No, the policy I want to talk about today comes down to something that will affect each and every person who logs into Emerald Kingdom. It’s been discussed a lot over the last couple years, and it’s something we have thought about seriously. The number one policy for Emerald Kingdom is going to be a little something we like to call: The Syndrome Policy.

It states, very clearly the following:

“In every game, there should be two clearly defined groups. These groups are the people who win, and the people who do not. Winning is a recognizable achievement, and should not be diluted, or minimized through wanting to placate or soften the blow to the people who have not won.“

Or to put it more simply: the uniqueness of snowflakes diminishes as the volume increases.

The policy is named after the villain Syndrome, from the movie The Incredibles. In the movie, he states the issue with remarkable clarity:

Everyone can be super! And when everyone’s super, …no-one will be.

Really sort of hits the nail on the head these days, doesn’t it? Everyone’s a winner these days it seems. While we don’t necessarily have a problem with easy “gimmie” achievements on a base level, (They can tell others of how far you have progressed) we do have a problem with the over use of them. But more to the point, Emerald Kingdom is a game that we have designed with personal achievement in mind. We have designed the game to eventually incorporate the mid and high level game. There are going to be people who are the first to do this, or that. There are going to be people who perform remarkable feats. Those people will be immortalized in the player wiki we have planned. Notability will be something we not only plan for, but will encourage.

But, on the back end of things, we here at Double Cluepon plan to apply the Syndrome Rule to the inevitable crowd of folks who will eventually ask for a pony. The ones who will ask for specific things to be made easier for consumption by a wider audience. While we sympathize with the folks who feel everyone should be a winner…we disagree that everyone can, and should be one. Winning is an accomplishment. From slaying a monster to being best and above all others at a specific skill. The rewards should be special, and set the winners apart from the people who do not win. This is called accomplishment, and it should not be diluted or watered down.

While we appreciate that everyone wants to feel like a winner, games are about, at the core: skill and achievement. The staff here do not feel this should be muddied in any way. The spirit of this policy is that, being special should be because you have done something special, not because you happen to have a pulse. Recognition should not be diluted into meaninglessness. If you do something difficult, better than everyone else…you should be rewarded. Part of that reward is not diluting the accomplishment by then making the same task easier. Whether it be the next day, or 3 years from that day.

We have seen a few games do this, and we have to say: a lot of the time it’s done at the behest of two prime drivers. The first one is greed. If they dilute the challenge, more people will play, and pay. The second one is laziness (or, if you will, complacency)…creating and maintaining challenges is hard work. It’s easier to let everyone be a precious snowflake than it is to build pedestals for those who have earned the right to be recognized.

In the end, we believe accomplishment, and skill are good things, and they should be praised. They should certainly scale, and the reward should be equal to the accomplishment. But they should not be watered down, or diminished. So, what have we learned here?

If you do something awesome in Emerald Kingdom, myself..and the other staff will make sure the rest of the citizenry know, via mechanics, or forums, or the wiki. We also will not cavalierly throw your deeds into the fire of obsolescence by nerfing the challenge to open it up to a broader audience. (The only way I could see us modifying a puzzle, or a mechanic in such an instance is if there is a flaw, or it goes beyond our original design intent…but even then, we could never withdraw your accomplishment, and it would be noted regardless).

In the end, Emerald Kingdom should be about what all games are about: challenges, and how to meet them. We intend to try our damnedest to make sure that is in no way diminished.

What do you think about such a policy? How do you feel when your accomplishments are somehow diminished? Comment and tell us!

The impetus for Emerald Kingdom has some of its roots in Squaresoft titles. I personally was amazed at the story on Final Fantasy VIII. It grabbed me, but then…so did the battle system. (Yes, yes…a great many do not like junction/draw, but I did, and that’s a topic for another post…)

But there is something to be said for Square in it’s heyday: they had the balls to try new things, to throw it all on the table and take chances…take risks. They had no choice, really; the RPG space was a wild and dangerous frontier on consoles. It was fast becoming a better genre on the PC side of things too.

But after that trilogy of VII, VIII, and IX, something began to change. The beginning of the change was Final Fantasy X, and the height of the change came when Square bought their last real competitor: Enix. The end of that change came when they had finally squandered everything they had, lost their way and released unfettered crap.

We can extol the virtues of Final Fantasy 7, 8 and 9 all we want. Everyone who played in that golden age has their favorite. I will tell you right now, that the Gel, Mark and Weaves in Emerald Kingdom have their spiritual roots in the draw and junction system of Final Fantasy 8.

When Final Fantasy X came out, I immediately purchased a Playstation2, and a copy of it. I was relocating at the time, so I rigged it up to the hotel TV, and went at it. Now, I happened to think it was a very compelling story. The Sphere Grid was about as close as you can get to a pure RPG; you could plan your characters with the same finesse as you could in pen and paper. But Final Fantasy X ushered in a trend that has only grown with time and new FF titles. The trend of evolving from real RPG games to that of interactive movies.

It started with Final Fantasy X. It was subtle, but it was there. They were sacrificing their pedigree in RPG’s by upsetting the awesome balance between story and game play. You could see it in many ways: the side quests were weaker, and not as fun. The battle systems limit breaks were really kind of rehashed, dumbed down and not worthy.

Don’t get me wrong, that first night? I stayed up till about 3 AM playing FFX. I was enthralled. I happen to love story, but I also happen to like seeing how well I can do damage, or fight strategically.

