Myself, along with probably every other developer and Android site, got an email today inviting us to join in on the Adobe Air pre-release. I’ve taken a bit of time to look through everything and I have to say it is pretty impressive, of course speaking in a strictly gaming aspect. When signed in to the pre-release program you have access to the beta Air 2.5 SDK with Android support.
Without getting too deep into the technical aspects of Air and Android there is a lot of information to be gained just from reading the front page of the project. The quick and dirty explanation about Abode Air is this, Adobe Air allows developers to publish ActionScript 3 projects as applications for Android (.apk files). You can use currently existing projects from the web that you’ve made and convert it into a install for Android devices.
So not only will Flash gaming be available via the Android browser but now we should start seeing games being packaged right up and offered on the Android market. Here is an excerpt from the description on the front of the Adobe Air project site:
Developers can write new code or reuse existing web content to build AIR applications for the Android OS. Because the source code and assets are reusable across the Flash Platform runtimes, Adobe AIR and Flash Player, it also gives developers a way to more easily target other mobile and desktop environments.
“It took about four days for us to make the AIR Android version, and 1/2 of those days were spent getting up to speed with the Android tools.
“Code reuse? You bet. Both the desktop and mobile clients use the same interfaces and api calls to interact with server-side infrastructure (which includes our web services platform and our FMS 3.5 servers).
“Two different clients and one server interface; we love AIR!”
– Bruce Hopkins, chief architect for BlogRadio
Another nice item that is available aside from the Air 2.5 SDK is the FroYo emulator they are providing developers. However diving through the FAQ shows both support for Android 2.1 and 2.2 which will make a lot of people happy.
List of Features currently being worked on:
- Android Permissions
- H.264 and AAC hardware decoding on Android 2.2 (FroYo)
- Camera (still pictures & Video)
- Reading from Media Library
- Microphone
- Native WebView (allows developers to embed HTML content inside mobile AIR applications using the native web browser provided by the platform)
- Unique identifier the device
There are a lot of possibilities with Air coming to Android, it is very exciting to see such a strong commitment by Adobe and judging by the setup I don’t see a whole lot of performance issues coming from this since it will be installed right onto your Android device.
And now for what you’ve all been waiting for I’m sure. Here is the list of examples of games running on Android using Air.
- BaoZi Jump! (Blog | Video)
- Chroma Circuit (Blog | Video)
- Fruit Smash Organic (Blog | Video)
- Happy Peg (Blog | Video)
- Mahjong (Blog | Video)
- Mingoville Sudoku (Blog | Video)
- MoaiMawashi (Blog | Video)
- Pop Pies (Blog | Video)
- Qrossfire (Blog | Video)
- Slots O’Luck (Blog | Video)
- Tik Tak Zoo (Blog | Video)
- World Geography Hangman (Blog | Video)
- Gold Strike (Blog | Video)
There are a lot more examples on the Air project site for other things such as Instructional apps and Entertainment apps but we deal with gaming so I am only posting those. So now that you have more information about Adobe Air, are we excited yet? I’ll be able to keep tabs on everything as well now that I’m apart of the project so if you have any questions or want to know anything, let me know in the comments although you should be able to sign up for it here.
