Flash
Latest
Unity stops offering Flash game engine licenses, cites a lack of Adobe love
The Unity 4 engine has given Flash gaming a lot of TLC by simplifying web ports of complex projects. If you ask Unity Technologies, however, that love isn't being requited -- and the company feels jilted enough to stop offering new Flash licenses, effective immediately. Adobe supposedly isn't committed enough to the plugin, having halted work on both a re-engineered Flash Player Next as well as an attractive revenue sharing model. Unity is equally concerned about the broader developer community shying away from Flash at the same time as its own plugin, Unity Web Player, has soared past 200 million installs. While those with existing licenses should have Flash support for as long as versions of Unity 4 are in the field, the exit is bound to have game creators scrambling to find alternatives for any future web-based titles.
Unity ending Flash support
Multiplatform game engine Unity is getting a little less multiplatform. "As of today, we will stop selling Flash deployment licenses," CEO David Helgason announced. " We will continue to support our existing Flash customers throughout the 4.x cycle."Helgason said that the decision to stop supporting Flash was motivated by what Unity sees as a lack of commitment to Flash on the part of Adobe, because of player instability, canceled projects, and various other factors.Besides which, "Developers are moving away from Flash, and while Flash publishing has gotten little traction, our own Unity Web Player has seen unprecedented growth in recent months."
IRL: Timbuk2's Commute Messenger and Fujifilm's EF-X20 flash
Welcome to IRL, an ongoing feature where we talk about the gadgets, apps and toys we're using in real life and take a second look at products that already got the formal review treatment. When he's not copy editing Engadget, Philip Palermo likes to write about his gadget collection. And that gadget collection includes an impressive pile of camera gear (like this and this and this). Now he's back, taking Fujifilm's EF-X20 flash for a spin alongside his X-E1. Meanwhile, Dan's found a bag spacious and compartmentalized enough to fit several days of clothing and all his trade show gear. Not an easy feat, folks.
One Shots: Soggy beginnings
Dungeons and Dragons Online newcomers and veterans alike are quite familiar with the waterlogged Sahuagin and all of their wacky antics. Basically think "level 1 mermaids from hell" and you're right with the rest of us. It's a good thing that the game doesn't have smell-o-vision because the tutorial would be reeking of a fishery, that's all I'm saying. Reader Sharvis photographed his initial journey through the game and delivered this familiar image of an odd cellar. "Oh great, the Wavecrest Tavern's basement has flooded," he writes. "And who let the Sahuagin in? They're making everything look tacky again!" We'll get the sump pump working while you check out the rest of today's player-submitted screenshots!
Be a pretty unicorn in PixelJam's Retro Unicorn Attack: Challenge Edition
Figuring out new ways to make believe that we're a pretty, pretty unicorn takes up about 80 percent of our day, so we always appreciate it when someone else does the majority of the grunt work for us. Imagine then our appreciative, wistful sigh upon learning of PixelJam's new game with Adult Swim, Retro Unicorn Attack: Challenge Edition.As retro and/or pixelated as its name and developer imply, Retro Unicorn Attack is an endless runner that tasks the player (a beautiful and majestic unicorn, obviously) with collecting fairies and dashing through vortexes, while avoiding obstacles and generally falling to a horrible death. The game is, besides being adorable and addictive, also quite difficult. Players can upload their best scores to a global leaderboard, hence the Challenge Edition subtitle.
Samsung puts 128-gigabit 3-bit cell flash into production, plans to build more memory cards
Flash memory advancements usually sing the same tune: faster, smaller and high-density. Improve one of these attributes, and you've go the makings of a better chip on your hands. Samsung is focusing on the latter, announcing the mass production of its 10 nanometer 128-gigabit three-bit multi-level-cell NAND flash. That mouthful translates into flash chips with more memory per cell in a small form factor. Sammy says the new chip is capable of 400Mbps, and claims the highest density in the industry. The new silicon will be used to expand the company's supply of 128GB memory cards and high-volume solid state drives. It's also well positioned to be a better part for devices with embedded NAND storage, which Samsung hopes will keep it competitive. You'll find Samsung's announcement and all the granular details after the break.
The Perfect Ten: Cutest creatures
I vividly remember a conversation I had with my then-girlfriend's parents back in 1996 about the potential of this growing "internet" phenomenon. With my limited understanding, I made it sound downright noble, a Library of Congress available at the fingertips of the average Joe or Jane. What I really should have said that it would be a tool for the distribution of pornography, nerd rage, and cute animal pictures. I have no idea how big the cute animal picture industry is, but there have got to be millions of aspiring photographers daily who prod little baby critters with encouragement sticks in the hopes of eliciting a few "awws" out of strangers. Even when the serious business of MMOs came a-calling, cuteness infested fantasy lands near and far. Whenever I see something absurdly cute in an MMO, I always smile because I know that somewhere, some uber-elite, way-too-serious player is developing facial tics from being in the same game world as it. So twitch away, as here are 10 of the cutest critters as seen in-game!