Then came XI, and X-2. XI was a halfway decent foray into Online Gaming with the Final Fantasy franchise. Final Fantasy X-2 was absolutely terrible. X-2 was Hot TopicRPG. It actually lowered and somewhat debased strong female characters in games. It’s battle system was terrible, the characters were weak, the story was contrived and its environments were wretched. I realize there are fans of X-2, and I am not saying that, for those fans…it does not have redeeming qualities. What I am saying is: it’s a weak title when held up to former Square titles, and other contemporaries. But one thing was certain: the Interactive Movie nature of Final Fantasy titles was well on it’s way to becoming a firmly grounded thing at Square.

I stopped playing the Final Fantasy series after X-2. I’ll be even more direct: I stopped playing X-2 less than 1 quarter of the way into it. Stuffing band members into the elevator in the right order? Seriously? I was done. It was wretched.

Kingdom Hearts was a breath of fresh air. Ironically enough, it had an awesome battle system, great story, and revitalized characters from two old stalwarts in their respective areas: Square and Disney. Kingdom Hearts was an amazingly fresh game. Tetsuya Nomura rarely misses the mark when it comes to character design, and you’ll notice that my favorites are typically the ones where he’s left his mark.

So, what happened? Why is XIII rated the way it is, and why was XIV practically D.O.A? Why was Kingdom Hearts II inferior after all of the hype, and the awesome that was the Deep Dive trailer?

It’s simple really: Square bought and merged with Enix. (I dont expect things to get better since they have aquired Eidos either. Although a glimmer of hope was released this year in Deus Ex, so you never know)

I’ll say it right here: buying Enix was a bigger mistake for Square than making that ridiculous “Spirits Within” movie which almost bankrupted them.

Why was it such a big mistake? I’ll tell you why: by buying their main competitor, the drive to innovate stopped to a large degree. There was no need to take big risks. Square “won”. They could rest on their laurels knowing they had come out on top. There are some problems with this attitude. Chief of which is arrogance that your view is the only view that really matters. The next problem is, complacency sets in and begins to stagnate you.

Don’t believe me? “After release, director Motomu Toriyama felt that the lower-than-expected review scores for a main Final Fantasy series game came from reviewers who approached the game from a Western point of view.” If that’s not the height of arrogance, I really don’t know what is. It couldnt possibly be the designers, no…it was the players, they’re wrong. How dare they?

But the real proof in the pudding here is what Yoichi Wada had to say on the same subject, which goes to the point of stagnation:

“Some value it highly, while others really don’t like it.” He added, “Should Final Fantasy become a new type of game or should Final Fantasy not become a new type of game? The customers have different opinions. It’s very difficult to determine which way it should go.”

Even Square does not know which path to follow at this juncture. Lost, rudderless on a tumultuous sea of a changing game landscape. But this was not even the worst thing.

No, the worst was yet to come. It’s name was Final Fantasy XIV. A game so bad the company has issued not one, but two official apologies for it. Square has lost it’s way. From the aspects of design, game play…and most recently…they have lost their way financially as well:

Arrogance, short-sightedness, complacency. You can think whatever you want about their audiences. You can think their failures are because of North American players, or Japanese Players, or people who are hating on them for whatever reason. But the facts are this: Square-Enix has been waning for a long while. Their slide has been going on for years, and they have only themselves to blame. It’s the direct result of not listening to players, and thinking that, having bought all the competition, they are king of the hill. The problem with this is, eventually you have to defend the hill, and there are plenty of people sharpening their swords right now to challenge Square in what has traditionally been their bread and butter staple: the immersive RPG. There are people trying on brass knuckles right now, to steal Square’s milk money in another genre: MMORPGs. XIV is an utter failure, it has harmed the Final Fantasy brand badly. It’s going to take years of development, and release to fix the harm done to the brand itself. (Not XIV, even if they fix the problems, it’s D.O.A. and I am nearly 100% certain it will never break even, and will close with a net loss)

When you remove all competition, and you remove the need to be competitive, and you lose your objectivity. You lose your ability to think in terms of “My competitor just did this, well…I’ll show them…I’ll do THIS. HA HA!”. This, more than anything has salted the soil at Square. Their complete and wholesale dilution of the Final Fantasy franchise is going to haunt them for years to come. At some point, a Mark Zuckerberg or Sergey Brin of RPG’s is going to come along and knock Square the hell out. That’s how the market works…the weak die, and get swallowed up.

Square needs to get their house in order. They need to do it quick. They can start by listening to the players, and perhaps…going back to the basics. People have been telling square for years what they want, and Square has arrogantly time and again told them they know what’s best. It’s time for them to take a step back, listen, and grow.

The opposite of growing is dying. The choice is theirs.

I wish I had that much dedication...

I took three screenwriting courses this quarter. I know – I’m a masochist.

But I’m here now and ready to go!

So I’d like to give you guys some advice to fellow writers that I’ve discovered while on my little hiatus. I was aiming it more for screenwriting advice, but luckily most of these overlap for all kinds of writing!

1.)   Write every day. I know it can be a little tricky, especially if you have work, school or both – but it is crucial. I made a promise to myself that I would write at least a page or two every night before bed whether it is for my classes or for some short stories to keep the creative juices flowing. NaNoWriMo is a good example of having a deadline with a certain amount of content that needs to be reached per day. Did any of you participate? Leave a comment and tell me how you’re doing!

