Notices

Games in flash are a perverse idea. Flash wasn't designed for gaming. Flash designers are graphic artists with no clue about resource usage, since flash hides everything from the developer. This is one reason you see so many (terrible) flash games created by people who couldn't code a 'hello world' program to save their life.

Flash has _terrible_ performance. Scrolling a full screen with a couple of layers can bring a pentium 400 to its knees. Flash was not designed for games.

These unalterable facts make flash games with any significant animation a no-go. Hence, the idea for a flash games centric portal is a no-go, as is this thread.

I just got my N800 last week and love it. I wish there were more games for this device. I think he is on the right pace but, will agree that flash games is not going to win people over. I still have my Tapwave Zodiac2 and for the time it came out it was incredible. Marketing was the death of that device. Only mail order and at CompUSA. Hmmm. That's where I got my N800. Nokia needs to learn from Tapwave's mistakes. Everyone I show my N800 to, fall in love with it and never heard or seen this device before. There were and still are some great developers for the Zodiac and GP2X over at http://www.emuboards.com/invision/
Maybe if we can contact them and see if they would like to develop for N800 and even take donations to get them a N800. If they have the device in there hands they will see the potential and start to develop games and emulators for it. There is a great emulator for the zodiac called Little John and it does NES SNES GBC SMS Genisis and TG16. There is also some great original games made for use of the touchscreen. There is defiantly potential here just need to get more people involved and maybe get the guys at emuboards to add a section for the N800-N770.

I'm going to have to disagree with you on this one. I've been toying around with some ideas for Flash targeted at the tablets, and there's much that can be done with both the d-pad and touchscreen as it relates to games. Sure, there are a lot of Flash games that run slow as molasses (especially on the 770), but there are some games that work just fine. I'll have some demos up soon to show off some input meathods that could work well for Flash games for the nice 800 x 480 screens.

Unless there is some hardware addition for gaming input to replace n770/800 buttons (which are laughable for games) it can't match Zodiac or GP2X for games. I keep my Zodiac 2 for action games, N770 for mouse/touchscreen driven ones. Too bad the buttons are so bad and are only on one side. Let's hope they will learn something when making third device. They did not learn when making n800.

As for hardware addition, there is the bluetooth gamepad but I'm not sure about event latency over bluetooth. Also it cannot be atached to the device easily and having two parts (tablet+gamepad) is not good for mobile gaming.

Let's face reality, chance of persuading Zodiac or GP2X developers is quite low since both devices are better for gaming.

Happy to know someone's working on Flash games for 770/N880. I think Flash is heavy yes, it's not designed for weak cpus yes, but a good developer can squeeze it, and if the game idea is good and the resulting game is playable and enjoyable, why not taking advantage of it?
When resources are poor, developers have to just count on how good the game itself is, not on its gfx/st/sfx, and good ideas come out better. A Nokia 770 running Flash is like a very limited machine with good potential, so it can be a nice platform for game creators to express themself without caring of all the usual stuff which games usually need these days, just focusing on the idea.
If the game has no sound, awful graphics, two colours, aliased lines, etc. 770 users won't care: it just have to give fun, it just have to make the user say "wow, let's have another ride..." :) I can't think the average 770 user wants a fast-pace 3 planes parallax shoot'em up to play on the device, there is GBA for that. The niche to target is different, and the games style to think at is something more "meditative", tricky, mind-capturing...

It's just my opinion, and I must underline that I DO appreciate very much games when they have very good gfx, soundtracks, sfx, etc. I do like fast-pace games, and everything I've said we 770 users have no need of in this message. I am very sensible to graphic art myself, and I'm a pretty capable graphic artist. But nothing's better than a good idea, no bad gfx or anything can change it (and the reverse of course: a bad game idea cannot be improved by wonderful gfx).

And I'm sure there are a lot of creative flash developers out there who could come out with very interesting ideas for 770 and N800, if they could be encouraged with some initiatives.

The limitations of the Flash plugin on the 770 is pretty tricky to work around, but I think as the more powerful devices roll out we'll be able to get more advanced features like sudo-3D environments and characters, along with more complex AI. It all has to start somewhere, and since I'm just learning Flash, simple games and animations are where I'm starting anyways.

I've discovered that even with the limitations of the Flash version in the 770, I can achieve some pretty cool effects that are already inspiring some interesting game ideas. I also think sound is a pretty important part of gaming, and interactive content in general, and I have some ideas of how to handle that as well.

I'll be more than happy to share my knowledge and collaborate with anyone else who also wishes to give Flash for the Internet Tablets a shot. I think the more people working with the platform, the better.

Hey ditto to all your coments, but I think we need to put that nifty little camera in use for gaming, like the eyetoy or something...

I'm not sure flash is the way. There are so many different ways to program games, it won't be one tool that would boost gaming in the NIT platform...

What about gaming in Linux in general? How much important is flash for it?