Back in February, Adobe published a white paper that outlined the future of Flash Player. The company said that it would be refocusing its efforts on gaming and Web video after discontinuing work on the mobile version for Android. Almost 10 months later, Adobe has made good on that promise by introducing game development tools into Creative Cloud.
Creative Cloud, the subscription-based collection of premium Adobe products, has been around for a while now. It includes the likes of Photoshop and more developer friendly software like Edge, but now it includes game developer software like Adobe Scout.
What’s Adobe Scout? The company says it’s an “advanced next-generation profiling tool that uncovers granular information in ActionScript-based mobile and browser content to unlock significant performance optimization opportunities. For more information, check out Adobe’s video breakdown:
Adobe will be including the first release of Scout in the free Creative Cloud membership as a special promotion. The free membership also includes the Adobe Gaming SDK, Adobe Flash C++ Compiler, and trial versions of Flash Professional CS6 and Flash Builder 4.7 Premium.
As for paid membership, you’ll get the full versions of Flash Professional and Flash Builder plus future versions of Scout. There’s also the little perk of getting access to all of CS6 and Edge Tools as well. Photoshop would definitely be useful in game design, especially those who are creating textures or vibrant 2D games.
It should also be noted that Flash now supports Unreal Engine 3 and Unity 4. That’s as good of a reason as any to start bringing your games to desktop players around the world.