Flash Support is going away and RotMG should port to HTML5

#2

DECA has some amount of brains, they obviously know about this and will consider their options.

#3

Pretty sure they could make a standalone flash client? Kinda like the new runescape uses. Still 3 years before 2020 though.

#4

DECA has some amount of brains

#5

They anticipated this, lets hope they choose a quality platform to move it to.

#6

Well, it has been talked about a couple of times,


To be fair, they are both closed, so I like this thread being open.

#7

sure it’ll last another 2 years?

#8

I’m sure this has been a regular topic of conversation, among the developers of the game, whoever they are at any particular time. Does ROTMG get rewritten and if so using what language/platform? All that’s changed is there’s now a deadline. Options include:

  • Do nothing, and rely on the player base adopting workarounds (Flash projector, out of date browsers) to continue playing. Probably not a long term strategy
  • Port it to Adobe AIR. This is Adobe’s platform for desktop + mobile apps, and could use the same codebase, though with some rewriting. This would create a downloadable, standalone, cross platform app. Probably worth trying to see how well it works.
  • Port it to another language. In theory the best solution, leaving Flash behind altogether, but a massive amount of work and far riskier as the game could turn out worse in all sorts of ways
  • Retire the game. It’s a quintessentially Flash game, an excellent showcase of Flash’s strengths. Maybe there is no way for it to exist after 2020 in this form.
#9

This is scary… i don’t want this too happen.

Also rewriting it would be the best idea, and it wouldn’t be too difficult because they will only need to rewrite the client and keep the same code for the server.

#10

There are many risks for this though. Maybe the game is not quite the same and players are not interested. Maybe the new code has many bugs, takes months to get working reliably, again losing players in the interim. There will almost certainly be new exploits and hacks as the usual suspects look to take advantage of the game and players.

Inevitably the months, even years, spent building a new client is time spent not making the core game better, so players lose interest.

And perhaps unavoidably you lose Flash’s great strength, that anyone can play it with only a browser. Many people do not want to download a standalone client app. They may have security/privacy concerns. They may not have the rights to download an app, or a work/school computer. They may find it too challenging.

In theory HTML5/Javascript is a browser-based alternative, but it has many issues, not least the high degree of variability between different browsers and browser versions. It is also a security nightmare, compared even to Flash, as you can view the code, step through it with a web browser, download it, modify it easily.

#11

There’s just using another browser and there’s also a way to download a stand alone client. However that may be against ToS…

#12

Considering the Steam client runs on AIR, this is the most likely short-term solution. I think Deca had mentioned in the past that a re-write is one of the options they’re considering, through I’m doubtful HTML5 would be used. HTML5 only supports websockets, not TCP like Flash & RotMG uses, so that’s a big hurdle to cross. Older comparisons have shown HTML5 is far slower than Flash when rendering graphics, though that may have changed since I last looked.

#13

2 posts were split to a new topic: Flash support disappeared?

#14

Everyone talks about the game being down well they work on putting it into a new code language. I mean can’t they still keep the game running well they work on remaking realms code

#15

Step 1: tell Kabam about this

Step 2: buy game from kabam for much cheaper because they realized their free money will soon go away

Step 3: give all players free things until everyone likes you, then create a lot of new dungeons so that people pay for keys/ boxes

Step 4: once you have squeezed all the money you can from the game, leave it alone and watch it die in 2020

#16

It’s Realm of the Mad God. The client isn’t a fucking operating system.
If they use an engine like Unity they would be able to set it up in a couple of weeks and it will be compatible with most platforms (just figuring out how to make the controls work on mobile would take a couple of years tho).

edit: ffs i will do it if they pay me, just it may take a few months (~2 - 3) because i am alone.

#17

They write in the Reddit AMA that they have been prototyping in Unity. But ‘a couple of weeks’ ? If it only takes a couple of weeks to write a client from scratch then why have they not done it with the Flash client, i.e. wrote a new version from scratch? Surely if it were that easy then they would have rewritten the game long ago, eliminating bugs and adding features like object IDs that need to be built in from the start.

Using Unity is perhaps not as disruptive as porting everything to C++, but there’s still plenty of scope for it to go wrong as I described. Perhaps the biggest issue is Unity died as a plugin years ago – Flash only survived as it was impossible to kill. So a Unity client will be a standalone app, which has to be downloaded and installed, which will put off many people.

It could be ported to mobile but they could do that now, relatively easily with Adobe Air. Hard to see how the controls would work though. Maybe it could work with a gamepad on tvOS.

#18

Unity is very flexible. It can export as HTML5.

#19

Can’t see them exporting to HTML5/JS, for two reasons.

First performance and consistent experience. Not only would a HTML5 version perform differently from a standalone Unity app, but HTML5 performance varies between platforms and browsers, sometimes very widely. Different browsers have different issues and bugs, often quite subtle ones.

Second security. Nothing is perfectly secure – certainly Flash isn’t. But Javascript is a whole different level of insecurity. The source code is downloaded to a user’s computer, so they can examine it for flaws and exploits. With the debug tools built into browsers anyone can modify the code and variables on the fly. The code can be patched on the fly, including by extensions that can be packaged and distributed for non-technical users.

HTML5 was seen by many in the casual game industry as the natural replacement for Flash, being modern, actively developed by companies while Flash has somewhat stalled, and cross platform on mobile and desktop. But it never happened, partly for the reasons above.

Instead standalone apps have seen a renaissance, with internet distribution, especially via app stores like Apple’s or Steam. ROTMG if it’s ported to Unity can take advantage of the same distribution channels – Steam in particular as they are already on there.

#20

Yeah, and i could play RotMG on Linux again.

#21

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