EPFL mixes graphene and molybdenite to make very efficient, flexible flash memory
We've seen graphene chips, and we've seen molybdenite chips. What would happen if we combined the two? If EPFL's experimental flash memory is any clue, we might get one of the better blends since chocolate met peanut butter. The chip uses graphene's high conductivity for the memory itself, as well as for electrodes, but stuffs molybdenite in between to rapidly switch electrical states (such as what you'd see in write commands) while using little power. The hybrid is theoretically both faster and more power-efficient than conventional silicon designs, but that's just the start: the extra-thin nature of either material is better-suited to flexible electronics on top of shrinking the chip footprint. If there's anything at this stage that would sour EPFL's dreams of a storage utopia, it's time. There's no immediate mention of commercialization plans for the mutant memory, which could leave us stuck on silicon for awhile.
Injustice: Gods Among Us footage shows alternate costumes, more facial hair
NetherRealm's barrage of Injustice: Gods Among Us footage continues unabated, with these newest clips showcasing a few of the characters' alternate costumes. We're quite fond of Pseudo-Military Superman and Realistic Armor Batman, but we're starting to lose hope for a Clean Shavin' Green Arrow.
Flash coming to Internet Explorer 10 on Windows 8 and RT tomorrow
Heads up, Windows users. Tomorrow, Microsoft will release an update for Internet Explorer 10 that enables Flash content in both Windows 8 and Windows RT. As many of you are likely aware, the "full web" experience has been limited to the desktop browser on Windows 8 up until this point, which was an intentional move by Microsoft in order to improve performance, battery life and the touch experience. With the update, Internet Explorer 10 users for Windows 8 / RT will be able to access Flash content on all but a few sites that Microsoft has selectively blacklisted due to their negative impact on the user experience. Naturally, users of IE10 within the Windows 8 desktop environment will still be able to access all Flash-enabled content, regardless of whether the site is on the blackballed list. Now that you've waited this long, what's another day among friends?
Patriot launches AERO wireless storage device and media hub for mobile data hogs
Patriot has just announced a new addition to its collection of storage offerings called the AERO. As the name suggests, the new device is of the wireless variety, which Patriot hopes will garner favor with owners of memory-light tablets and smartphones. To reinforce this ambition, there is of course a companion app -- Patriot Connect -- for Android and iOS that turns the device into a mobile media hub. With hooks for 3rd party media players, it hopes to overcome any format barriers, and there's also an internet pass through feature to let multiple users hit the web on the same IP. There are two capacities on offer -- 500GB and 1TB -- both with WiFi b / g / n, capacity for five connected devices, USB 3.0 and up to six hours of life on the rechargeable battery. The larger of the two will cost $199, dropping to $159 if you don't need so much storage. Both ship in early April.
Seagate ships its first desktop hybrid drive, third-gen laptop models
Seagate has had some skin in the hybrid hard drive game for some time, but always in 2.5-inch wide versions -- great for your laptop, not so much the cavernous spaces of a gaming tower. Its just-shipping Desktop SSHD fills that gap in a nearly literal sense. Along with slotting neatly into a 3.5-inch bay, the larger SSHD carries both 2TB of spinning storage and 8GB of flash to speed up disk-intensive tasks without throwing away capacity (or money) on a pure solid-state drive. It should be as much as four times faster than conventional desktop drives, Seagate claims. Whether or not that's true, the firm isn't neglecting its portable-owning friends: it's shipping a new 1TB, regular-height Laptop SSHD and a 500GB, 7mm (0.28-inch) Laptop Thin SSHD, either of which is up to 40 percent faster than its predecessor. Seagate hasn't mentioned pricing for any of the drives at this stage, although it's safe to presume they'll undercut SSDs with equivalent space.
One Shots: Back in the day...
A few weeks ago I asked everyone to send me in screenshots of pre-2004 MMOs... and only Brad delivered. Seriously, people, you've been shown up by Brad. Brad gets the gold star. Brad gets the golden ticket and can come on a once-in-a-lifetime visit to see the fabled Massively word factory. Brad is my hero. Brad (if you didn't catch his name) sent us in this shot of Ultima Online: "So much fun with vendors! This is a shot of Angelica's on the Chesapeake Server -- a popular shopping spot in Felucca to grab gear on the go. It was one of the few player-owned vendor spots in a protected zone near Lord British's Castle. This would have been taken around 2002. Notice the detail of the fish tank made from stacked cloth and the flowers made with an onion and two cooked eggs!" Yes. Notice Brad's eggs, people. In them you can see the reflection of your failure. Aw, just kidding!
Safari blocking outdated Flash plug-ins due to security holes
Adobe recently issued a security update for Flash Player which patches an exploit that gave hackers the ability to take over a vulnerable system. Not leaving things to chance, Apple is now rolling out a hotfix for Safari that blocks outdated versions of the tainted web plug-in. If your system hasn't been patched yet, you may receive a notification when attempting to access Flash-based content. The prompt will then advise that a new software version is available. If you're running OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) or higher and Safari is your browser of choice, you may want to nab this update from Adobe. Otherwise the next time you go online, the internet might be a far cry from what you're used to seeing.
