Starling Framework Interview with developer Daniel Sperl
At the recent DevGamm 2014 conference, I managed to chat with wonderful people - the Gamua development team . Daniel Sperl and Holger Weissbock are the creators of the Starling and Flox frameworks , very useful products for the Flash community.
At the conference, Daniel talked about developing mobile games using Starling, and Holger about creating a full-fledged cloud backend using Flox.
Our conversation resulted in a short interview with Daniel about how Starling appeared, how it developed and more.
Starling is a framework for game developers who want to publish games on multiple platforms. It is based on AIR, a cross-platform runtime from Adobe that works both on the desktop and on mobile platforms. Since Starling uses the GPU to render two-dimensional graphics, it can be used to create dynamic games with high FPS and a lot of special effects.
Companies like Rovio, Zinga and Ubisoft use Starling. The most famous Starling game is “Angry Birds Friends”; as well as several games for Disney!
Starling 1.5 has a number of innovations that can be found on the official blog . In a nutshell, this version has become faster and better than the previous =). Now it is possible to use huge texture atlases up to 4096x4096 in size. And also to store sub-textures in a rotated form, which allows more efficient use of the area of texture atlases. This version of the framework was created with an eye on a large number of mobile devices, so that the individual characteristics (and disadvantages) of these gadgets were taken into account. The programmer can now focus on developing, rather than debugging the application.
Other new features:
- Removed restrictions on the size of textures for iPad1 (It became possible to use rectangular rather than square textures).
- Now AssetManager can run in the background (when the application is minimized).
- Added additional checks for the loss of 3D context, which makes the application behavior more stable.
A general summary, as the developers of It just works say, and I completely agree with them.
And now Q&A.
How did the Starling idea come about?
Back in 2009, we worked on several games for iOS and there were no frameworks that we really would like. I've been developing Flash for quite some time and thought it would be great to have a Flash API for the iPhone! Thus Sparrow appeared - a framework attributable to Starling's sister for Objective-C. Suddenly, in 2011, Thibault Imbert from Adobe contacted me and said that it would be nice to create the same framework as Sparrow, but only for Flash with support for the Stage3D library. At that time, the library was only in development. I was completely fascinated by this task, and am passionate to this day! That's how it all began.
Why did you decide to make an engine, not a game?
Actually, I always planned to develop games too! But it turned out that supporting such a library is itself a very large project. I constantly communicate with the community, look through bug reports and suggestions for improvement. There is almost no time left for anything else. However, I am sure I will have the opportunity to return to game development!
It turns out that the community is also actively involved in the development, for example, the Starling Particles extension is included in the Adobe Gaming SDK. What other interesting extensions have users added? And how often does the community add new functionality, fix bugs, etc.?
I am always amazed at how much time users spend on the Starling forum. If you have a question and you post it on the forum, there is a good chance of getting an answer within a few hours! And there are many interesting extensions from third-party developers; for example, the “PixelMask” extension provides the ability to mask the pixels of Starling objects. Or “Graphics”, which provides the basic capabilities of vector drawing (analogue of the flash.display.Graphics API). People are constantly sending new code! I am very happy about this, but I have to parse this code and comment on it.
What software do you use in development. Favorite IDE?
I use Flash Builder, as it is the best integration tool with Adobe AIR and works right out of the box. However, a large number of developers use InteliJ IDEA and speaks well of this system! I'll try it somehow. In addition, the latest version of Flash Builder is pretty “bazzy" and it’s good to have an alternative in stock.
If you are developing for Windows, then FlashDevelop is a good alternative. I am developing on a Mac, so it unfortunately does not suit me.
Do you work at home or in the office? How is work coordinated?
A photo of the office in the studio.
I rent a small office in northwest Austria with my colleague Holger. At first, during the formation of Gamua, I tried to work from home, but ended up almost locking myself at home without seeing white light! In general, nothing good came of this approach. ;-)
While I am working on the Starling and Sparrow projects , Holger is fully responsible for our new “Flox” project. We are both perfectionists, so it was very important for us to divide the areas of responsibility.
Tell a little about Sparrow, because the audience of objC application developers is wider than Flash developers. How much attention is being paid to Sparrow development right now?
Sparrow hasn’t had a good time in recent months, as Apple has released the Sprite Kit, which is very similar to Sparrow. At first it was hard for us! However, I still think Sparrow has its own audience. In the end, it's Open Source: you can fiddle inside and fix any problem yourself. If there was a problem in the Sprite Kit, then good luck, write a bug in Apple! Perhaps they will not answer you; and if you decide to fix it, you will need to wait for the next iOS update.