2.)   Keep going. This one can be a little hard to get one’s head around, especially if you’re so passionate about your project. It’s so easy to keep going back over the pages you’ve written and keep editing. But guess what – you’re not going anywhere! Keep typing and just finish it. You can always go back later. Trust me, you’ll end up rewriting the first ten pages of your story before you realize you don’t even have an ending and your deadline is tomorrow. And you’ll probably edit your whole thing about one hundred times anyway; so just spare yourself the agony. Speaking of agony…

3.)   Hurt your characters. From watching many of his productions, Joss Whedon has an unspoken rule: “If your audience likes a character, kill him. Or at least maim him.” Probably the most recent example of this is in Game of Thrones. Oh man, do people get trampled in that show. But I always come back for more. That’s what’s so great about it! As Kurt Vonnegut said, “Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters are, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.” Without that, the characters aren’t challenged and they don’t grow. If you’re not feeling particularly evil that day, you can always hurt them psychologically or emotionally. You have my permission to ruin a character’s life. d(^.^)

4.)   Raise the stakes. Things need to happen in stories, if you didn’t already figure that out. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, something always has to happen. In each little “chapter” that I write for a character, I make sure there is some sort of conflict that the character has to overcome. It creates a little mini-movie that also builds the character’s personality. Without that, I can’t make things worse and worse for the character to overcome in the grand scheme of things and then become something different at the end. Without raising the stakes, my characters can’t change – they, and I, become complacent.

5.)    READ. Author John Green said, “I really think that reading is just as important as writing when you’re trying to be a writer because it’s the only apprenticeship we have – the only way of learning HOW to write a story.” Read good books; read bad books; blogs (Look, you’re already ahead of the game!), articles, friend’s stories, scripts – just do it! You’ll learn what to do, what not to do, and how you would do it differently. Hell, read John Green’s Paper Towns while you’re at it! It’s one of my favorites.

Andromeda's best writer is Bleepblurp of the Ninth Sector. High five, buddy!

So there you have it! It’s a little short, but you’ve got the general idea. But don’t take just my word for it. After all, the best advice doesn’t come from anyone else but you. You can look up so many articles on how to be the best writer in the galaxy but it will never teach you what you can learn yourself.

Today’s question of the day is as follows:

What are you reading lately? I need some new stuff. I really should read A Song of Ice and Fire, though…

See you soon!
<3 Castiel

P.S. You might want to be on the lookout for a special sneak peek into the first chapter of the story with a little bit of art to go along with it! ^_~ More info on the way!

In the same way people dream of being the next Babe Ruth, or Michael Jordan…I looked to Three Rings as an inspirational model of what a good independent game developer should be. I learned a great deal from them, and in the end…while they showed me a great deal of what to do, they also showed me what not to do. Daniel James was a great leader in that he published not only his successes, but his failures as well. He opened his books on several occasions. Before Puzzle Pirates, micro-transactions in games were a very untested niche. Doubloons changed that. Doubloons changed the landscape, and paved the way for new business models that did not depend on getting a box on a shelf.

When that happened, James didnt cover up the numbers. He did not try to obfuscate or throw up obstacles…he showed people how it worked, and how he did it. In an industry that loves keeping secrets of success close to the vest…Three Rings came out and said, “here is how we did it, and here are the metrics which can help you understand how we did it.” Before Puzzle Pirates, ARPU really didn’t exist.

But they did other things too. They built games which required strategy, planning and cooperation. They created multiplayer online games whose measure of success did not immediately depend on how many times you were willing to click a mouse. They designed games with low, mid and high end content. They created challenging puzzles and thinking games. Some were hits, some were misses. They were not the messiah of independent game design any more than Mojang are. But they were willing to try new things, explore new ideas…and more importantly, refused to listen to reasons why it couldn’t be done, in favor of listening to their hearts as to why it could be done.

We don’t know what possibly led Three Rings down the path of instability, which invariably may have resulted in Sega acquiring them. I saw some signs of faltering with titles like Whirled, and some of the things James has pointed to over the years made me wonder if they lost some of the magic. While a press release may be glowing, its always good to remember that there are three sides to the truth. While these kinds of things, good or bad, happen… It’s important to remember that it does not take away from their many accomplishments though.

I don’t expect Three Rings Design to remain too much of a bastion of independence under Sega’s stewardship. Sega, in my opinion tends to ruin a lot of what it touches. That’s okay too. All things end, and change is always happening and inevitable. That said, if the folks at Three Rings are happy, then I am happy for them too. While I am sad to see them go I also realize and understand that “started and ran an Innovative Multi-million dollar making game developer for 10 years which was aquired by Sega” does not look bad on any resume. No matter what your personal feelings are.

But in the end, Three Rings Design has always been my high water mark for what it means to be successful in this business. Not for the amount of money made or lost. But because they challenged a status quo. Many of them in fact. For that, they deserve nothing less than to be held up as an example of how great it can get, and how far you can fall sometimes in the underground/independent game developer world.

I am sure there are people who think, well TRD will remain as a part of Sega and do more cool stuff. They could be right, but somehow I have my doubts. This industry has a track record for swallowing innovative companies and watering them down into irrelevancy. It’s that very reason that I wanted to say: Thank you Three Rings, for being something awesome, and worth admiration. I hope you continue to be awesome and worth admiration, but even if you don’t…I can always look back and look at your success and failure, as a guide for my own path.

