For a game developer that uses Adobe Animate, is there a future?

[josephw50223730]

I've been using Adobe Photoshop + Adobe Animate for the past 5 years to make this game:

This is only a tiny glimpse into everything I've been working on. About a week ago, people started scaring me away from writing in AS3 and using Animate because of the end of the flash player. That thing is, I REALLY would rather keep using Photoshop and Animate to make my games because they work really well with each other (I can instantly edit sprites in Photoshop and they immediately update in Animate) and I know AS3 well enough to actually get this done.

I've been trying other frameworks like Haxe and Unity just to try things out, but both of those have their problems. Haxe ide's don't have the nifty symbols library as far as I know and while Unity does have something of a symbols library with their prefabs, their physics engine has been difficult to wrap my head around. Trying to recreate this game in one or the other has been excruciatingly difficult. I've gotten the farthest with Unity, but C# is nowhere near as easy as AS3 for me.

I just want to be able to make and sell a game one day, probably on Steam. Will this be doable with AS3 and Adobe Animate, or any of Adobe's products after flash is gone? People are throwing all kinds of game making software at me, like Godot, but I'm not ready just yet.

[cmgap]

You will encounter many obstacles and naysayers along the way. Keep your focus on getting your project done to the best of your ability with the tools you have in hand. It may not be this project that you sell one day but completing what you started will have immeasurable value. The lessons you will learn along the way will help you with your next project when perhaps you will be ready for a different approach if the technology forces you down another path.

[Ussnorway]

josephw50223730  wrote

people started scaring me away from writing in AS3 and using Animate because of the end of the flash player.

yes a lot of people find the end of Flash to be scaring them... thats why they stay in much longer than they should have but you have good advice in seeing that it is (past) time to move on to something else

to be clear, Flash is dead!

[pziecina]

You could wrap your game as an Adobe Air package, but that would meen any user downloading it as a stand alone game. It would not work in a browser, and although Air does have a following, it is not as widely accepted or recognised as the flash player was, so you may have a problem in user acceptance.

[Nancy OShea]

Watch what other game developers are doing.  As an example, King.com, the maker of CandyCrush has pulled their Flash-based version and replaced it with one that uses HTML5, CSS & JavaScript. 

If you look in the Flash Player User forum, you'll see dozens of posts by people who can't get the latest Flash player to work in their browsers.  Why?  Because the browser makers have disabled the plugin by default. They don't want people using Flash Player for security reasons.  Face it, Flash is dead. 

[Preran · Accepted solution]

The team's vision is to ensure that you can export from Adobe Animate to a variety of modern platforms even after Flash is gone. The process in creating a platform agnostic app is already underway. If you would like to share your suggestions or let the team know of your requirements use the Wishlist form Feature Request/Bug Report Form . I know that the team monitors feedback from the form pretty religiously.

[A_GRADE]

That's awesome! 😃

Do you know when the App you've mentioned will be released?

[Preran]

It's already here. Adobe Animate no longer exports to just Flash Player. You can choose to export an Adobe Animate video in a wide variety of formats.

Preran