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Converting a Flash Game to HTML5
The above game was converted from Flash into HTML5. We converted this game in 2016, and at this time the main driver for making this change from Flash to HTML5 was the shift in customer behaviour from mainly using desktop computers to using iPads. In the world of primary education, computer rooms were being closed and money invested in iPads. In order to maintain this game it was necessary to change the content to HTML5. Today, there is an even more urgent need.
The problem with your content in Flash
Many years ago we started developing games for the Flash Player plugin, but now as you are probably aware, Flash player has fallen out of favour with the digital world. In fact, Adobe, the owner of Flash Player has now announced that they will be withdrawing support for Flash Player in 2020.
This will mean no more updates including security patches and the knock-on effect will be that the main browsers will drop Flash as a plugin quicker than you can say ‘Bob’s your Uncle’ which will mean that content in Flash will no longer be available to your audiences. That process is already starting; Chrome is forecast, in 2018, to ask its users to explicitly give permission for Flash to be used. Depending on how easy this is to do, your regular flash game players will likely drift away to find something else to play.
HTML5 game developers to the rescue
There are thousands of games playing in Flash Player everyday and so the race is on for game developers to convert flash content into a browser-friendly format. The format to convert to is HTML5 which uses the canvas tag to create experiences very similar to content playing in Flash Player. As HTML5 game developers we are able to convert your simple 2D games from Flash into HTML5.
Helping to convert your Flash games into HTML5 games
We’re very familiar with the Flash platform, we’ve been developing content in it since 2005. When converting your content into HTML5 games then we go through a structured process to ensure that you are 100% satisfied with our work. We would include the following stages to support this process.
Review and Revamp - Some games in Flash are quite old and therefore could do with a review and revamp. We’ll discuss this with you and see if we can take this opportunity to make changes that you have been wanting to make. For example with the above flash based game, we took the opportunity to add extra and more quirky sound effects which added extra value to the game.
Managing the game assets - Depending on the complexity of your game we take care in closely examining how characters and other assets are built within Flash. It is common to see movieclips nested within movieclips and sometimes this can cause a problem when clips are exported to spritesheets (the standard for animation for HTML5 games) - we like to check this and simplify the process where we can.
Minimizing download time - throughout the process of moving your flash content to HTML5 we are constantly looking at the size of files. As a vector-based drawing programme, Flash was actually very good at keeping complex animations to a small file-size. As game developers we want to ensure that your new HTML5 game is quick to download. On this basis, we may make recommendations to minimize download times. For example with the game above, we decided that it didn’t need as many screens as it originally had when we first built it. The extra images would have caused the game to load more slowly and therefore it wasn’t going to be a good and viable option.
Resizing for different screens - as part of the conversion from Flash to HTML5 we will also support the resizing of the game across different screens to ensure that players are playing the most appropriate size of game for their screen. We’ll also discuss with you options for retina / high definition screens.
Preserving your link equity - often games have many links pointing to them and this supports the ranking of your game within Google and the other search engines. Whenever, we are involved with your flash content, we’ll support you with ensuring that even though the flash content has changed the link equity remains with the page that it is embedded in. The above game has more than 4,500 inbound links to it, quite significant link equity and any modifications to the web page needs to be carefully considered as it could affect its ranking in the search engine results pages which would be a disaster.
If you require simple 2D Flash games converted into HTML5 then we’d love to hear from you. We’re based in Falmouth, Cornwall but we are happy to work with you wherever you may be. Contact us on the details below.
By: Tim Bowerbank
Role: HTML5 Game Developer