Create an arcade game in Flash...

[renobastian100]

Has anyone tried this before? I want to create a fully functional flash-arcade game with controls and credits...
Can this be done? What limitations do you see with this?

[Smeghead]

Flash runs bad on slow pcs maximized

[rytel]

It's certainly possible. Atari's done it for some of their games. Interfacing controls should just be proper keyboard mapping, and you can use Flash local storage to store high-scores etc.

If you're interested in non-internet development, Pygame seems to be pretty powerful.

[Dazz]

Flash runs bad on slow pcs maximized

If you are creating an app or a game, never listen to the people complaining about running bad/slow on old PC's.  You design the game how you want, specify recommend hardware specs and even minimum specs.  The people with hardware lower than minimum specs can either not play the game or upgrade their slow POS... Sure you want as many people possible to play and enjoy your game, but at what expense?  

I don't see people telling Blizzard that the newly released Starcraft II will not run on their 686 with an integrated video chip.

That's one thing about this hobby that really gets me...  People will spend hundred's on building their cabinet, nice controls, nice artwork, but they will toss in an old ass PC to run it.  This is like tossing a Ford Festiva engine into a nice new Corvette body.  Sure it'll run, but don't ---smurfette--- when you can't beat a minivan off the light.

To answer your question, it's possible and it's been done before as stated above.

[Smeghead]

That's one thing about this hobby that really gets me...  People will spend hundred's on building their cabinet, nice controls, nice artwork, but they will toss in an old ass PC to run it.  

True, which is why I mentioned it, most people do because Mame doesNT require a beast of a pc (sorry typo)
I've got the original Sonic the Hedgehog from Genesis/Megadrive and its ok small screen but runs like a pig full screen on my mame box because its not amazingly high spec, because it doesnt need to be for anything else.

[bkenobi]

...because Mame does require a beast of a pc...

Really?  I don't think the Athlon XP machines I have in each cab would be classified as beasts.  MAME only requires a powerful machine if you want to play the 3D CHD games (plus a couple others) at full speed.  Other than those, you can use a run of the mill P4 grade system and be perfectly fine!

[RayB]

I don't understand the question? A game is a game, no?

[Marsupial]

It's certainly possible. Atari's done it for some of their games. Interfacing controls should just be proper keyboard mapping, and you can use Flash local storage to store high-scores etc.

If you're interested in non-internet development, Pygame seems to be pretty powerful.

sadly, their flash port of arcade version don't keep the "insert coin" capacity.
If you want to play in a cab, you need to have a credit counter, somehow.

[rytel]

sadly, their flash port of arcade version don't keep the "insert coin" capacity.
If you want to play in a cab, you need to have a credit counter, somehow.

Yeah, I wouldn't recommend playing the Atari ports on an actual cab. They've rasterized Asteroids!  Flash is fully capable of doing vector games the right way.
But as far as developing or porting a game goes, it shouldn't be too hard to implement a credit counter. Just map it to the usual 'insert coin' key.

[bkenobi]

Does it really matter if the game is written as a vector or raster source if you are playing it on a non-vector monitor?  Seems to me that either way it will be rasterized, so this is a purist type argument that has little basis.   

[rytel]

True, but for whatever reason, the Asteriods only renders at the resolution of its in-browser size, they get pixelated when it goes full screen. Flash is capable of reproducing vectors at any resolution, so it's strange that the full screen version gets pixelated. It looks like the developers rasterized the graphics to save computation time, but ended up with a non-scalable interface.

[Dartful Dodger]

You can also publish out Droid apps from Fash.