Is AIR still a good option?

[jamesgeiger]

I want to develop a 3D game and want to use ActionScript 3 and Adobe AIR - is this a good idea? I love Adobe and prefer to stick with it. I know JavaScript pretty well so I think I can pick up ActionScript 3.

That being said, what happens when Flash is end of life in 2020 - will you remove all of the flash references from ActionScript and will AIR still work? e.g. will it just be HTML/ActionScript/AJAX at that point?

[rewb0rn]

Hi there,

Adobe confirmed that they will continue to develop Adobe AIR beyond 2020 and that the end of Flash will not include AIR. So yes, if you know your way around AS3 and you are happy with it, AIR is definitely still an option for the future.

Happy coding!

[davidrenelt]

You should consider that you might want to publish your Game on Consoles at some point. In that case Unity is the better option. Overall, from a Business standpoint it becomes increasingly hard to find developers for AS3/AIR and increasingly easier for Unity. So imagine your Game being a hit and you rapidly want to develop it further for as many platforms as you can, AIR is not a great option.

If your target is just iOS and Android, this might not be an issue for you.

I'm not a huge fan of Unity, but it has a lot of momentum which AIR lacks and is unlikely to regain.

[Douglas McCarroll]

Opinions differ. I suggest that you read the "AIR Roadmap Update" thread on this forum.

[ASWC]

One thing to start: AIR is not an option for the web.

Other than that AIR is still today a fairly good option for 3D games especially for Ios and Android but also for Desktop and that's about as far as it goes.

The language (AS3) is a good language to learn especially if you are seeking more experience in OOP languages, knowing AS3 will make it easier to jump to other C based languages without much problem.

The situation with Flash (not AIR) doesn't involve Flash stopping working at any point. It involves Flash being blocked more and more by browsers (already the case today). If you publish a Flash game, it can run on the web for the next 20 years (maybe) but it might be blocked by most browsers especially since Flash won't be updated (security risk) after 2020. So nothing will stop working after 2020, Flash will just slowly die out (it already started).

AIR is free so that's a good point for using it and there's at least one still supported (at least last I heard) AS3 3D framework out there (Away3D). Other options are:

- Unity (their pricing scheme is better now and more accessible to indie developers but it's still pretty expensive)

- WebGL, Free! Only needs notepad to write, good, especially using typescript and node.js, community and frameworks are plenty and very dynamic. The technology is improving fairly fast but it's still far behind most technology out there. Advantage: can run anywhere and even be compiled as Ios and Android, disadvantage: slower performance

- Xamarin, free but works only for Ios and Android

- others (less known or less common) ...