Let's Make Flash Better

[matt-likes-swords]

Hey guys, developer of the Epic Battle Fantasy series here.

I'm petitioning Adobe to bring back the "Stage Quality" setting in Adobe AIR for Desktops.
It's that super-important feature that let's you turn off anti-aliasing in Flash games and get better performance.

Well a few years ago they removed it from Adobe AIR, which essentially means that .exe versions of many Flash games will run much worse. This is a major problem when bringing old Flash games to platforms like Steam - or even new games from developers like me who are still using Flash.

If enough Flash developers request this feature back, Adobe will consider it.
So please, vote on the topic here if you're interested:
https://bugbase.adobe.com/index.cfm?event=bug&id=4123650

[matt-likes-swords]

At 9/1/16 11:42 AM, thronecode wrote: It's weird... I use Haxe with HaxeFlixel, and still get the Stage Quality for Flash :|
I don't personally use Flash for production, but I voted for it! Good luck!

It's only the Desktop profile of AIR that's affected. Flashplayer and mobile AIR still have the Stage quality option.
This is very annoying for me!
Thanks for the vote!

[Gimmick]

Voted! I didn't even know that this was a problem, I'd always assumed that AIR desktop content would have the quality settings available (only now do I find even the enumerations aren't proper :\ )

In the meanwhile, if you're using blitting then you could try using BitmapData.drawWithQuality() and specify the stage quality LOW; for some reason that seems to work in AIR, AFAIK. If a user sets the quality to low (in a menu, for example) then the quality is changed and everything is redrawn...granted, it's very tedious but it's better than nothing I guess.

[matt-likes-swords]

At 9/2/16 11:42 PM, Gimmick wrote: Voted! I didn't even know that this was a problem, I'd always assumed that AIR desktop content would have the quality settings available (only now do I find even the enumerations aren't proper :\ )

In the meanwhile, if you're using blitting then you could try using BitmapData.drawWithQuality() and specify the stage quality LOW; for some reason that seems to work in AIR, AFAIK. If a user sets the quality to low (in a menu, for example) then the quality is changed and everything is redrawn...granted, it's very tedious but it's better than nothing I guess.

Thanks! I've heard of this workaround but I'm assuming it's not great for performance in my case, though I could give it a try.

[Gimmick]

At 9/3/16 06:03 AM, matt-likes-swords wrote: Thanks! I've heard of this workaround but I'm assuming it's not great for performance in my case, though I could give it a try.

In theory, it should give a speedup since it doesn't have to rasterize the displayObjects too accurately, although I suspect that - since stage blitting is already very fast compared to the flash vector renderer - if framerates are low using this method, then there's something else that's causing the lag.

[matt-likes-swords]

At 9/3/16 06:23 AM, Gimmick wrote:

At 9/3/16 06:03 AM, matt-likes-swords wrote: Thanks! I've heard of this workaround but I'm assuming it's not great for performance in my case, though I could give it a try.

In theory, it should give a speedup since it doesn't have to rasterize the displayObjects too accurately, although I suspect that - since stage blitting is already very fast compared to the flash vector renderer - if framerates are low using this method, then there's something else that's causing the lag.

Oh maybe I misunderstood. All of my graphics are vector, but I've heard I can still use a similar trick to draw them in low quality. Maybe that's something different.

[Fireshadows]

Got your back, Matt.
Let's hope this goes through.

[MSGhero]

At 9/3/16 07:14 AM, matt-likes-swords wrote: Oh maybe I misunderstood. All of my graphics are vector, but I've heard I can still use a similar trick to draw them in low quality. Maybe that's something different.

You can draw() your game to a bitmapdata and specify the quality probably, but this will more than likely be super laggy considering how many vector things you have going on at once.

I also can't believe they haven't fixed this yet.

[matt-likes-swords]

At 9/3/16 11:45 AM, MSGhero wrote:

At 9/3/16 07:14 AM, matt-likes-swords wrote: Oh maybe I misunderstood. All of my graphics are vector, but I've heard I can still use a similar trick to draw them in low quality. Maybe that's something different.

You can draw() your game to a bitmapdata and specify the quality probably, but this will more than likely be super laggy considering how many vector things you have going on at once.

I also can't believe they haven't fixed this yet.

I think this is a feature that a lot of people wanted, but no one knew everyone else wanted it, so most of the threads about it are pretty dead. I'm trying to get all the supporters together! :D

[EggysGames]

Wow thats horrible, a lot of my games really relied on it.

[SkyFire2008]

I think they should make flash player open source, if they want it to survive.