You can learn about the position here.

And..

2) Tim Rogers hit the nail on the head here, with a pile driver.

I ask the simple, and honest question, when it comes to ethical and moral values in game design.

 

Could Pavlov’s experiments with dogs, be considered a “game” for Pavlov, the Dogs, both or neither?

• If it is a game, why is it so hard to accept that a lot of F2P games are engineered to provoke a conditioned response from the people who play it?
• If it’s not a game, then why is it so hard to accept that a lot of F2P games are engineered to look like a game, but are in actuality simply very pretty condition/response systems?

Why is it, some folks have such a hard time understanding that there is a difference between something that is fun, and something that is psychologically engineered to elicit a response?

And before you start in with “people have a choice”…you’re ignoring the last 100 years of scientific research into getting people to do things counter to free will. Choice can be directed, engineered. There’s a reason why psychological warfare, propaganda and push polls , and even Three Card Monte and The Shell Game work. I get why people use “Free Will” as an counter argument here…we like to believe we’re always in control. We have trouble as human beings, admitting and accepting that we can be manipulated, that while we have reason, and logic…we’re also animals…

Now, if you think psychologically engineering conditioned responses from people is in any way ethical when it comes to game design, and contributing positively to the art and mechanical design of game play…please do us all a favor…find another industry. Or rather, go back from whence you game: wall street and brokerage houses. Those are the places where mathematically and scientifically engineering money is accepted practice.

Just my $0.02.

Hey, it’s my first post up here on the DC dev blog. If you don’t know me, I’m Chatto, EK’s Music Director. My job here is to create the soundtrack for EK and make sure it sound BADASS. The whole soundtrack creation process can involve many individual processes, such as composition, instrumentation, arrangement, and tweaking many knobs/mixing. The method I use for making a completed track consists of creating a base, composing around it, and concurrently adjusting knobs and sliders for the mixing process. Also I sometimes mix in some performances which adds some extra steps to the process.

The type of mood I want to set for a track usually comes first. If an EK battle theme were a person, this is what the “mood” on their face would look like:

What NINE THOUSAND? I had to do the reference...Did you see..did you see what I did...there?

For example, if I want a very mellow and atmospheric track, I may start by actually composing first with chord progressions mixed with a harp-fashioned riff and a recessive melody. If I am creating fast paced battle music, I may start with a base of rhythm and percussive effects. The reason that I use a base is because there are 4 main components that determine the mood of a song: Rythm, Atmosphere, Melody, and Instrumentation. Rhythm(or lack of) usually affects the pace of a song. This would definitely be a factor if you were composing a battle theme as opposed to a surreal environmental piece. Sometimes you may want to even add changes to tempo and beat in your piece, but that’s actually part of what I would do in the arrangement process. 

When making a base, I focus on the conceptual side of the music. The next component in a base is atmosphere. A sculpture artist may use a certain material for their piece. For example, clay. Clay has a certain texture and look to it. It will affect the aesthetic of the piece a lot. If they used metal, it would affect the piece a lot more different than clay. The atmosphere of a piece is also slightly related to instrumentation and positioning. If you close your eyes and listen to a recording of an orchestra, you can get a sense of where instruments are, as well as how they change the atmosphere of a piece. Oh, I actually have a really good example of use of atmosphere in a piece:

Yoko Kanno - Blue Tone

This piece has a very calm atmosphere to start, and then changes when the piano comes in slightly, then goes back to being calm again. This is mainly caused because of the “ringing” pad sound Yoko uses. This piece however, has a bit of a different atmosphere:

Metroid Prime – Torvus Bog

There is a pad in this one as well, however, it has a different sound to it which makes the atmosphere slightly less calm and instead gives it an atmosphere of beauty and wonder. This one kinda makes me want to explore. It’s better to have a clear concept of where you want the piece to go unless you want a big clusterf- of music buffet that has all the sounds you like, but no coherency. Without any coherent theme, you’ll end up with something that sounds like mashed potatoes rather than a baked potato.

The next component to a base is melody(or lack of). If you want to compose music for a part of the game with lots of exploration, you generally want the melody to blend more closely into the background. I’d want an environmental piece to pack most of its power in the instrumentation and rhythm. The benefit of not having a dominant melody is that people won’t get annoyed by a “catchy” melody that plays over and over again.

The reason that melody can be annoying is because our brains are very good at picking out melody. Eventually the brain will memorize the melody and say “hey it’s that melody playing again” and will try to tune it out. If you’re wanting to create a good character theme that IS memorable, you’d want to have a very dominant melody. This is slightly related to one of my pet peeves about games with Generic Korean MMO music:

This flipping song plays every time you double click on a monster.

 

Some good old C&H

Alone, this is a good composition, however, it absolutely wears down quickly when it plays EVERY TIME YOU ARE FIGHTING IN THE GAME. Generally this is not a song I would want looping on my media player forever because of the strong repetitive melody. However, I’d definitely be just fine with a song like this:

Some less annoying and less repetitive music (Notice the lack of headache when put on loop)

The fourth thing that is important for a good base is instrumentation. You want to create the actual sounds you are using for the piece. For example, fast electric guitar with heavy distortion might not be the best choice for environmental music, but would fit great for a battle theme. Instrumentation is basically what sounds/instruments you group together. Some people will group instruments together that belong to different genres(eg. An upright fretless bass is from the Jazz era, let’s use one of those in a Jazz piece). However, conceptually you want to be in the middle ground to make a good theme. Conceptually your base should have a variety of styles in the instrumentation. For example:

Let’s consult the pro on how to successfully fuse electronica and Jazz. Mostly Jazz though.