The new version of Sparrow is getting ready for release in the next two weeks! The update includes major improvements, such as a triple increase in performance! Moreover, the set of features is similar to those that Starling has, and this makes Sparrow a powerful tool for game development.
Do Starling innovations migrate to Sparrow and vice versa?
There is no way to migrate from AS3 to Objective-C. However, Sparrow uses the same file formats for bitmap fonts and texture atlases. And since the classes are also similar (even the names of the classes and methods sometimes coincide), you can easily port the game. Objective-C is actually a very good language and in some areas it is simpler than AS3! For example, there is no need to worry about the garbage collector; because recent versions have become very smart in the field of memory management.
Tell me a little about the new AIR mode for background tasks, how does it even work? In Starling 1.5 features it is often mentioned.
The background mode for performing tasks is not associated with workers (who still only work on the desktop). This mode means that you can execute some code when the application is in the background. You won’t be able to do much, iOS restricts tasks to save battery power, but in some cases the background mode is useful, for example, you can finish the download.
How did you meet a work colleague?
Actually, I know Holger from kindergarten! He was always one of my closest friends; we even went to the same school! After university, we worked for a while in various companies. And then together they founded Gamua.
Are you planning to expand the team? For example, additionally write games.
Not now. First, we want to keep the team small and intra-team processes simple. Usually, as the company grows, more time is spent on holding meetings and agreeing on plans. I want to program, not to be a director. Although of course the possibilities of a company of 2 people are very limited. Therefore, for example, if we want to start another project, we will have to expand, because we are fully loaded with current work.
Do you write tests on your code?
You found my weak point! Starling has unit tests, but they do not cover the entire framework. It's not so easy to write tests for code related to Stage3D, you need to prepare a special environment, and I do not have enough time for this.
How does Adobe sponsorship work if I want to create a super duper tool?
As I said, Adobe themselves turned to me, and not vice versa. So I don’t know how to arrange sponsorship with them! I guess you need to work on something very well aligned with Adobe tools and strategy, as well as a bit of luck!
For us, sponsorship works great, better I can not think of. Adobe provides enough freedom to develop Starling. They just want game developers to have a quality tool.
What are your plans for future Starling releases?
I have many ideas for new features, but requests from the developer community always have the highest priority. I want Starling to be as stable and reliable as possible! Therefore, I add new features when the current functionality works flawlessly.
How old are you? When I first sat down at the computer, how did I get into IT?
I am 33 years old and have been interested in computers since the time we got the first Commodore 64 in the 80s. I began to study programming in high school and learned the basics of playing with BASIC. It always seemed fascinating to me that you can in some way tell the little gray box what you need and it will fulfill your orders!
Where did you study?
I studied in the specialty “Media Technology and Design” at the University of Applied Sciences of Upper Austria, which gave me knowledge in the field of design and programming. That's why I always liked game development: in this area, both talents are needed.
Family Children?
Actually, I got married a couple of days after the first release of Starling in 2011! I want to tell you that it was a busy time ... organizing a wedding and preparing for the release at the same time (while I was still working at my main job during the day), which required a lot of effort. But not in vain, because now I can work on Starling as my main job, and of course I have much more time left for my wife.
Rest where? how often?
Actually, I like to spend my free time with a good book on the couch or in the sun. Or playing in the toys of the Zelda or Super Mario series, I did not miss any of them at all! Also, I like to ride a bike through the Austrian outback. And sometimes traveling abroad. I do not like to lie on the beach, it is much more interesting to go around the country by car and see as much as possible. I would like to someday travel around Russia! If you still know the language ...!
Bike, great! Which bike? We have many developers riding bicycles.
Haha, most of you will smile if they see what I use to move around! I don’t know why, but I'm a fan of everything small and portable. As a child, I did not have NES, but there was a Game Boy! And now I have a Smart and folding bike! They are great and I can easily put my bike in the trunk.
Here are a couple of pictures to understand the idea. (These are not real photos of my vehicles, but they are very similar).
Is it the first time in Russia? Liked? What do you remember?
Yes, I am the first time in this beautiful country! To my shame, I managed to see only a small piece of Moscow. But I met many really good people and really want to somehow come again, so that there would be more to get to know the country and its people!
