Consistent Game Development across all Platforms
Be honest: you wouldn’t have expected to see a new Starling version appear, seemingly out of the blue, right? It’s been more than 4 years since I wrote the last blog entry for Starling 2.7. And, truth be told – personally, I haven’t found a lot of time to move...
Starling actually celebrates its tenth birthday this year – isn’t that incredible? I can still vividly remember my excitement when I discovered the email from Adobe’s Thibault Imbert in my inbox, with his proposal of porting my Objective-C framework, Sparrow, over to the Flash API and the (then) brand-new Stage3D...
In the blog article accompanying the previous Starling update, I wrote that Adobe should hopefully soon decide how to move on with AIR. Well, shortly after that post, it actually happened: Adobe transitioned support and future development of AIR to Harman. That’s one topic of today’s blog post; the other...
As I mentioned in the previous blog post, our no-fuzz backend is sadly reaching the end of its lifetime. Flox will shut down on August 1st, 2020. Some of you are using Flox purely for its simple analytics and logging capabilities. If that’s the case, I just want to assure...
First things first: the reason for this blog post is a major heads-up: I’m going to have to shut down Flox around August 1st, 2020. Yikes. I’m aware that this might mean a major hassle for the remaining users of Flox – depending on how much use you make of...
There’s no denying it: Starling has seen easier years than 2018/2019! The Flash Player’s end-of-life is looming ahead, and Adobe, it seems, still hasn’t quite figured out what they want to do with AIR. In other words, it’s time for a quick … Recap and Outlook Adobe started to fund...
Summer is coming to the northern hemisphere, and it has become kind of a ritual to push out a new Starling release before it gets too hot, right? The new release comes with one major addition that has been on my to-do list for a long time, but I never...
The year is almost over and many of you will soon be going into a well-earned holiday season. Before you leave, I’d like to hand you a small gift — a new release of Starling! The update itself (we’re now at version 2.3) focuses mainly on enhancements of the text...
The title says it all: I prepared a special offer for the Starling Handbook. That’s kind of a big deal for me, because it’s the first time I can provide a discount on anything! After all, it’s hard to give a discount on a free, open source product. ;-) Black...
Hard to believe, but we are already halfway through 2017! Since I spent so much time with the Starling Handbook, there hasn’t been a new official Starling release for quite a while. With the handbook out of the door, however, I could finally put on my developer hat again –...
My dear friends, it is with the greatest satisfaction that I can finally announce: The Starling Handbook is available. It’s just a click on the big red button away! And, honestly: who can resist clicking on a big red button?! Giveaway Winner In the previous blog post, I started something...
First things first: the Starling Handbook is finally ready! W00t! Do you remember? If not, I can’t blame you: it’s been quite a while since I announced it in this blog post. In a nutshell, this book is going to be the official “bible” for all Starling developers, with lots...
For many of you, the holiday season is coming up. You’ll meet your loved ones, unwrap a present or two and hopefully have some time for yourself, maybe read a book? While I can’t give you the Starling Handbook quite yet (it’s going to be out sometime in Q1 2017),...
UPDATE May 2017: In the meantime, the Starling Handbook is available! Find out all about it here. Do you know the feeling? When you’re extremely familiar with a library or framework, it suddenly steps out of the way, allowing you to focus completely on your actual application. That’s when you...
The last Starling release, version 2.0, left almost no stone unturned. You can imagine that I was quite anxious about how everything would work once it was out in the wild! Would the new API really move your projects to the next level — or would it crumble once confronted...
Here’s another quick update for all Starling developers — no worries, I’ll keep it short today! Starling 2.0.1 First of all, I wanted to tell you that I just released the maintenance release 2.0.1 on GitHub, which fixes a few minor issues that were reported during the last couple of...
It’s been several weeks already since I offered you a first look at the brand new version of Starling (if you haven’t read my previous post yet, make sure to do so before continuing: Starling 2.0 Beta). Many developers were brave enough to take it for a test ride or...
Seven months ago, I set myself the goal of bringing Starling to the next level. To completely rethink its rendering architecture; to make it more extendable; to clean up all the tiny little compromises that had built up since its first release, and make every single class something to be...
It’s been a while since we had a guest post on our blog! But when Johann Huang from SGN told me about the project he was working on, I knew we had to spread the word about this to as many developers as possible. Johann, thanks a lot for this...
Hey guys, it’s hard to believe, but it’s July already! So far, 2015 has been an extremely busy year for our little bird, so it’s high time to release a new stable version. After all, you ought to be able to make use of all the features and improvements that...
As some of you may have noticed, Flox was down for approximately four hours yesterday afternoon (CET). With this blog post, we’d like to give you a quick update on what caused this downtime and how we were able to fix it. In a nutshell, there was a glitch in...
It’s just a few days before this year’s festive season is beginning, so chances are that you’re currently looking for gifts and presents for your friends and family. It’s the same here at Gamua — and what better gift could we give you than a brand-new version of Starling? That’s...
Hello guys! It’s been a while since we last updated the Flox client library, so it was high time for an update! This time, we’re adding two features that have been requested several times in the forum. I think we found very elegant solutions for those areas — read on...
Last week was the Flash Online Conference #10, featuring sessions about many current and upcoming projects around Flash and AIR. There were lots of really interesting talks from Adobe engineers as well as framework developers. For example, Chris Campbell spoke about the Flash roadmap, and Josh Tynjala showed the brand...
While Starling was already granted the honor of being the topic of two books, it took a little longer for our first-born framework, Sparrow. But the wait is over: Packt Publishing recently launched a wonderful guide to Sparrow, written by the experienced Sparrow developer Johannes Stein! The book is called...
