Announcing Native iOS Game Center for Adobe AIR!
We just released our Google AdMob Android Extension for Adobe AIR, but we're not stopping there. Milkman Games is dedicated to bringing all the best native features to your mobile Flash / AIR games, and up next is our latest Extension: Game Center Leaderboards and Achievements for Adobe AIR!
iOS is the biggest mobile gaming platform on the planet, and you can now bring the great social features of Game Center leaderboards and achievements right into your Flash / AIR app! Some top-tier developers are already hard at work integrating this extension into their games, and we can't wait to make a public announcement soon. In the meantime, you can start integrating Game Center into your ActionScript 3 app right now:
- Fast, easy to use, and well documented
- Show the native iOS Leaderboards and Achievements panels in your Flash game
- Complete sample application, as3 docs, and getting started guide included
- Step by Step illustrated tutorial shows you how to register your Game Center game on the Apple Developer Portal
- Supports iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch
- Full suite of events for fine control over your application flow
And quite a bit more. The MMG Game Center Extension for AIR 3 / Flash is available now for $69.99, and comes with full documentation, quick start guide, sample app, and one year of e-mail support. Learn more and pick it up now in the Tools section.
Announcing Native Android AdMob for Adobe AIR!
Milkman Games is very pleased to announce our newest extension for Adobe AIR 3.0: Native support for AdMob on Android! Monetizing apps on any mobile platform can be a challenge- but it's about to get a lot easier for Flash/AIR developers targeting Android. AdMob offers best in breed mobile ads for Android, and you can now display native ads in your AIR applications with just 2 lines of code.
We've put this extension through the paces with a production app - the new ad-supported/free Android edition of Aqualux, available here. The MMG AdMob Android Extension is extremely simple to use, while supporting all the key features you need to begin monetizing your games and apps straight away:
- Fast and easy setup
- Support for test ads during development
- Easy placement and alignment, automatic handling of stage rotation
- Create, destroy, hide, and show ads at any point in your app
- Events and logging for ad state (ad loaded, failed to load, link clicked, etc.)
And quite a bit more. The MMG AdMob Extension for AIR 3.0 is available now for $29.99, and comes with full documentation, quick start guide, sample app, and one year of e-mail support. Learn more and pick it up now in the Tools section.
Developing Android Extensions for AIR 3: A Beginner’s Guide
Adobe AIR is a powerful platform, and its use on the BlackBerry PlayBook made deploying Aqualux there a painless and productive effort. For me, the choice to use AIR to translate my game on to mobile was informed by two major advantages; first, the relative ease of taking a fairly complex codebase already written in Actionscript 3, and quickly moving it on to other devices; and second, the advantages of working in an environment where 90% of implementation details of cross-platform development- rendering, I/O, networking, and sound- have already been handled. For that other 10%- platform specific features, like in-app purchases, DRM, and other OS-level specifics- you can now write and deploy native code inside your application with the Native Extensions features in AIR 3.
In this article, I'll be covering the process of building an AIR Native Extension for Android, step by step. If you're familiar with Java and/or Android, this is surprisingly simple. If you're not, don't worry- Actionscript 3 borrows a lot of syntax and features from Java, and if you know the former you'll have no problem reading and understanding the latter.
Announcing Nook Color Native Extension for AIR 3
This thing's pretty sweet.
Adobe has officially announced AIR 3, and Flash Player 11. Flash 11 has some very slick 3D stuff to offer (I suspect we're going to see some very high profile games start to show up in the browser later this year), but it's AIR 3 that's really exciting for Flash mobile developers. Adobe's done on a great job of picking up the performance across devices, as well as adding some key features that are closing the gap between platform-specific/native mobile development and AIR, specifically, captive runtime for mobile, and native extensions.
Currently, we're working with a partner on bringing some Actionscript 3 content on the Nook Color. The Nook is a great Android-based tablet, and it has a built-in AIR 2.6 runtime. With the release of AIR 3, the power of Captive Runtime and Native Extensions enable access to platform-specific features of the Nook via AIR apps.
Today, we're releasing an extension called NookColorTools. It's free, and it gives you a very simple AS3 API to the Nook SDK. AIR 3 isn't in its final release yet, but you can download the release candidate here right now and start experimenting. Grab NookColorTools v1 here, and checkout the readme file for instructions; there's also an example project to get you started. One feature for now- launching a product page on the Nook Color shop. This is a powerful feature to have for cross promoting your apps with a 'more games' button in the like. We'll be adding more features shortly.
Milkman Games will also be producing a selection of high quality AIR extensions for iOS and Android in the next few weeks- Game Center, in App Purchase, Android Intents, and all sorts of other goodies. To stay up to date, follow @milkmangames on Twitter!
Milkman Games just got indie-er…
The reason I can't ride a bike.
Twenty years ago, I brought home Basic Programming for Kids from the local public library, and started spending a lot more of my time on my family's VTech Laser 128 and a lot less playing outside with the other kids. For those who know me and marvel at why a 28-year-old man doesn't know how to ride a bicycle, you can now place the blame on Roz Ault.
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.