 

The instrumentation of this piece contains funk, Jazz, and electronic sounds/instruments. They work well together and give the piece a unique feel. This is where the decision also comes in for whether to use synthesis, live recording, samples, or something else. Instrumentation has a lot of influence on the style of a piece as well.

The second half of my music creation process involves fleshing out anything that isn’t conceptual in the piece. This would involve adding alternate melodies, arranging, and lengthening the song. The actual arrangement process is what gives a song variation, length, and depth.

Usually I will take a long break in-between the conceptual and arranging stages so that I can “reset my ears”. Sometimes when I come back to a piece for arrangement I will like the concept, and other times I will hate the concept and tweak it or start over. I also want to give my ears a break before doing any mixing or mastering because ears will become less sensitive to changes in volume/pitch over time.

Another good practice I have when composing music is to study a piece of music that is similar to what I am composing for. I not only get inspiration from the piece, but I can also pick out the specific parts that make it a good piece. If I don’t care for a piece of music though, I usually will have a harder time with inspiration. True story one time I was given a JUMBLE OF A MOODBOARD as reference for a piece. I won’t say what/who this was for, but I imagine they picked the references by throwing darts at a musical dartboard and ended up with Polka, Screamo, and Country Western(see picture).

This is just one of the methods I have used for composing music. There are certainly other ways to compose and think about music, but this way tends to lead to really good results and is very unifying. It does occasionally lead to some atrocities of music, but I usually have no problem ditching bad ideas for better ones.

Anyways, that’s just about it for my post. It was a pleasure to post in this particular development blog!

Props in storyteller. The RGB lines delineate the iso boundaries.

We have animations…

StoryTeller's animation importer and editor

We have our item editor…

StoryTeller's Item Editor. It's pretty straightforward.

Finally, we also now have areas…

Areas let us define custom events, sounds and ..... other surprises!

But, wait…there’s more. Two tabs in StoryTeller have yet to make an appearance. (Can you guess what they are?) While those are being worked on…the main focus right now is the alpha client, which is in full swing. Additionally, Xaphan and Uriel are burning the midnight oil on the actual beta artwork painting. What you see in this is not even the final artwork…we consider this rough work. We’ve been using what you see for internal test work.

If you have not already done so, now is the time to head over to the Emerald Kingdom website to sign up for Alpha testing. It’s rapidly approaching. While we have been collecting names for some time…we have not selected the initial tester list.

There has been much hay made of the recent announcement over Windows 8 Metro not having support for all plugins. While this is an interesting move by Microsoft, it’s not completely unexpected. Like many they are enamored over the promise of HTML5, and what it can do. However, this has re-ignited the “Flash is dead” idiocy across the internet.

Yes, it’s idiocy. Hand-waving freak-outery aside… I’ll go one further: proclaiming an executable environment dead instantly shows to the world that you do not understand the technical issues of the debate, in which case you should really stop posting. Or, to put it in the way Raguel put it: Flash has evolved, but the arguments have not. Talking about Market Share, native support for Execution Environments… irrelevant. Especially when it comes to the PC.

Why is this lunacy? Because, for the most part, true native support for outside code interpretation has always been something that is an add-on. The argument that “Flash is dead” conveniently ignores the fact that Flash is no longer just a program for making banner ads. It shows a complete and utter lack of understanding of how Flash has evolved, along with the Flex environment, AIR, and ActionScript 3.

To understand it, you need to understand the underlying components of what makes Flash, Flash:

• ActionScript 3 is an ECMAScript-based, compiled, Object-Oriented programming language. It’s syntactically very similar to its sibling JavaScript (another ECMAScript-based language).
• ActionScript is compiled into bytecode into a SWF file.
• The ActionScript Virtual Machine is the interpreter/run-time environment for compiled ActionScript programs.
• Adobe AIR, the Adobe Integrated Run-time, provides support for JavaScript, ActionScript, MXML, and HTML to be used to build Rich Internet Applications which can run in a browser or as standalone desktop applications.

Now, let’s take a look at Java:

• Java is a compiled, Object-Oriented programming language. Syntactically, it’s very similar to its predecessors, C and C++, and even moreso to its sibling C#.
• Java is compiled into bytecode, in the form of a JAR file.
• The Java Virtual Machine (JVM) is the interpreter/run-time environment for compiled Java programs.

The similarities do not end there either. Here are some fun quotes about Java from 1998 (bold emphasis is ours):

JAVA truly is the great equalizing software. It has reduced all computers to mediocrity and buggyness.

–Anonymous at NASA

There are a few things that are in the way of Java becoming a well-established platform for applications. IMO, one obstacle is the CLASSPATH stuff. Another is the fact that applications are not as easy to install as native ones. Performance is a consideration too, of course.

–Jose H. Solorzano on the advanced-java mailing list

Standards are, among other things, supposed to provide islands of stability with a minimum life of five years. Currently Sun seems to be shipping new (not entirely compatible) releases of Java every year. To my mind that is clear evidence that the product is not yet stable enough to be standardised.

