perhaps some of our influence?

[LadyWizard]

When did that go up?  I swear I was just on there questing and flipping my training skill... seems it's only a tiny link on the front page not on the okay skill's done choose your poison page.  right now at 245% training effort I'm LadyWizard over there.  Only signed up a month ago and never did find what we spend credits on or where half the keys I have go

[pewlagon]

Just wow! That was heartfelt and warm. Definitely, how things should be handled. Acknowledging your player base is key.

[chasearcanum]

With hindsight, developing on Flash was a mistake, it locked them out of much of the mobile/tablet market which would have been a good fit for the game.

Edit:

avelworldcreator seems better placed to state the reason than I but I cba to change my post :p

Yeah, but look how quickly the industry's changed there.

 The IPad's been out for less than 3 years.  At the time it was released, Flash was on 97% of all browsers, was the basis for virtually all casual games online (yahoo games, kongregate, etc), online multimedia training, and the bulk of all web video.  Heck, its ubiquity had led it to be used more often than java applets for programmability functions like upload managers, web-based file browsers, and the like.  Browsers had only started getting their javascript engines performing at a rate that made html-5 game programming seem an option (albiet a distant one), and there were no good development tools for such a thing that could compare with the ease of authoring in Flash.  To top it off, Flash had a sizable base of developers that were fluent in that interface.   

Even over the first year of its release, the iPad's greatest weakness was often cited as its lack of Flash.  It was widely believed that Adobe would eventually tackle the barrier and be as dominant there as it was on the PC.

if you were going to start development of a browser-based online game at that time, there was really no safer bet than Flash.

Unfortunately, safe bets still lose on occasion.

[dwturducken]

That was actually a security decision on Apple's part. The ubiquity of Flash has made it a target for virus programmers, much as Windows' ubiquity has made it a target. HTML5 was seen as a "safer" replacement, so Apple took the chance that Flash was on its way out. While this hasn't really come about, it hasn't been a long-term failure for the iPad or Apple. I haven't used OSX newer than 10.6, but my recollection is that Flash would be excluded from "future" versions of the OS, as well.

(Please excuse any inaccuracies; I'm working from memory, here.)

[avelworldcreator]

When did that go up?  I swear I was just on there questing and flipping my training skill... seems it's only a tiny link on the front page not on the okay skill's done choose your poison page.  right now at 245% training effort I'm LadyWizard over there.  Only signed up a month ago and never did find what we spend credits on or where half the keys I have go

I have friended you on Glitch. On November 30th we have an end of the world party, and on Dec. 8-9 we have another. Too bad both games are blocking new members now. I think both sides need to mourn together.

[Segev]

I know I would have given a free account on Glitch a try in its last days; unlike CoH, it probably wouldn't freeze my poor outdated laptop when I tried to exit.

I still wonder about the technical limitations of building a flash emulator into an ap. A browser-based game just screams for porting to mobile market, and if flash is the only bottleneck, I feel so much worse for them when their business concept was within spitting distance of what they seem to think a true success would have been.

[avelworldcreator]

The conversion to HTML5 was being closely examined. Unfortunately that technology isn't yet mature enough for what they were doing. Well, technically they might have been able to do it through Java rather than Javascript but that would have taken a lot of code rewrite, conversion, testing, and debugging that they simply could not afford.  If they could have held on profitably enough for about another year or so, they could have pulled it off, but the circumstances worked against them.

It would be interesting if they would allow an outside group to examine and tinker with the code to make it more modern and viable commercially. It's worth asking. It's not within any realistic range for Plan Z or KCG at the moment, but there might be hope elsewhere.

[Segev]

Well, that's the reason I keep wondering if putting an ap together that has a virtual Flash engine on it to encapsulate and run their existing browser code - modified for mobile controls - would be possible.

I honestly don't know how difficult that would be.

ARE there mobile devices that support Flash?

[avelworldcreator]

Well, that's the reason I keep wondering if putting an ap together that has a virtual Flash engine on it to encapsulate and run their existing browser code - modified for mobile controls - would be possible.

I honestly don't know how difficult that would be.

ARE there mobile devices that support Flash?

Yes. Android and Windows devices do.

Screen size is probably the other issue. It needs to be tablet sized. That's now more common, but not when Glitch started. The window is there, they just don't have the funds.

[Segev]

Then it's a question of what funds they'd need...

Man, I really want to talk directly with their business planners/team/etc.

I can't stop thinking there's hope for them or their game if we can help them just reach hard enough.

I say that recognizing that they probably HAVE wracked their brains and thought of everything they could, but I really would love to know what "everything they could" encapsulated and what obstacles made each option unviable. Costs vs. expected increased profits vs. other considerations...

I'm just going to have to try to get in touch with them tonight at some point. I won't be back at my apartment until latish, though, sadly, and I have a very early morning tomorrow to catch a plane.

[avelworldcreator]

Then it's a question of what funds they'd need...

Man, I really want to talk directly with their business planners/team/etc.

I can't stop thinking there's hope for them or their game if we can help them just reach hard enough.

