Flash + Android slow performance? Is blitting the only way?

Hi everyone,

I’ve started playing around with developing apps/games for Android using Flash CS5 .5 (export AIR for Android).. Tried a few simple apps and no problem. Then I tried converting one of my games http://activeden.net/item/collect-the-falling-apples-game/124994 to be played on an Android mobile device. It all works but it is amazingly slow and lags so much it’s unplayable. I’ve researched it a bit and viewed the tutorials on gotoandlearn.com about Flash and Android and blitting. Seems like blitting is really the way to go for performance heavy games on Android. But is it really the only way? Can Android simply not handle a Flash AS3 non-blitted game? Wanted to know what the developers around here that have ventured into Flash games for mobile devices think/know.

Thanks, CK

Hello, Try to use vector instead of bitmap files and make as lightweight as you can! Also did you try it on other devices maybe the phone CPU is not very good.

For games and visuals, no matter the platform, blitting is always the way to go if you want best flash performances .

Circ is an AIR mobile app that doesn’t use blitting. There are many resources on optimizing flash mobile content, check out these articles from adobe:

As bitfade recommends for game it’s best to use blitting to boost performance.

xPhantom said
Hello, Try to use vector instead of bitmap files and make as lightweight as you can! Also did you try it on other devices maybe the phone CPU is not very good.

Vector is slow and definitely no-go for AIR mobile, use bitmap as much as you can.

RimV said

xPhantom said
Hello, Try to use vector instead of bitmap files and make as lightweight as you can! Also did you try it on other devices maybe the phone CPU is not very good.

Vector is slow and definitely no-go for AIR mobile, use bitmap as much as you can.

yeah sorry my mistake.

RimV said

xPhantom said
Hello, Try to use vector instead of bitmap files and make as lightweight as you can! Also did you try it on other devices maybe the phone CPU is not very good.

Vector is slow and definitely no-go for AIR mobile, use bitmap as much as you can.

+1!!!

Hi,

my experience with blitting on Android is a “no go”. It seems so on the present AIR 2 .6 pixel operations are disastrous just like using vector assets. I tried to get Majid Abdul’s “Caverun Game” to run on my Nexus S1 with using blitting and it was even slower than without blitting. As well I tried to draw in my maze puzzle the path with Graphics.line and a bitmap pattern… OMG the whole thing was unplayable after this.

Devarai

Devarai said
Hi,

my experience with blitting on Android is a “no go”. It seems so on the present AIR 2 .6 pixel operations are disastrous just like using vector assets. I tried to get Majid Abdul’s “Caverun Game” to run on my Nexus S1 with using blitting and it was even slower than without blitting. As well I tried to draw in my maze puzzle the path with Graphics.line and a bitmap pattern… OMG the whole thing was unplayable after this.

Devarai

Make sure you set render mode to “gpu”. Bitmap blitting only makes sense in gpu mode. Also if you have to use lot of vector “cpu” is the only right mode.

Switching to “gpu” mode means mostly to get back to the basics and sacrifice most of the cool things that makes AIR a mature development platform like filters and things. If I switch to GPU mode most of my apps don’t work correctly any more and have many inconsistences on the screen. It is like “gpu”/”cpu” are two different worlds. It would be much nicer to have one world with everything put together and that is accelerated by hardware as much as possible. Concerning the “CaveRun” game: I was not able to convert it to a true GPU mode game because in some places vectors are necessary and colorTransforms and filters are used….