Author Topic: My new pet project : makes flash games more like desktop games (Read 71124 times)

ecaradec · « **on:** May 06, 2010, 02:29 AM »

I rewrote most of the post since the project evolved :

SwiffOut my new pet project allows to play flash games fullscreen. It is better than others extensions because it adapt the resolution of the screen for a resolution that suit the flash best - this help keeping more cpu. It hide and stop all ads and avoid menus to popup when playing. It also works with ie, firefox and chrome. The aim is make browser game really look desktop game.

SwiffOut is free now : you can get it as http://swiffout.com

SwiffOut is a commercial project (sort of because I'm mostly loosing money right now . Two reasons there : I wanted to try payment systems, and use tools that I don't usually use like google analytics, servers configuration, webtools, draw graphisms. I will also build more support, faq, blog... After many price variations the price is now $5.

~~SwiffOut now has a free edition and an extended edition :~~

The free edition is usable on SwiffOut sister website http://swiffoutgames.com (which I'm very proud of too, because it is very nice I think ) where you can play flash games fullscreen for free (swiffout is unlimited on this website, it will not display dialogs or anything ). SwiffOut Games is also a very special website because it is optimized to work with SwiffOut to make things a little bit easier.
~~The extended edition is $5 and allows you to play full screen on any website, so this open a LOT more games~~

I would definitly offer a free licence, if you have a blog and are willing to do a review (good or bad - bad reviews can be useful too ). I'll give you one extra licence for your readers too. You can write me a little blub with your blog name right now if you feel like it.

I you wan't to stay connected with what I do, and how the project evolve, SwiffOut has a blog that you can check for new versions and get some details about how the experiment goes here : http://grownsoftware.com/blog/

mouser · « **Reply #1 on:** May 06, 2010, 03:16 AM »

sounds interesting and i look forward to trying it!
as you say if you do $1 then paypal will take all of the payment.

its very hard to ever go up in price, so why not start at $9.90 for a while, and see what happens.

ecaradec · « **Reply #2 on:** May 06, 2010, 04:30 AM »

Thanks mouser, I feel great to have your approbation about that.

ecaradec · « **Reply #3 on:** May 06, 2010, 04:56 AM »

How stupid I forgot the url : http://grownsoftware.com/swiffout

f0dder · « **Reply #4 on:** May 06, 2010, 05:24 AM »

Why $9.90? Does it really help to get people to make the purchase? Personally I'd be more inclined to pay $10 than $9.90, as I get royally ticked off by that kind of price marketing.

mouser · « **Reply #5 on:** May 06, 2010, 05:35 AM »

question: it says it is a browser extension, but doesnt say what browser it is for?

ecaradec · « **Reply #6 on:** May 06, 2010, 06:17 AM »

The setup contains browser extensions for IE, Firefox and Chrome, but the browser extension just scan for the flash then transmit it to swiffout to display it fullscreen. It is a browser extension and an external application.

ecaradec · « **Reply #7 on:** May 06, 2010, 06:19 AM »

You may be right f0dder. I'm not sure how to confirm that. Would you like 10$ better than 9$ too ?

ecaradec · « **Reply #8 on:** May 06, 2010, 06:23 AM »

I'm not sure that decreasing the price over the time is good or bad. Lowering the price afterward seems more harmful to me, since people who paid before might be upset that they could have pay less by waiting ? I'd rather favor first customers

f0dder · « **Reply #9 on:** May 06, 2010, 06:47 AM »

You may be right f0dder. I'm not sure how to confirm that. Would you like 10$ better than 9$ too ?
-ecaradec (May 06, 2010, 06:19 AM)

Hmm, good question actually - $9 isn't offensive to me, while $9.90 definitely is. Something that might be fun to try is pricing the app at $10, along with a very small footnote reading something along the lines of "we didn't want to offend you with a pricetag of $9.99"

ecaradec · « **Reply #10 on:** May 06, 2010, 07:02 AM »

Or I could offer both price ($9.90) and ($10 for the marketingly offended)

You made me realize that I should write $9.9 instead of 9.9$ on the website. If you find some english mistakes on the site. Do not hesitate to tell me, I'm not a native speaker.

lanux128 · « **Reply #11 on:** May 06, 2010, 07:32 AM »

nice idea! can the flash games be played in a window of its own instead of full screen?

ecaradec · « **Reply #12 on:** May 06, 2010, 12:36 PM »

Actually I have a test mode parameter that switch to playing in a window. But right now it is a window without border, so you won't be able to move it. But it's really doable.

