Optimizing Adobe AIR Games for Mobile GPUs: 7 Simple Rules

For the last month or so, your friends at Milkman headquarters have been working away on porting Aqualux to the BlackBerry Playbook. The Playbook has an integrated Adobe AIR runtime, which means you can develop native apps for it using Actionscript 3.

Frankly, we're impressed. AIR runs on a number of other mobile systems- like Android and iOS, but on the Playbook it's hooked into the operating system on a deep level. Native AS3 APIs let you access in-app purchases, system state, and native GUI directly. On to of that, the device has a pretty beefy GPU and a dual core processor, so there's a lot of head room to create some very performant games using Flash.

Aqualux runs buttery smooth at 30 FPS on the Playbook- so let's explore some of the techniques for optimizing AIR games for phones and tablets.