When people start to develop for mobile, they usually have one top requirement: performance. That’s why Starling does everything in its power to make your game run as smooth as possible. I’ve also talked and written frequently about the practices to follow for best results in this area (this wiki...
I’ll jump right to the most important message of this blog post: this Sparrow update is huge. In fact, I considered calling this “3.0” because it’s lightyears ahead of any previous Sparrow version! But one thing after the other. The last year hasn’t been easy on our little bird. Sparrow...
Hello everyone! I am very happy to be finally able to give you access to Flox’s brand new way of tracking down all the errors and exceptions that shoot through your games. I know that many of you have been waiting for this since about forever and I very much...
As always, it has been a busy spring here in Austria. Over the last weeks and months, I added a huge number of optimizations, bugfixes and new features. Our little bird learned something new almost every day! Thus, it’s high time for a new stable version, so that all of...
Hello everyone! Be warned for this is an absolutely useless intermission of your busy work day: I just received a pic from an anonymous source. It was taken while driving through a tiny Austrian town which apparently is only a few minutes away from our office! Granted it’s in the...
When we first announced the JavaScript version of the Starling library on this blog and on the Adobe MAX, the feedback we received from you guys was phenomenal: A huge number of people showed their interest and encouraged us that we were on the right track. However, many months have...
The first Starling book came out shortly after the framework’s official launch, more than two years ago. Seeing a complete book about my work being written and published — it always felt unreal to me and left me speechless! Now, you can imagine how exhilarating it was when I found...
Hello floxxers! Let me tell you a story: we usually ban everything we want to do, need to do, can’t do right now and all ideas that spark through our heads onto long lists of work items. These lists get sorted, reviewed, reduced, distilled and sometimes forgotten. ;-) Not this...
After a long pause, we’ve got the next entry in our “User’s Corner” blog series! Today, I give the word to Denis Balon from gafmedia.com. He and his team created an extremely promising solution that allows users to import their Flash CS animations into Starling easily. Thanks a lot for...
Hello floxxers! The wait is over: we just open-sourced the Flox SDK! Enjoy our black friday deal! ;-) Philosophical Preamble As you know, Gamua is an open-source company since day one. Actually Sparrow was open-source even before day one. Whatever the exact date, it has always been our philosophy that...
Hello everyone! I was just able to release the new Flox SDK! This version comes with a new feature many of you have been waiting for: Friend leaderboards. Players & Scores You most likely know that Flox allows you to identify your players as well as their data. You most...
Hello Floxxers! Only a few days after releasing the well-received team support I am happy to announce another handy feature: As of now Flox allows you to manage your game’s data programmatically. All you have to do is summon a hero! “Uhm, a … what now?” Players Let’s step back...
Good news everyone! More often than not games are developed in teams or need to grant access to other users. As you might know, up until now Flox games where accessible on a single-user basis only. However, as of today it is possible to invite others to your game. There,...
It’s done! Today Flox has left its beta cocoon and became a “1.0”. I can not even begin to describe how happy I am to be able to write this blog post today. To the trained eye I may also happen to appear slightly tipsy later this evening. But before...
During the last months, developers all over the world created stunning games with Starling and Sparrow. From one-man shows to huge companies; from garage game to Triple-A; from card game to action platformer - it seems that everything is possible with Starling & Sparrow, especially in combination with Flox, Feathers,...
Time flies by, doesn’t it? Believe it or not, it’s already been more than half a year since the last Starling version was released. In other words, it’s high time for an update! Ladies and gentlemen, please buckle up: Starling 1.4 is AIR-borne! Overview This release is all about polishing....
Hello Floxxers! Today I’ll shine a light on Flox player authentication and the login process. Player authentication is one of the most basic parts of the Flox SDK and almost all of you will encounter it in your game development endeavors. As with all things Flox the player login process...
Hello Floxxers, the new SDK (0.7) is out and it brings a feature many of you have been requesting in the forums. As of now you can selectively exclude properties from being serialized to and deserialized from the Flox servers! To pick you up, I’ll quickly summarize that particular problem:...
Today, we’d like to reactivate our “User’s Corner” series of blog articles. In this series we give the word to developers who have used our frameworks to create interesting games or libraries, giving them a chance to share their experiences with our readers. The topic of today’s post is a...
The latest update for Flox brings a major overhaul to your game analytics: As of now you’re able to see industry-approved key performance metrics or KPIs out-of-the-box and beautifully visualized within the web interface! Which KPIs Are We Talking About? Key Performance indicators are usually used to measure if and...
A few weeks ago, I presented to you the release candidate of an all-new version of Sparrow, containing lots of new features and a completely revised architecture. I’m really excited to tell you that the release candidate is now followed by the official release! During the last weeks, I gathered...
Starling has become extremely popular since its launch – much more so than we could ever imagine! It is regarded as one of the best solutions for cross platform game development. Deploying games to iOS, Android and the web has never been easier! We know, however, that the web is...
Today I’m very happy to introduce you to the latest addition to our game-development universe: It’s called Flox and it will make your game-dev endeavours an even greater pleasure than they already are. What Is Flox? I hope you don’t mind me asking a few questions first. ;-) Have you...
Adobe’s “Creativity Conference”, MAX, is just a few weeks ahead: it takes place from May 4th to 8th in Los Angeles. For the first time, Holger and myself will attend the conference. We’re very excited about this! I hope we’ll meet many users of Starling and Flox there, and maybe...
That I can finally write this blog post takes a huge load off my mind. Today is a very exciting day for Sparrow! After a long delay, I can finally give you the update so many of you have waited for. The iOS platform is constantly evolving; things like OpenGL...