mouser · « **Reply #13 on:** May 06, 2010, 07:06 PM »

just want to report that i've tried it on two flash games so far and it worked wonderfully. on the second one, the screen was blank the first time i tried it, but i suspect that may have to do with the fact that i use the NoScript extension to block flash most of the time and only enable it manually when i get to a page with flash i want to enable.

also should be said that this worked on multimonitor setup, AND i was able to use my other monitors without it popping out of full screen on the monitor it was on, which is cool, since directx full screen games do not allow this.

and i was able to exit out of the fullscreen game with an escape key without any trouble.

big thumbs up

lanux128 · « **Reply #14 on:** May 06, 2010, 10:30 PM »

Actually I have a test mode parameter that switch to playing in a window. But right now it is a window without border, so you won't be able to move it. But it's really doable.
-ecaradec (May 06, 2010, 12:36 PM)

i hope that option makes it to the final build. btw, how to invoke Swiffout in Firefox? i can't find the button anywhere, though it works in IE.

scancode · « **Reply #15 on:** May 06, 2010, 10:53 PM »

Do you plan to include the effects of piracy in your experiment? *smirk*
By the way, nice app!

lanux128 · « **Reply #16 on:** May 06, 2010, 11:04 PM »

i spotted this bi-lingual dialog box, btw..

swiffoutsettings.exe_sshot_07_05_2010_(001).png

ecaradec · « **Reply #17 on:** May 07, 2010, 01:32 AM »

Actually I have a test mode parameter that switch to playing in a window. But right now it is a window without border, so you won't be able to move it. But it's really doable.
-ecaradec (May 06, 2010, 12:36 PM)

i hope that option makes it to the final build. btw, how to invoke Swiffout in Firefox? i can't find the button anywhere, though it works in IE.
-lanux128 (May 06, 2010, 10:30 PM)

I think that I will make progressive improvements. I'll add a blog to keep everyone informed of new versions.

ecaradec · « **Reply #18 on:** May 07, 2010, 01:35 AM »

In firefox you should see a button appear near the address bar. Sometimes it may fail if you moved buttons to others bar that the toolbar. Check if you can find it by right clicking and go to personnalize. It should appear in the list of all buttons to add.

ecaradec · « **Reply #19 on:** May 07, 2010, 01:38 AM »

About piracy, I was thinking of preventing it by being a nice guy and encouraging people to not crack it

ecaradec · « **Reply #20 on:** May 07, 2010, 01:40 AM »

Thanks for the little bug in the dialog.

I found a more annoying bug for IE user. The IE addon seem to be less performant about finding games in the page than IE and Chrome. If games doesn't launch with IE you can try to launch it with another browser until I find why...

lanux128 · « **Reply #21 on:** May 07, 2010, 03:07 AM »

In firefox you should see a button appear near the address bar. Sometimes it may fail if you moved buttons to others bar that the toolbar. Check if you can find it by right clicking and go to personnalize. It should appear in the list of all buttons to add.
-ecaradec (May 07, 2010, 01:35 AM)

yes, my 'navigation toolbar' was hidden so i couldn't see the swiffout button previously. now it's visible.

lanux128 · « **Reply #22 on:** May 07, 2010, 03:13 AM »

About piracy, I was thinking of preventing it by being a nice guy and encouraging people to not crack it
-ecaradec (May 07, 2010, 01:38 AM)

maybe a subtle message like this.

scancode · « **Reply #23 on:** May 07, 2010, 09:16 AM »

About piracy, I was thinking of preventing it by being a nice guy and encouraging people to not crack it
-ecaradec (May 07, 2010, 01:38 AM)

That's good enough for me <3
Nice app, by the way.

TPReal · « **Reply #24 on:** May 07, 2010, 11:23 AM »

The idea is cool

But:

The window cannot be minimised. That's a big disadvantage for me. There should be a way to minimise it, and possibly making it an actual draggable window should also be an option.
I found a web page where it fails to identify which flash is the actual game: http://www.newground...m/portal/view/486811 . Instead of the game, it gets the four orange buttons from the upper right corner as the main flash.
This program is good, but it looks simple. I mean it doesn't do anything extra wonderful, just moves the flash from the web page to a separate window. As a programmer I guess it was a lot of work to programme it, to deal with different browsers and so on, but as a user I see it isn't very sophisticated. So I think I definitely wouldn't pay for it more than, say, $5, and I'd estimate the real value somewhere around $3. Let me say it once more, that's not because the program is poor, but because it is simple.

TPR.