I say that recognizing that they probably HAVE wracked their brains and thought of everything they could, but I really would love to know what "everything they could" encapsulated and what obstacles made each option unviable. Costs vs. expected increased profits vs. other considerations...

I'm just going to have to try to get in touch with them tonight at some point. I won't be back at my apartment until latish, though, sadly, and I have a very early morning tomorrow to catch a plane.

There web page is mostly blank now. I'm keeping an eye out for one of the staff and I'll drop a note. I have an idea but it's long term.

[LadyWizard]

Actually I have a current Nexus 7 Jelly Bean and no flash support.

[Thunder Glove]

I always feel bad when I read about a game going down or being canceled.  (CoH isn't the only one I felt bad about, not by a longshot; it's just the only one I was literally logged into at the time)

I hadn't played Glitch, but the head developer of Kingdom of Loathing talked about it on their weekly radio show back when Glitch was in beta, and I wanted to try it, but the beta at the time was closed, and I forgot about it after that.

Now I'm sorry I won't get a chance to play it.   Maybe if their next games do well and the company gets large enough, they can afford to bring it back.

[chasearcanum]

Actually I have a current Nexus 7 Jelly Bean and no flash support.

Yeah, Adobe has basically decided not to do Flash for new mobile devices anymore.

A big problem with Flash was its own overreach.  They wanted  it to be more than a multiplatform multimedia/game platform.  They wanted it to be a full app development platform- you could do videoconferencing through it, share files through it, do anything you do with applications on the desktop, essentially.   It also wasn't efficient-- not a problem on a plugged-in PC, but even laptop users noticed well before Mobile how quickly using flash unplugged drained their battery (as if the wireless wasn't a drain enough.)

So, in very little time, flash developed interfaces to videocameras and microphones and the localfilesystem and some of us that developed in it started to wonder if we could (for example) access any file in the filesystem and upload it to wherever we'd like... and we could...  Could we unwittingly turn in the mic and stream it? yep. Could we hide flash in an off-screen window, hidden to the user, and have their entire screen activity, video, and audio stream to wherever we'd like? Done.  Adobe patched a ton of this, so don't panic and run to uninstall it, but since each of these had a legitimate purpose too, each patch had to keep the functionality while putting some sort of barrier in place to prevent the abuse.  People would figure out what the barrier was, figure out how to get around it, and another barrier was put in place.  It was starting to get reasonably secure near the end, but all these patches added to the platform's bugginess.

By the time Apple's security decision came out, flash wasn't the security hole they made it out to be, but it had enough of a reputation there that Apple was able to make it stick.   It was still inefficient, and using it would quickly drain a mobile device's battery (and overheat the device) so Apple had a legitimate grouse there.  The biggest threat to apple was its versatility, though.  Anyone could develop anything for flash to do exactly what an app would do and then bypass apple's store completely.  They point fingers elsewhere, but that is one of the core concerns they had.

Adobe still developed for Android, and there was a lot of hype given to that.  It DID still drain batteries like crazy, but I could go to Kongregate and play flash games on it rather well.  There, the problem was that to get full flash functionality on these mobile devices, it needed to be developed for each system to account for those systems' different hardware and proprietary drivers.  It just wasn't feasible to keep up, so they declared that they'd not make flash for any new Android devices earlier this year.

[Twisted Toon]

I played Glitch back when it was in Beta.

I can say, with some confidence, that their shutdown message isn't stated the way it is due to our influence.  Tiny Speck's always been simple and honest with its playerbase; they're as emotionally invested in their game as much as any player.  They're not the kind of dispassionate IP-squatter that NCsoft is.

When they say they're heartbroken over it, I believe 'em.

[sings]There's Humbaba, and Friendly, Alph, Tii, Zille, Lem, Grendaline and Spriggan, Cosma, Pot, and Maaaaaab~[/sings]

I think they named that game perfectly...

Playing the trailer for that game caused my computer to glitch and I had to reboot. 

I guess it had to happen to somebody. But why me and not Ironik? 

[avelworldcreator]

That was the alpha trailer that used to be on their (now blank  ) home page.

[avelworldcreator]

I did the death watch to the end of Glitch tonight. We overloaded the server so much it shut down about a minute early. That's two in less than 2 weeks and two studios gone. Over 140 people out of their jobs of years

[TonyV]

I did the death watch to the end of Glitch tonight. We overloaded the server so much it shut down about a minute early. That's two in less than 2 weeks and two studios gone. Over 140 people out of their jobs of years

Dude...  PLEASE tell any friends or devs you know over there that our heart goes out to them, and I hope that Glitch may live again someday.

[avelworldcreator]

Dude...  PLEASE tell any friends or devs you know over there that our heart goes out to them, and I hope that Glitch may live again someday.

I am. In fact, just like with CoH, they are coming together. Even have an offer of server space. They may even talk about linking into the Phoenix Project as their own group and such. Same fundamental goal as we have.  I've offered to help them with the little bit of time I can spare helping them get off the ground.