What if iPhone and Blackberry Supported Flash Lite?

I was looking over the e-Learning Guild’s 360 report on mobile learning, released several months back. What really jumped out for me was the survey regarding targeted devices. Granted the results are anecdotal and not from a scientific survey, but none the less it does reflect answers from 240 m-learning designers from numerous regions around the world.

Of the devices m-learning targets:

• 34% support Flash Lite (21% in the USA) – e.g. Symbian and Windows Mobile
• 62% target iPhone and Blackberry (76% in the USA).

After adding these numbers up, one could conclude that IF/WHEN Flash Lite is on the iPhone and Blackberry Flash Lite can potentially be used as the m-learning development tool for 96% of the devices currently targeted (97% in the USA).

Yes, this is all hypothetical, but I and many others are of the opinion that the iPhone and Blackberry will eventually support Flash Lite. Let’s just hope sooner than later.

The e-Learning Guild did provide the following links regarding the possibility of Flash Lite on iPhones:

http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/6/adobe_flash_apple_iphone_maybe_someday

http://www.flashdevices.net/2008/03/adobe-flash-player-coming-to-iphone.html

written by Jeff Goldman

Unity3D on the Wii Now Official

Unity 3D, a high-end game development tool for web, desktop and soon the iPhone has announced they are now an official middleware provider for Wii.

From the site:

Unity’s game engine allows developers to create, modify and iterate on Wii game functionality with the following features:

• Live Preview: The play button allows developers to instantly preview their game inside the authoring environment exactly as it currently exists, regardless of the development phase. Users can modify any object’s properties and see the results in real-time without pausing.
• Scriptable Controller: Simple, straightforward, fully-featured Wii Remote™ scripting class lets developers read data from the Wii Remote controller, Nunchuk™ controller, and Classic Controller™ effortlessly.
• Optimized Character Animation: Developers can create characters without special exports, imports, or modifications required. Files drop easily into Unity and the characters come to life with full animation on Wii hardware.
• Scriptable Shaders: Unity’s ShaderLab system has been expanded to leverage the full power of the Wii graphics chip. Developers can use one of the built-in shaders optimized for Wii or write their own. They can script and modify any shader on any object.
• Click to Publish: Developers can easily run their game on their Wii development kit, building it with one click.

Read the press release.

Written by Richard Leggett

Handset detection (Mobile Browser Sniffing)

A huge challenge when developing web sites for mobile phones, either as a separate entity, or as a gracefully degraded version of the “desktop” version, is sniffing just what features the device has. This might include support for XHTML, JavaScript 1.5, Flash Lite (standalone or embedded in a page) and so on.

I just caught a post on the Flash Lite Google Group regarding a new site, handsetdetection.com, which provides a free API for sniffing over 7000 devices. The API is available through XML or JSON and the list of features the API documents is exhaustive, from screen size and streaming video support to HTTPS and SVG capability.

Find out more at the website.

Written by Richard Leggett

Nonoba – Free Flash Multy-User Server,API,Hosting and $20,000 Competition

I’ve just received an email from Nonoba with information on their new multi-user offering, which includes an AS2 and AS3 API, but what I find particularly interesting is that they also include free hosting and execution of your game logic.

The aim appears to be to lower the barrier to entry for anyone wishing to create a multi-user game. These can include turn-based, or real-time games. They currently have some demos up on the site, and these include Nonoba Racer, Fridge Magnets, Multiplayer Asteroids and DrawPad.

Finally they are holding a $20,000 USD competition, with a first prize of $15,000 for the best game built on the new API.

Sign up for the beta here.

More information on the APIs here.

Written by Richard Leggett

Papervision Site for the BBC

I just caught this site via the blog of Iain Lobb (head of interactive at Bloc Media) who commented on my last post. It’s an incredibly slick site developed using the Great White branch of Papervision3D. The site is (for) a TV and online cartoon series, providing a nice cross media experience.

The main things that stood out for me were the production quality of the games and the audio which is very high quality and just as importantly, very well integrated.

shock to the system

 

There’s a game for each episode, the “Shock to the System” game is the last item in the Episode 2 menu, and reminds me somewhat of Tron. (Speaking of which, Tron 2 looks like a must see!).

You can read more about the development of the site over at Iain’s blog. Congratulations on the great work.

Written by Richard Leggett