Adobe Arcade

Here's a breakdown of all the sessions we have scheduled for MAX tomorrow that may be of interest to Flash Game Developers:

Building Great Games with Flash
Wednesday, 9:30am - 10:30am
Room: 403B
Twitter: #adobemax353
Speaker: John Say, Say Designs

Learn the secrets and tools of the trade for creating great games with Flash Professional, including honing the fun factor, performance optimizations, and cross-platform/device strategies. John Say and his team at Say Design have enjoyed the excitement and rewards of building a wide variety of games over the last ten years using the Flash Platform. From the web to mobile to kiosks they have delivered games onto almost every type of device enabled for the Flash Platform.

Building Browser-Based Casual MMOs
Wednesday, 11:00am - 12:00pm
Room: 403B
Twitter: #adobemax39
Speaker: Nick Fortugno, Rebel Monkey

Learn from the experts how to design and deploy a new kind of multiplayer gaming experience right in the browser. Rebel Monkey recently launched a casual MMO called CampFu, which gives players the unique ability to form teams and engage each other in real-time co-op games with nothing more than a browser. Get the lowdown on the tricks of the trade, challenges, and solutions for building your own browser-based casual MMO.

Birds of a Feather - Gaming *JUST ADDED*
Wednesday, 12:00pm - 1:30pm
Community Pavilion, Table 4

Grab your lunch and join us for a birds of a feather session for game developers. Meet and talk to many of our speakers from today as well as people from Adobe who are working to make game development on the Flash Platform an even greater experience.

Flash Platform Gaming Showcase
Wednesday, 2:00pm
Room: 404A
Twitter: #adobemax215
Speaker: Danielle Deibler (Adobe), John Shapiro (Adobe), Patricio Jutard (Three Melons), and More!

Get an overview of the latest developments in the Flash Platform relevant to casual and social gaming. You will get a firsthand look at some fun and innovative games from top publishers as well as insight into how these games were made. See what Adobe is working on to make building games for the Flash Platform better than ever.

Build a Flash Based Platformer in 90 Minutes
Wednesday, 4:00pm
Room: 408B
Twitter: #adobemax267
Speaker: Ben Garney, PushButton Labs

Learn how to build a platformer using Flex Builder and the open source PushButton Engine game framework. This will be a hands-on session that will give the attendee experience with writing real-world game logic, designing levels, and learning the tricks of the professionals. By the end of the session, you will have created a complete side-scrolling platformer style game (like Super Mario Brothers), including puzzles, cut scenes, and enemies.

There have been some really exciting announcements so far at MAX 2009 of interest to game developers.

The biggest announcement was probably that when you develop your game (or application) in Flash Professional, that game should play great, as is, in a wide variety of smartphones. Check out the Open Screen Project for more info and the list of partners who are helping to bring Flash Player 10.1 to mobile devices.

And of course, for a certain phone that isn't part of that project, in Flash CS5 Professional you'll be able to export your app to the iPhone.

Now, the first question that I'm hearing from game developers is what kind of performance will you get? Well, you can see for yourself. There are a number of applications that have already been released on Apple's application store that are using this technology.

Try & Buy for your AIR Applications
You may have caught mention on the day 1 keynote that we're announcing a new monetization service for the AIR runtime. Well, the service (codenamed Shibuya) is up on labs for developers.
Be sure to catch the keynote on day 2 (or the live stream if you can't be here in person) where we'll go into a lot more detail and demonstrate how you'll be able to sell your games and applications on the AIR Marketplace.

Also be sure to stop by the Adobe booth in the Community Pavilion afterwards and pick up your $5 Coupon for applications that use the new service on the AIR Marketplace.

The PushButton Engine team announced today their new r470 release.

If you're attending Adobe MAX 2009, bring your laptop and get hands-on with Ben Garney. Sign up to attend "Building a Flash Based Platformer in 90 Minutes" on Wednesday October 7th at 4pm. Be sure to sign up early, space is filling up quick!

We just got back from the LA Convention Center where we set everything up and finished applying the side art. It really looks awesome!

Until the movers actually arrived the other day I didn't think it was really going to happen.. Even then, there was the nerves of if everything would arrive in one place. However, it seems the stars have aligned and I'm really excited to say the Flash Arcade we've been building is making its public debut at MAX 2009. We've got a great spot in the MAX Playground in the Community Pavilion, West Hall, Level 1. Pretty much right when you come in the doors

Augmented Reality has been an area of interest I've been keeping an eye on for a while now. I really liked seeing this little application from the USPS. While you can argue its "usefulness", its great to see businesses (can you call the post office a business?) trying out this new technology. It's one of the first attempts at a practical application I've seen outside of the gaming or marketing space.

Most applications of AR I've seen these days are taking advantage of the Flash Platform. Its great to see new technology applications being created without the need to install any new software on the end user's system. Those interested should probably start by checking out the FLARToolKit.

Adobe has used AR to do things like hype MAX, which is cool of course. Unfortunately most of the applications has been little novelty apps used to pitch movies, sell cars and amuse television news anchors. There's exciting things going on with mobile platforms where the camera can be combined with a GPS and a compass, but since this is a game blog, I'll bring it back to games.

Why haven't we seen more games start to use this new technology? The first and still best example of such a game is 2007's The Eye of Judgement for the PS3. When I first saw this I expected a rush of new and innovative games to come along taking advantage of this new technology. Sure, Eye of Judgement was a gimmick that brought some technology to an existing genre of card games, so where is the likes of Parker Brothers bringing rich 3d animations and computerized game mechanics to Monopoly and Scrabble?

Well, maybe that's going too far...

One of my favorite anime in recent years has been Dennō_Coil. It presented an inspiring vision of a perhaps not-so-distance future of what applications there are for "augmented reality". Look at your wrist and see a 3d clock or bring up a full keyboard and monitor floating in virtual space in front of you. Look down, see your virtual pet dog standing by your side (just don't let him get infected with a computer virus!) Games where your position in the real world determines your position in the virtual world. We already have computers small enough to carry with us at all times and a high speed wireless data network. Now all we need are the cool glasses.

There are three sessions at MAX 2009 this year dealing with this area that I'm really looking forward to (in addition to the sessions on gaming I mentioned in a previous post of course!)

• Designing for Augmented Reality
• A Deep Dive into Ten Innovative Projects for Flash
• Introduction to the Spark Project and FLARToolKit

Who knows? Maybe the creator of the first great mainstream AR game will be in attendance...