As you probably know, today Adobe ends Flash support. Maybe the newest generations didn’t get to use it as much as I did when I was a kid but, as someone who became a full-time game developer, this software marked my life.
Browser games
One of my first memories playing video games in a computer were browser games made with Flash.
The player was very powerful if you think about it for the time when it was used. You could play vectorized art games that weighted less than 10mb (most of them less than 2mb) and you could download it and play it in a few seconds or minutes depending on your dial-up connection.
Even today, it is not very common that games work at any resolution. Thanks to the vectorial way Flash worked, you could expand the game as much as you wished and it would still look good.
AS2
My first steps with programming was in AS2. Most of the games I uploaded in Newgrounds are made in Flash using AS2.
I taught myself by trial and error and googling for tutorials. One of the first games I ever made was The Greatest Orb, I discovered how to make buttons in AS2 and to control the timeline with it. With only these two things the game was possible to make.
Thanks to AS2, I discovered that I loved programming and helped me to train the logical bases. As for every programmer, is a language I owe a lot.
Job Opportunities
When I found out I could make money while making video games at first I couldn’t believe it. My mind made a “click” I found FlashGameLicense.com and started to get offers for the games I made. There I decided I wanted to work from now on of that.
The website made things pretty simple. You uploaded a game, they scored it and you would start receiving offers as “bids” for your game. Once you decided the winner, the sponsor would pay you in exchange of adding ads for the game. For example, Primal Champions was sponsored by ArmorGames.
AS3
During my first years at Escuela Da Vinci, where I received formal programming education, I learned to code in AS3, the latest language Flash used.
With my new knowledge, I got to make more complex games as Asterash with required a lot of optimizations that weren’t nearly common in Flash games.
Ruffle
For last, the important question now is how are we going to be able to keep playing all these games. Games that led to a huge generation of game developers.
My biggest bet right now is on Ruffle, I had seen Tom Fulp from Newgrounds praised it over and over plus it is open source.
I hope we can get to play old games easily in the future as it was when we had Flash.
I could talk about great memories for hours, great time making games and great friends I found along the way. For now, I will just say…