OpenFL for Home Game Consoles

larsiusprime 2015-06-03 17:47:15 UTC #1

How we got Haxe/OpenFL to run on game consoles like the WiiU and XBox.

This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at http://www.fortressofdoors.com/openfl-for-home-game-consoles/

larsiusprime 2015-06-04 19:20:49 UTC #2

Do let me know if anyone has questions. I'm happy to answer them!

Chlorodatafile 2015-06-04 22:17:07 UTC #3

It's impressive ! And it will be available to everybody ? It's hard to belive because it's so incredible and exciting !

B_Galliart 2015-06-05 04:57:41 UTC #4

Valve has been pushing to get more games on Linux but of the three funding partners, Yummy Circus is the only one that currently listed as running on Linux. So, while everything about the presentation is interesting/cool, what really caught my eye was: "you can do 'lime build linux' ..." Also, you stated in the QA part of the talk that OpenFL supports Linux.

So as part of step 2, will you be accepting beta testers to test OpenFL flavors of either Defender's Quest or Paper, Please? Or, more importantly, is there a way for Linux users that already have payed for either of these game to sign up to beta test them on Linux?

Lastly, is the OpenFL support for Firefox OS and HTML5 at all based around Mozilla's asm.js? Is there ever any use of emscripten?

larsiusprime 2015-06-05 13:46:42 UTC #5

The original Defender's Quest I (written in AS3) runs on Linux, albeit via Adobe AIR, is it not listed as such on Steam? (If so it might be because it runs on regular flavors of Linux, but has issues installing on SteamOS due to a giant headache list I won't get it into at the moment, but suffice it to say I'm tired of Adobe AIR).

When we roll out the HD upgrade of Defender's Quest I (written in Haxe/OpenFL) we'll definitely be putting out a proper native Linux and SteamOS release.

And yeah I wouldn't mind a proper linux tester or two! For Papers Please you'd have to contact Lucas Pope and see what his plans are for that, I'm not sure if he has any.

As for OpenFL's FirefoxOS/HTML5, you should talk to Joshua Granick (@singmajesty on twitter, @jgranick on github) over at OpenFL.org about that. For regular HTML5, OpenFL uses haxe code that compiles to JS, and it has three separate rendering modes depending on the author's needs - DOM, CANVAS, or WebGL. I'm not sure to what degree it uses asm.js or emscripten.

larsiusprime 2015-06-05 18:50:10 UTC #6

So that's "Phase 2." There will be some terms people will have to agree to (you can't develop on a console unless you are signed up with that console's owner, like Nintendo, MS, Sony, etc), blah blah, but as long as you can agree to the terms and whatever maintenance cost there is, the idea is we would like to make it available to you. We can't officially promise that of course, until we have approval as official 3rd party middleware from the various console owners. That's one of the things we're working on right now.

B_Galliart 2015-06-06 06:30:19 UTC #9

Both Defender's Quest I and Papers Please are listed as for Linux on Steam. I am sorry about the incorrect statement before. Previously, the Steam Store used the Linux Tux penguin logo to indicate Linux support. Now they use a Steam logo (I guess to mean SteamOS) instead. I assumed the Steam logo was part of the Steam Play logo.

Personally, I don't care if a game is native or uses a runtime system. I still have fun with games that run via DOSbox or WINE. However, I am still glad to here there will be an alternative to using Adobe AIR given that AIR for Linux was discontinued in 2011 with AIR v2.6 (they are now up to AIR v17 which can't run on Linux).

larsiusprime 2015-06-06 18:14:55 UTC #10

Ah, whew. Yeah it is a SUPER pain to get AIR to run on linux. We personally use a custom install script that does all sort of black magic to force it to run correctly on 90% of systems but we still get lots of support requests for it. Can't wait to leave that behind for good.