–Francis Glassborow on the SC22JSG mailing list

Sure, Java’s great for distributed enterprise applications, and maybe even for embedded systems, but it simply hasn’t lived up to its promise of “write once, run everywhere.” And on the Web, even the smallest Java applets drive surfers crazy as they wait for their Java Virtual Machines to load. That’s why many people turn off Java in their browsers. They’re simply unwilling to wait for something that isn’t that interesting in the first place. And let’s face it, the vast majority of Java applets on the Web are a drag. Most Java applets don’t do anything but look cool.

–Fredric Paul

Java on the client doesn’t work, and we at Netscape have done an about turn on client-side Java in recent months. But on the server side, Java is taking off quite quickly.

–Marc Andreesen

So Java applets crash my browser, and the Java technology that’s supposed to be cross-platform plainly isn’t. A good portion of the blame for this surely belongs to Sun; the company has declined to release its hold on Java to an independent standards body, and Sun and Apple have been extremely late in delivering this so-called cross-platform technology to Mac users.If this is what Java is all about, I’ll take decaf.

–Joanna Perlstein

And on and on and on… But wait! Java is still in use practically everywhere. Java didn’t die then, and it’s certainly not dead now. Proclamations of it’s demise were, at the time, greatly exaggerated. Even if you count Microsoft’s attempts to Embrace, Extend and Extinguish Java. Java, in the mid to late 90′s was just as — if not more than — reviled as Flash is now. It was proclaimed dead many times. It was slow, buggy, inhibited performance of the browser, crashed browsers (and machines). Yet here we are today. Java is still around. Contrary to the worries of the pundits, it’s thriving.

Starting to see where this is going?

Now, let’s look at some other examples.

• Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language.
• Perl requires an interpreter, which is not included with Windows, in order to run Perl scripts. This must be installed by the user.
• It is also dead. Though the Perl is not dead campaign is gaining momentum.

How about another?

• Python is a high level, general-purpose multiple paradigm programming language.
• Python requires an interpreter which is not included with Windows, and must be installed by the user.

When you begin to understand the technology, you start to realize Flash is not just about the Flash IDE, creating easy SWF’s with tweened graphics for a banner ad, or a menu bar on a website. If you don’t understand by now that Flash’s core ActionScript is an Object Oriented language executable environment then you do not have the technical knowledge required to make a judgement on technology.

Alternative executable environments are a staple of modern computing. They almost never ever die. Proclaiming that one is dead is akin to announcing to the world, “I’m an idiot who does not understand technology” while wearing nothing but clown shoes and chaps. Think we’re wrong about this?

Try this on for size:

• While the original DOS was an operating system (and we use that term loosely) at the core these days, it’s a code execution environment. Good Old Games, Steam and others bundle DOS Box to run legacy games. While DOS is no longer supported by Microsoft, it still lives on to this day.
• Z80 Environments, which have a long and storied history, live on in the MAME Project. MAME is the Multi Arcade Machine Emulator. Like DOSBox, it’s a legacy code execution environment.
• Many other computing environments have been virtualized and have homebrew communities, like Atari 2600, NES, and others.

These are examples of how environments to execute programs never really go away. But let’s get back to this argument over how a lack of native support somehow is a death knell for these environments. People who make absolutist arguments about technology are the ones who typically have no grasp of technology beyond their own limited scope. They suffer from a very real tunnel vision. There are dozens, if not hundreds of sites offering cheap Apache/PHP hosting. Does that mean Perl is dead? How about the Microsoft IIS server? Apache is still in the lead. Especially when you throw in Tomcat. Does that mean IIS is an ailing and dying duck? No.

A lot of the arguments made about Flash these days (Sadly, by many an Apple fan, and others who should know better) are the same as the ones that were being shouted out back in the 90s when Gil Amelio was at the helm at Apple. Apple’s dead. They’re not relevant, they aren’t used in business, Microsoft won. Without vendor and software support, Apple is doomed. Yet, look at where they are today. (Disclosure Note: Azrael was once a devout Mac head, who spent many years in the wilderness with a PowerBook, and other assorted hardware, and still has his Newton. Raguel laughed when Apple died and now lives on current Apple laptops, and owns a half-dozen other devices in the Apple ecosystem.)

The problem with absolutist arguments when you work in technology is this: they preclude you from understanding the most basic rule in technology, which is use the right tool for the job you have before you. It also keeps you from seeing something else: technology evolves and matures.

When you start talking about a lack of native support in this context…you already lose the argument. We have news for you: with every Windows machine any of us have ever owned, We have had to install the Sun (now Oracle) branded Java JRE/JVM to run the things we want/need. You’re often auto-prompted to do so. We have installed the AIR framework to run AIR Apps, prompted to do so when the things needed to run the apps are not there. Like TweetDeck (which is a standalone app, btw)…which have no bearing on browsing. Oh, and we install Chrome, Opera and FireFox. With Chrome or Firefox being often being selected as the default browser. We rarely, if ever use IE. So, native support is not an issue here when it comes to non native code execution environments. It does not matter what Microsoft does with Metro on Windows 8. The landscape is not changing much, if at all when it comes to running the things you want to run.

Flash/Flex/ActionScript/AIR are far from dead. They will continue on, in spite of the continued pining of people who have not one jot of a clue.

