

And super as an asset generation tool, of course.Adobe Flash Player was the silent super hero of the computer software world. It's too bad Adobe didn't decide to open source Air a long time ago, in my opinion.Īnimate is a great tool for (web-based and off-line) animation creation, as well as interactive web apps and browser games (although better tools for this last purpose exist). I'd say choosing Air for game development is just a bad idea for any newbie interested in creating games. Not to mention active support and development by the communities and the developers of these tools, a wide range and depth of examples, tutorials and plugins/extensions. Loads of active communities, tutorials and support are available for Construct, Unity, Godot. Instead of hoping and wishing for a future of an Air community that returns from the dead, why not just choose a modern game development platform which already has vibrant user and developer communities? Last I read, based on the statements given out by Harman's representative(s), they were saying no roadmap exists, and no actual new feature or language development is planned - sort-of Air in maintenance mode, as I see it. Hopefully they will get a page up soon with more info, and the people from the AIR community will be ready to help with tutorials for newbies.

Harman has mentioned that they we will have an initial/free offering which allows people to get started, and will then have tiers in a similar way to how Unity is priced. And even easier to learn than Animate and Air, because classic programming skills are not required. The list of suggestions which I mentioned above (at least the first three) provide visual workflows to build 2d game prototypes within the scope of an hour. Air doesn't (as far as I am aware) support building for current game consoles, for example. For game dev much more up-to-date, more efficient and faster workflows and authoring environments have been introduced to the market over the past decade. It's visual and easy to learn, and the workflow is really fast.Īir hasn't seen much development or support from Adobe for quite some time. That said, if the OP is interested in browser games dev, Animate can still be used together with Javascript.Īlthough there is uncertainties around AIR at this point, with Harman taken over it's development, I would argue that AIR + Animate is great for newbies. If, as a game developer, you already invested a lot of time and energy in Air over the years, it makes sense to stick with that platform for the time being, and wait what Harman will do with the platform.īut advising a newbie to invest themselves in Air for game development? I just don't think that is a good idea. (Although you will find a visual tool like Construct is hard to beat for churning out quick game prototypes!)

With excellent (visual) IDEs.Īnd I never said Air is dead or not useful for rapid game prototyping. And therefore, if a person is interested in getting into game development with no prior experience, modern, up-to-date, very well supported and proven solutions with active communities are available instead NOW.

I do think Air received almost no support in the past few years from Adobe, and that the community has dwindled to a shadow of its former self. I have no negative impressions of Air (the tech) itself. And I answered, just like you, that without reasonable programming skills it is not possible to accomplish this in Animate, and since the OP seemed interested in a no-programming solution, I offered a list of viable alternatives which all work well and provide fast workflows. Yes, the OP asked about Animate within the context of being able to create games without programming. And many online tutorials as well.Īnimate can still be used to generate assets and graphics for use in these game development environments, of course. And all four are actively developed and supported. Unity with PlayMaker plugin (Unity is free, PlayMaker is not)Īll of these export games to the web (browser games), Android, iOS, Windows, Mac, and Linux. Although, as Joseph mentioned, good Javascript programming skills are required to develop a game in Animate.Ī number of game creation options exist which do not require (manual) coding: Harman has taken over the development of the Air runtime/SDK, but has already stated the updated runtime (supporting 64bit) will cost money.Īnother option is to export to html5 from Animate, and convert to a mobile app using Cordova or PhoneGap, for example. For native mobile games development Animate + Air is arguably an outdated proposition for a newbie to learn at this point, with too many uncertainties.Īdobe no longer supports Air, and Google requires 64bit apps by August 1st, which the current (free) version of Air does not support.
