Adobe has announced a great new addition to the Creative Cloud: Game Developer Tools! The addition of this set of tools reinforces a commitment to the Flash Platform on top of the already rapid advances in runtimes we’ve seen over the past year. Making this new set of gaming tools a part of the Creative Cloud places them alongside the excellent Edge Tools and Services offering which became available in October, and the core creative tools which includes Flash Builder 4.7 and Flash Professional CS6.
This new set of tools includes the Adobe Gaming SDK, the FlasCC cross-compiler, and the new Adobe Scout 1.0 advanced telemetry profiler.
FlasCC is the product previously codenamed Project ‘Alchemy’. FlasCC allows developers to bring C/C++ code — including the leading game engines on PCs, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3 — to the web using Stage3D.
Adobe Scout is the product previously codenamed Project ‘Monocle’. Scout enables advanced profiling and introspection through the advanced telemetry features of Flash Player 11.4 and Adobe AIR 3.4.
Gaming SDK is a new convenience offering which provides a sort of jump-start for developers getting into all of this great new stuff the Flash platform has to offer.
So why a Gaming SDK? The world of Stage3D is very different from that of traditional Flash development. Stage3D was first available with Flash Player 11 and AIR 3 last year on the desktop – and has recently been made available for mobile devices as well. The new APIs offer a huge leap forward in terms of what Flash is capable of- yet the use of these APIs requires some pretty hardcore knowledge of shaders, vertexes, AGAL, and just all around low level programming that most people do not have the time or desire to deal with.
Enter a set of brilliant 3rd party framework developers who enable the use of Stage3D APIs is a functional way for everyone! Frameworks like Starling for 2D rendering views, Away3D for 3D rendering views, and the awesome Feathers component and layout library for GUI elements provides a core set of powerful frameworks upon which to build any number of experiences for games, apps, whatever!
Adobe has recognized the value of these frameworks and have thrown their support behind all three of them. These are core frameworks as part of the new Gaming SDK, alongside the AIR SDK 3.5 and a number of great ActionScript Native Extensions. Rounding out the package is a group of documentation resources, code samples, and a set of tools to work with ATF textures. Installing the Gaming SDK will enable everything needed for a developer to get going with all this new stuff quickly!
Also available now is the final version of Flash Builder 4.7 and, of course, Flash Professional CS6. Both products are include in a standard Creative Cloud membership and trials are available for those accessing the free Game Developer Tools.
Does anyone know if FB 4.7 is available for purchase as stand alone, one time license?
I really don’t want to be forced into Adobe cloud with it’s monthly payments – feels like another cable bill so I’ll just pass.
Sure it is: http://www.adobe.com/products/flash-builder-family.html