How to do cross-platform web and standalone...

Admitedly I'm being a bit lazy searching, and I've eaten too much ice cream, so I'll just ask. I'm looking into doing a game for an audience that is not very tech savy.

I was thinking the best way to get them into the game was to have a demo of the game playable in a web browser, without the need to download anything. Then have a downloadable version they can install if they like it.

What first comes to mind is Flash, since most users have that installed allready, and it can easily do web content. Though I'm a bit unsure of how fast it is (lots of Flash games run slow on my aging iBook) and how well it will work for a standalone full screen application.

Then I thought, I remember someone on the forum talking about a wrapper for putting BlitzMax projects into browsers. Anyone have a link to this?

Are there other options I'm missing (Director or Java maybe), that might be worth looking at.

Ragnar

Flash is probably your best bet.

Flash or Java. From a software engineering standpoint, I'd recommend Java over Flash. Flash has the edge of being designed primarily as a multimedia presentation engine, and games sometimes fit into that mold pretty easily. Flash will also require a bit of time and money investment from you (it's not free and there is a learning curve) Actionscript is a bit like javascript, so it's somewhat familiar to a lot of web developers. However, unless this has changed recently, I believe Flash is currently still an interpreted language.

Java has a lot of advantages. You have Web-start, and can do full-blown cross platform applications that are actually compiled (JIT) at runtime. The stand-alone version you write could actually be a more complete version of the online demo and quite possibly leverage the same code base.

Until recently, game development resources in Java have been relatively thin, but they are getting better as that community recognizes the need to compete with .Net

This is an open-source 2D java game engine.
http://easyway.sourceforge.net/joomla/index.php

I've not used it, so I'm not sure how good it is, but I've got it bookmarked and look in on it from time to time. The demos presented by the author aren't too bad.

Good luck.

They still have to download the demo in the browser, all you're doing different is installing and running it for them automatically.

And.....?

If you want rich content that isn't implemented in HTML and javascript, this is how you have to do it.

Whether you use Flash, ClickOnce, WebStart or IGLoader...

Be aware that neither Flash, Java or Shockwave come installed on Vista.

What about OSA kit?

Plays blitzgames in a browser

It works for windows machines anyway.

Thanks for the tips. I tested out games in both OSAkit and IGLoader. Both worked fine in Internett Exploder, but failed in Opera (maybe because of my high security settings). Both did require me to download a plug-in, which kind of defeats the point, and both are Windows only.

That leaves me with Flash, Java or simply dropping the idea of having a web playable demo. Of course, both Flash and Java need to be downloaded in some cases too, though I guess they are more widespread than OSAkit or IGLoader.

I guess I'll have to look into it a bit further.

For what it's worth (maybe not much <g>), Adobe announced their attempt at cross-platform apps today:

http://it.slashdot.org/it/07/03/19/1832212.shtml

don't count out shockwave. You can get almost as many people as with flash, it is much faster for pixels, and those who don't have it, stand a good chance of mistaking it for a new version of flash, and will gladly download it

ie do you really need it to run INSIDE the browser, why can't you just have them download the file and install it for them?

I thought it would be a good idea to have it in a browser, basically that more none-techie people would try it out if they didn't have to install anything. The idea was to have a browser playable demo, and a download for the full game.

But if it complicates things too much, I'll simply go with a download and an easy to use installer. Flash and Director both look nice, though Flash gets a bit complicated if you want to make it into a full screen standalone application. I've used Director in the past (from VideoWorks to Director 3...hehe), and could use that (though it's a bit expensive).

If I drop the idea of a demo inside the browser, BlitzMax would probably be my first choice. :)

For creating (windows) web based games this looks quite interesting, bit like the love child of Wild Tangent and 3DRad :
http://www.dxstudio.com/

DxStudio is Windows and IE only - hardly cross browser/platform.

...hence the 'windows' in brackets. Still quite an interesting product though.