Latest Injustice footage shows Joker, Flash, Shazam, whams, bams
The next round of Injustice: Gods Among Us combat footage has been released into the wild, now that round 2 of NetherRealm Studio's ongoing character popularity contest has come to an end. The resulting bouts pit Joker against Lex Luthor (above) and Flash against Shazam (below), who up until the New 52 relaunch was known by his original, proper name, Captain Marvel.As was the case with the last round of videos, very subtle similarities to Mortal Kombat are apparent to anyone looking for them: Captain Marvel Shazam's moves invoke a sense of Raiden, Joker's various gadgets remind of Cyrax/Sektor and Flash's kicks have a Kung Lao look to them.
Adobe charging 10 percent royalty on iOS games made with Director 12
Adobe recently released version 12 of Director, its interactive app creation system, and in doing so introduced the ability for those who use the app to create iOS games to publish their titles directly to the App Store. As it turns out, that potentially time-saving capability comes at a premium. 9to5Mac reports that Adobe is asking for a 10% cut of all profits for games created in Director 12 -- if they make more than US$20,000 in the App Store. Director users on Adobe's forums are upset by the move, which is outlined in the application's new terms and conditions. Evidently, it's up to app authors to inform Adobe of any sales beyond the initial $20,000 mark and pay the company directly. This differs from other development products such as Unity, which charge app makers up-front or on a per-title basis in order to utilize their software to make commercial products. In this case, there's a $999 initial cost for Director plus a royalty, which seems to be a little more than these devs are willing to pay.
One Shots: Bring out your dead
Ah, nothing like a pile of rotting stiffs to start your day off right, I always say! So nice of considerate readers to send me such pictures in my email. Maybe it's a somber commentary on the fragility of life and the tragedies that go unnoticed around us daily. Maybe it's somebody trying to gross me out. I'm good either way. Reader Volska clues us in: "Talk about morbid. Here's a screenshot of some piles of corpses from the Guardian starter area in RIFT. No happy welcoming party here." With a start like that, what other pictures will we have to share? It's a wild and wooly One Shots, and it all starts after the jump!
Java, Silverlight left in cold as Firefox disables all plugins by default -- except Flash
In an effort to prevent "drive-by exploitations," upcoming versions of Firefox will have Java, Adobe Reader and Silverlight disabled by default, according to a recent Mozilla Security blog. All other third-party plugins except Flash will also be disabled, requiring users to enable them using the so-called click to play feature introduced last year. All that is to prevent "poorly designed" Firefox plugins from crashing or recent headline-grabbing exploits involving the likes of Java, with Adobe's Flash player being the one exception that works out of the box -- though versions longer of tooth than 10.3 won't see daylight without your say-so.
Daily iPhone App: Interlocked puts lots of physical puzzles on a digital touchscreen
I am a big fan of The Room, an iOS app which has gained plenty of accolades here and elsewhere already. One of the most charming things about The Room, I think, is how well it replicates real-world objects on a touchscreen platform. The Room expertly turns the touchscreen interface into a series of mysterious puzzle-boxes, all very fascinating and ingenious to play with. Interlocked is another app that does that, although without a lot of the extra mystery and setting that The Room adds to things. The app is published by Armor Games, the same company that published the great Kingdom Rush, and like Kingdom Rush, it's based on a popular Flash game you can play for free online. Also like Kingdom Rush, the iOS version has been polished and cleaned up a bit. The game is simple: You're given a puzzle with a set of interlocking pieces, and then you can drag or swipe around the screen to try and pull all of the pieces apart. The game starts off easy, and quickly gets difficult -- just a few levels in, I had some frustration trying to figure out just how these pieces on screen fit together. If you're a fan of these kinds of manipulation puzzles, you'll love this setup for sure. As I said, Interlocked is a pure puzzle game, so it doesn't have any of the mysteriousness that made The Room so popular (and if you haven't played that one, you should). Still, if you like these very physical puzzles, Interlocked, with plenty of content and a nice clean interface, should offer up lots of fun. It's available right now as a universal app for US$0.99.
One Shots: Slumbering death
Reader John's going to get me to actually say something nice about TERA. Are you ready for it? Because this doesn't happen often. Here's my compliment: It's a beautiful-looking game. Really. I can't deny that there's a special level of polish and eye when it comes to its visuals. Anyway, John sent us in this captivating picture of a place that might look pretty in the daylight, but you probably don't want to be loitering after nightfall. "I just started playing TERA upon hearing about the F2P conversion. This is my Amani Berserker traveling through the low-level Valley of Titans and stopping behind a pair of rock giants. These rock giants are all over the place here -- I wonder what will happen if they ever wake up?" Dance party? That's my guess. See John's full-color photo in all its glory after the break in addition to other terrifying vistas.