With all that said, there are a few people who have pointed out the flip side to the coin. Seantron makes a very good point: Flash developers should be doing more to “get out of the box” that is the Browser. The “What Games Are” blog asked, “So where does this leave browser based games? Has Microsoft just announced their doom?” rather than just proclaimed doom and gloom. They also pointed out, this affects all browser games that are not HTML 5. While Flash is a most favored whipping boy…where does the no plugin policy leave Unity? By some people’s logic… Unity must therefore be dead. But, hey… Unity is a development environment, it has a code execution environment too. It uses a plugin! It’s not going to die anytime soon, and neither will Flash/Flex/AIR.

In closing, remember… absolutist statements when dealing with technology are often the telltale sign of someone who does not, in fact, understand technology. While some things may be more immediately apparent than others, remember this: at least once a day, your browser receives an answer from Perl, and PHP. You’ve received the results of Python in your time. You use Java more than you’re probably aware of. Every time you hit Armor Games, you’re using Flash. Oh, and for what it’s worth: most Flash games these days are not created in Flash CS. They are created using the Flex environment, or other open environments, or with free compilers outside of Adobe’s sphere.

There are a lot of people who think minimalist websites laden with quasi intellectual prose somehow stand as an authority to all that is. In our experience, it’s these types that talk a great deal, but say nothing. They’re willing to tell you the cost of everything, but omit the value of anything that stands in the way of their meager, tactless (and often factless) argument.

Despite Microsoft’s positioning, and in spite of the wishes of many, Flash, and its various components such as Flex, AIR, etc are going to be around for a long time to come. ActionScript and AIR are maturing, and getting better. So is Python, and Perl. (we use all three here). We apply the tech that makes sense for what we do. We do not make sweeping, absolute declarative statements when it comes to technology. Nobody should. When you see people do this, remember…it’s a sign they do not understand what it is they are talking about.

Ja Mata!

EDIT: It seems Microsoft has indeed clarified this positon: “Open distribution: retail stores, web, private networks, individual sharing, and so on” will be allowed, Microsoft says. Metro apps, on the other hand, will be “Distributed through the Windows Store. Apps must pass certification so that users download and try apps with confidence in their safety and privacy. Side-loading is available for enterprises and developers.”

Which basically nulls the “flash is dead” debate. The debate over whether or not a company should have the right to control what you may, or may not install on a mobile device is a separate one, and is still raging hard. 

However, the Flex SDK doesn’t have the convenience of the other Flex build systems. To build a SWF is one command (mxmlc). To build an AIR app from a SWF and an app.xml document is another command (adt). To test the AIR SWF is another command (adl). These commands must share similar configuration options, so it’s only natural to want some kind of script or program to handle that for
you.

GNU Make is a general build system. Given a set of “targets” (built files), a list of prerequisites for that target, and a set of instructions, Make will perform the necessary steps to build your software.

Say you have yourapp.mxml, and you want to build yourapp.air manually. You would have to perform three steps:

1. Generate yourapp.swf from yourapp.mxml using amxmlc (for an AIR app)
   amxmlc -sp+=. -l+=. -strict=true -debug=true -o yourapp.swf yourapp.mxml
2. Ensure a yourapp.pfx certificate exists to sign yourapp.air
   adt -certificate -cn yourcompany.com -ou YourApp -o "Your Company" -c "US" 2048-RSA yourapp.pfx yourpass
3. Generate yourapp.air from yourapp-app.xml, yourapp.swf, and yourapp.pfx
   adt -package -storetype pkcs12 -keystore yourapp.pfx -storepass yourpass yourapp-app.xml yourapp.swf

To do this with a Makefile, we would do the following:

yourapp.air : yourapp.swf yourapp.pfx
	adt -package -storetype pkcs12 -keystore yourapp.pfx -storepass yourpass yourapp-app.xml yourapp.swf
yourapp.swf :
	amxmlc -sp+=. -l+=. -strict=true -debug=true -o yourapp.swf yourapp.mxml
yourapp.pfx :
	adt -certificate -cn yourcompany.com -ou YourApp -o "Your Company" -c "US" 2048-RSA yourapp.pfx yourpass

Once we have this saved as “Makefile” in the same directory as our source, we can simply type make at a command-line and it will create “yourapp.air”.

There are three sections to this Makefile, called “targets”. Each target is a different file, either yourapp.air, yourapp.swf, or yourapp.pfx. Since yourapp.air is the first target, it is the default target, so typing “make” with no arguments will build yourapp.air.

After the target file comes a colon and then an optional space-separated list of prerequisites, which are other targets that must be completed before the current target can build. So, in order to build “yourapp.air”, we must have already built “yourapp.swf” and “yourapp.pfx”.

After the prerequisites list we put a newline, then a tab, then the command that should be run to build the target. For example, to build “yourapp.swf”, we invoke the amxmlc command with some options.

Using Variables

Like most Unix tools, Make has plenty of flexibility for writing consise, easy-to-maintain Makefiles. The first thing we should probably do is use variables instead of copying the same strings in multiple places. This will allow us to simply re-use the same Makefile for multiple projects by changing a few configuration values.

You should put variable declarations at the top of a Makefile. Variables are declared simply with VARNAME = VALUE, like so:

AIR = yourapp.air
SWF = yourapp.swf
CERT = yourapp.pfx
MXML = yourapp.mxml

Once we’ve declared the variables, we can use them as either targets or substitutions in our commands using $(VARNAME).

