but I stand by it: developing Flash is the most fun way I have found to program.
Now, part of this is because Flash was one of the first things that I learned to program, so it’s probably a big rose-tinted because i was younger and it was new, but even as a thirty-something I still have had a blast playing with Flash MX Pro (legally acquired, of course).
Flash is so interesting to me, because it is animation first, but the programming was bolted on pretty elegantly. You could animate something using professional tools, highlight it, make it a movie clip, and immediately export it to code and hack against that. Yeah it was hard to maintain for big projects but it was fun how quickly 15 year old tombert could go from a few drawings to a simple game.
Headline is out of date. They changed their plans. From the link:
> We are not discontinuing or removing access to Adobe Animate. Animate will continue to be available for both current and new customers, and we will ensure you continue to have access to your content. There is no longer a deadline or date by which Animate will no longer be available.
> A material number of customers see Animate as a differentiator from our competitors, so even if we only provide support and security patches, the investment is justified for retention.
I don't really think there's a hidden agenda here. The announcement surfaced new information for them, they probably reframed their own analytics and saw insights that backed maintaining Animate as a result.
Notice that it's still very much possible to produce SWF files with languages like Haxe http://haxe.org/, and there are frameworks that mimic the Flash drawing API like OpenFL https://www.openfl.org/, there is (or was) a lot of interesting stuff like that happening around.
Indeed, Flash UI is really its strenght, the way to draw and manipulate curves, I don't think I've seen anything like it after that, although illustrating is not my trade. However, it is possible to do cool procedurally generated stuff with the drawing API, or use plain normal bitmap graphics to do things.
Weird coincident.. last I week I installed "Flash MX 2004" in linux using wine. Works flawlessly! Gonna make some cool shit for "newgrounds flash forward 2026"
Context: Flash Forward is a yearly game jam on Newgrounds, where all the games are made in Flash. (They work in all browsers without flashplayer now thanks to Ruffle.)
I had a start programming and doing little weird animations back in the early 2000s. Then I could earn a living doing stuff with Actionscript, little games on the web, or profile picture generators; even stuff on the BlackBerry PlayBook, which had support for AIR runtime. I made games with Flash and Actionscript until ~2015. Newgrounds even holds a jam called Flash Forward, in which you submit Flash games https://www.newgrounds.com/collection/flash-forward
I stopped using Flash long before it became Animate. I'm really sad to see it go, and that Adobe has so little love to this important piece of the web and the Internet.
I am glad to see that they’re backing off from discontinuing. I would really, really like it if they would let me buy it outright instead of subscribing.
I’ve mentioned this on here before, but I stand by it: developing Flash is the most fun way I have found to program.
Now, part of this is because Flash was one of the first things that I learned to program, so it’s probably a big rose-tinted because i was younger and it was new, but even as a thirty-something I still have had a blast playing with Flash MX Pro (legally acquired, of course).
Flash is so interesting to me, because it is animation first, but the programming was bolted on pretty elegantly. You could animate something using professional tools, highlight it, make it a movie clip, and immediately export it to code and hack against that. Yeah it was hard to maintain for big projects but it was fun how quickly 15 year old tombert could go from a few drawings to a simple game.
I miss it.
I miss flash too. No other development environment was/is as easy to use.
I learning to program with as2 and as3.
Headline is out of date. They changed their plans. From the link:
> We are not discontinuing or removing access to Adobe Animate. Animate will continue to be available for both current and new customers, and we will ensure you continue to have access to your content. There is no longer a deadline or date by which Animate will no longer be available.
People who still move to other options, if you can find something thats offline & local, as Adobe will rethink it in next couple of months again.
They only "changed" them because it materially affected them.
"We're going to provide support and security patches" means "in a year we'll quietly stop any work on it anyway"
I mean, framed differently:
> A material number of customers see Animate as a differentiator from our competitors, so even if we only provide support and security patches, the investment is justified for retention.
I don't really think there's a hidden agenda here. The announcement surfaced new information for them, they probably reframed their own analytics and saw insights that backed maintaining Animate as a result.
Notice that it's still very much possible to produce SWF files with languages like Haxe http://haxe.org/, and there are frameworks that mimic the Flash drawing API like OpenFL https://www.openfl.org/, there is (or was) a lot of interesting stuff like that happening around.
And, of course, Ruffle[1][2] to play them.
[1] https://ruffle.rs/
[2] https://github.com/ruffle-rs/ruffle/
Can't modern Flash compile to HTML5? Can the open alternatives also do that?
I wish SWF became a common HTML5 transpile format.
Flash editor was the magic
Indeed, Flash UI is really its strenght, the way to draw and manipulate curves, I don't think I've seen anything like it after that, although illustrating is not my trade. However, it is possible to do cool procedurally generated stuff with the drawing API, or use plain normal bitmap graphics to do things.
Adobe’s pen tool across all titles is second to none. There is so much value in just that one tool done right.
This is very true.
Weird coincident.. last I week I installed "Flash MX 2004" in linux using wine. Works flawlessly! Gonna make some cool shit for "newgrounds flash forward 2026"
Context: Flash Forward is a yearly game jam on Newgrounds, where all the games are made in Flash. (They work in all browsers without flashplayer now thanks to Ruffle.)
This year's jam just started:
https://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1554561/1
Some more earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46859732
I had a start programming and doing little weird animations back in the early 2000s. Then I could earn a living doing stuff with Actionscript, little games on the web, or profile picture generators; even stuff on the BlackBerry PlayBook, which had support for AIR runtime. I made games with Flash and Actionscript until ~2015. Newgrounds even holds a jam called Flash Forward, in which you submit Flash games https://www.newgrounds.com/collection/flash-forward
I stopped using Flash long before it became Animate. I'm really sad to see it go, and that Adobe has so little love to this important piece of the web and the Internet.
yeah, definitely gonna participate in NG's flash forward
They could have at least offered some legacy version for file access