A few Questions before possible Order

[InterestedUser]

Hello everyone,

as I need to program more and more cross platform Apps and Games, I saw the Multimedia Fusion 2 Developer Version, along with the flash exporter.

I already read through different threads here, but before I am taking the step to just buy and use another Development Platform, I have a few questions. I hope that that someone might be able to share his / her opinions on the program.

What I am interested in in particular at the moment is the option to actually export the app to flash. As the MMF is not using Actionscript (I assume), I wonder if this feature does work well? In the state as it is now, is it really possible to e.g. program my facebook games (which I usually do in flash) using MMF.. and(!) could even export the whole thing as a PC and Java game?
Speaking of Flash. Is there a possibility to use Actionscript, or is this not necessary?

Secondly, the Java Runtime. Any opinions from people using it would be great.

So if you might have an opinion to share about any points mentioned, or maybe something else to point out. Please feel free! It would be great to read your opinions.
Don't be afreiad to mention downsides, I think every program has it's downsides.

Thanks a lot for taking the time reading the post..

Greetings,

Manuela

[Jahkri]

Hi Manuela,

welcome to (one of the nicest and most friendly) Forum on the Web.

You are right. Theres no Actionscript (yet) inplemented into MMF2dev. But Jamie from Clickteam is working on an Extension that will allow to include Custom-Action-Script. So if in any Situation you need Actionscript then there should very soon be an Extension that will allow you to implement your own Action-Script.

There are some limitations with creating the Flash-Game. Some Extensions don' t work for Flash, also some Events/Actions don' t work for Flash either. Some Extensions are already ported over to Flash and i think there will be more to follow (there' s already a bunch of new Beta-Extensions exclusively for Flash). In the Flash-Subforum you find some interesting posts you don' t want to miss.

About the Java-Runtime, i' ve never used it so far but i think pretty everything should also be possible with Java. But it depends on what you want to do with java (is it for a mobile device or for web-distribution or perhaps even for Mac-OS).

Perhaps someone more experienced with java (and perhaps even flash) could give you some more insight.

Have you tried the Demo-Version of MMF2dev? Sadly you can not test the Flash/Java-Functionality (you can not export to that formats in the Demo-Version) but to get a grip about how MMF2dev works. The "Coding" is almost the same (independent on what platform your game should finaly run).

PS: Sorry for my bad english... i' m swiss.

Greets,

jahkri

[Popcorn]

The flash and java export actually works very well! The java mobile runtime is brilliant! The flash runtime have a few more issues because of limitations in Flash, but most stuff works quite well.
And yes, you can program Facebook flash applications using MMF2.

Because of limitations in flash, some stuff might be lacking or running slower as a flash application. Also keep in mind that anything having to do with vectorbased graphics wouldn't be done easily in MMF2 as MMF2 does not support it.

The good thing is, you only need to make your game once, and don't need to do any changes to port the game to different runtimes (unless you are using unsupported extensions). Simply change the Build option to the runtime you are building for, and build the application! MMF2 does the convertion for you in a few seconds.

[InterestedUser]

Hello there,

thank you both for sharing your thoughts with me.

I am currently trying out the demo version and yes, it's a shame I cannot test the flash and/or java extension.

I guess I will try the demo as long as I can, to see if it suits my needs.

I saw that for online gaming, one has to use Lacewing, which I cannot test in the demo either. Ah well, seems I have to go through some demos, to actually see how this works and what can be done using it.

Best wishes,

Manuela

P.S. Jahkri, don't worry about that. I am german, so there could be loads of errors in my texts as well and your english is very good

[Looki]

Jahkri was actually wrong about the Actionscript extension. Instead, there now is an SDK called Edif that allows you to write Actionscript extensions yourself.

[Jahkri]

Hi Looki,

thanks for your Replie. Is the AS-Dynamics-Extension not under development anymore? Wouldn' t it be more elegant if there would be an Extension that could interpret Action-Script. I think its a little bit annoying for MMF-Users to have to use another dev-tool (SDK) to implement Action-Script in their MMF-Creations. Wouldn' t it make more sense to have an extension like the .net-Script-Extension? But perhaps i' ve got something wrong. And i have to admit that i didn' t use any scripting-language so far except for the nice MMF-"Scripting :-)

Greets,

jahkri

[Looki]

Well, yeah, but it's technically not possible. The AS Dynamics extension relied on external files as well. There was no "Execute inline Actionscript" action. It is simply not possible.

[Atom]

I am sort of dissapointed with Edif, i am still just coding regular AS3 still which has lots of info online, is easy to do, and it's working fine. It's also been a while now with Edif but still no basic documentation or a working example and nothing seems to be happening with it.

I don't get why there no info on Edif yet because many people want to use AS3 still, people that don't know about Edif keep bumping the Flash Haxx thread also. Thinking i would be able to code AS3 with MMF2 in the future was one of the reasons i purchased the plugin at the time also, but the plugin is definitely worth it though. It's getting much better now with new objects but still i hope to be able to use AS3 sometime.

[Stephen]

I am planning on making a tutorial for Edif still, but I have been really busy with other extensions and my job, so I will try to get to it as soon as I can.

[Atom]

Cool thanks StephenL, that is great to know.