$(AIR) : $(SWF) $(CERT)
	adt -package -storetype pkcs12 -keystore $(CERT) -storepass yourpass yourapp-app.xml $(SWF)
$(SWF) :
	amxmlc -sp+=. -l+=. -strict=true -debug=true -o $(SWF) $(MXML)
$(CERT) :
	adt -certificate -cn yourcompany.com -ou YourApp -o "Your Company" -c "US" 2048-RSA $(CERT) yourpass

While we’re at it, we should probably replace most of our commands with variables. Doing this will make our commands re-usable in other Makefiles.

AIR = yourapp.air
SWF = yourapp.swf
SWFOPTS = -sp+=. -l+=. -strict=true -debug=true
CERT = yourapp.pfx
CERTINFO = -cn yourcompany.com -ou YourApp -o "Your Company" -c "US"
CERTTYPE = 2048-RSA
CERTPASS = yourpass
MXML = yourapp.mxml
APPXML = yourapp-app.xml

$(AIR) : $(SWF) $(CERT)
	adt -package -storetype pkcs12 -keystore $(CERT) -storepass $(CERTPASS) $(APPXML) $(SWF)
$(SWF) :
	amxmlc -o $(SWFOPTS) $(SWF) $(MXML)
$(CERT) :
	adt -certificate $(CERTINFO) $(CERTTYPE) $(CERT) $(CERTPASS)

Now we can split our Makefile into two parts, the first part setting up the variables for this project, the second part included from a common directory.

# Makefile
AIR = yourapp.air
SWF = yourapp.swf
SWFOPTS = -sp+=. -l+=. -strict=true -debug=true
CERT = yourapp.pfx
CERTINFO = -cn yourcompany.com -ou YourApp -o "Your Company" -c "US"
CERTTYPE = 2048-RSA
CERTPASS = yourpass
MXML = yourapp.mxml
APPXML = yourapp-app.xml
include Makefile.flex

# Makefile.flex
$(AIR) : $(SWF) $(CERT)
	adt -package -storetype pkcs12 -keystore $(CERT) -storepass $(CERTPASS) $(APPXML) $(SWF)
$(SWF) :
	amxmlc -o $(SWFOPTS) $(SWF) $(MXML)
$(CERT) :
	adt -certificate $(CERTINFO) $(CERTTYPE) $(CERT) $(CERTPASS)

Now, Makefile.flex can be symlinked to multiple projects, since it doesn’t
have to change at all!

A Challenger Appears: Make on Windows!

I said I’m a Unix guy, but unfortunately I’ve had to switch to a Windows 7 laptop for a couple months now. Luckily for me, Windows has a Linux environment available called Cygwin! Unluckily, getting Cygwin to work with
the Windows Flex SDK, Java for Windows, and Ant for Windows took some hacking.

I installed Flex, Java, and Ant from their vendors using the Windows versions. I installed Cygwin making sure to include GNU Make. However, using the same Makefile I used on my OSX laptop ran into some puzzling errors: Unable to access jarfile /cygdrive/c/flex/lib/mxmlc.jar when that file definitely exists in the Cygwin environment.

It turns out that using the Bash scripts from the Flex SDK for Windows doesn’t work in the Cygwin environment, mainly because Cygwin has to map C:\flex\lib to a proper Cygwin Unix-like directory path, /cygdrive/c/flex/lib. So to make the Flex SDK work under Cygwin, we have to make sure to use the Windows-specific batch files and executables so that all the paths are found.

To make this simple, we will replace our commands (amxmlc and adt) with variables, then use an optional include file to override those variables on our Windows machines. If the optional include file doesn’t exist, we’re on a Unix system and everything works. If the optional file does exist, we’re on a Windows system and everything works.

In our Makefile.flex, we’ll change our commands to use variables, like so.

# Makefile.flex
ADT = adt
AMXMLC = amxmlc

$(AIR) : $(SWF) $(CERT)
	$(ADT) -package -storetype pkcs12 -keystore $(CERT) -storepass $(CERTPASS) $(APPXML) $(SWF)
$(SWF) :
	$(AMXMLC) -o $(SWFOPTS) $(SWF) $(MXML)
$(CERT) :
	$(ADT) -certificate $(CERTINFO) $(CERTTYPE) $(CERT) $(CERTPASS)

Now we’ll add an optional include for a Makefile.cygwin. The – in front of include means “ignore any errors, like if the file doesn’t exist.”

# Makefile.flex
ADT = adt
AMXMLC = amxmlc
-include Makefile.cygwin

$(AIR) : $(SWF) $(CERT)
	$(ADT) -package -storetype pkcs12 -keystore $(CERT) -storepass $(CERTPASS) $(APPXML) $(SWF)
$(SWF) :
	$(AMXMLC) -o $(SWFOPTS) $(SWF) $(MXML)
$(CERT) :
	$(ADT) -certificate $(CERTINFO) $(CERTTYPE) $(CERT) $(CERTPASS)

Finally, if we’re on a Windows system, we’ll add our Makefile.cygwin:

# Makefile.cygwin
ADT = adt.bat
AMXMLC = amxmlc.bat

Now Cygwin will use the Windows-specific batch files from the Flex SDK instead of the Unix-specific shell scripts, but only on Windows.

—

I’ve only recently started using Make to build projects, and it is an incredibly powerful tool.

If you have any questions about using Make with your own Flex projects, or if you have ideas for how to improve these Makefiles, let me know in the Emerald Kingdom Developer Forums.

For more information about GNU Make, see http://www.gnu.org/software/make/