In conclusion, it is worth adding that the Gamua development team, although it consists of only two people, makes a very high-quality and complex product. How they do it I don’t know. Perhaps these are personal qualities (both developers are total perfectionists “energizers”), maybe the European mentality, or the sponsorship of Adobe (with a large degree of freedom in development). But an example is illustrative, the same Sprite Kit at Apple (and many other frameworks), most likely, is being developed by some group of developers (as is customary in the enterprise development).
An interview in English can be found on the link: Talks about Starling. Daniel Sperl Q&A session, comments on the translation and the text write in a personal promptly correct. If you have anything to ask the developers, write in the comments I will ask and write.
At the conference, Daniel talked about developing mobile games using Starling, and Holger about creating a full-fledged cloud backend using Flox.
Our conversation resulted in a short interview with Daniel about how Starling appeared, how it developed and more.
Starling is a framework for game developers who want to publish games on multiple platforms. It is based on AIR, a cross-platform runtime from Adobe that works both on the desktop and on mobile platforms. Since Starling uses the GPU to render two-dimensional graphics, it can be used to create dynamic games with high FPS and a lot of special effects.
Companies like Rovio, Zinga and Ubisoft use Starling. The most famous Starling game is “Angry Birds Friends”; as well as several games for Disney!
Starling 1.5 has a number of innovations that can be found on the official blog . In a nutshell, this version has become faster and better than the previous =). Now it is possible to use huge texture atlases up to 4096x4096 in size. And also to store sub-textures in a rotated form, which allows more efficient use of the area of texture atlases. This version of the framework was created with an eye on a large number of mobile devices, so that the individual characteristics (and disadvantages) of these gadgets were taken into account. The programmer can now focus on developing, rather than debugging the application.
Other new features:
- Removed restrictions on the size of textures for iPad1 (It became possible to use rectangular rather than square textures).
- Now AssetManager can run in the background (when the application is minimized).
- Added additional checks for the loss of 3D context, which makes the application behavior more stable.
A general summary, as the developers of It just works say, and I completely agree with them.
And now Q&A.
How did the Starling idea come about?
Back in 2009, we worked on several games for iOS and there were no frameworks that we really would like. I've been developing Flash for quite some time and thought it would be great to have a Flash API for the iPhone! Thus Sparrow appeared - a framework attributable to Starling's sister for Objective-C. Suddenly, in 2011, Thibault Imbert from Adobe contacted me and said that it would be nice to create the same framework as Sparrow, but only for Flash with support for the Stage3D library. At that time, the library was only in development. I was completely fascinated by this task, and am passionate to this day! That's how it all began.
Why did you decide to make an engine, not a game?
Actually, I always planned to develop games too! But it turned out that supporting such a library is itself a very large project. I constantly communicate with the community, look through bug reports and suggestions for improvement. There is almost no time left for anything else. However, I am sure I will have the opportunity to return to game development!
It turns out that the community is also actively involved in the development, for example, the Starling Particles extension is included in the Adobe Gaming SDK. What other interesting extensions have users added? And how often does the community add new functionality, fix bugs, etc.?
I am always amazed at how much time users spend on the Starling forum. If you have a question and you post it on the forum, there is a good chance of getting an answer within a few hours! And there are many interesting extensions from third-party developers; for example, the “PixelMask” extension provides the ability to mask the pixels of Starling objects. Or “Graphics”, which provides the basic capabilities of vector drawing (analogue of the flash.display.Graphics API). People are constantly sending new code! I am very happy about this, but I have to parse this code and comment on it.
What software do you use in development. Favorite IDE?
I use Flash Builder, as it is the best integration tool with Adobe AIR and works right out of the box. However, a large number of developers use InteliJ IDEA and speaks well of this system! I'll try it somehow. In addition, the latest version of Flash Builder is pretty “bazzy" and it’s good to have an alternative in stock.
If you are developing for Windows, then FlashDevelop is a good alternative. I am developing on a Mac, so it unfortunately does not suit me.
Do you work at home or in the office? How is work coordinated?
A photo of the office in the studio.
I rent a small office in northwest Austria with my colleague Holger. At first, during the formation of Gamua, I tried to work from home, but ended up almost locking myself at home without seeing white light! In general, nothing good came of this approach. ;-)
While I am working on the Starling and Sparrow projects , Holger is fully responsible for our new “Flox” project. We are both perfectionists, so it was very important for us to divide the areas of responsibility.
Tell a little about Sparrow, because the audience of objC application developers is wider than Flash developers. How much attention is being paid to Sparrow development right now?
Sparrow hasn’t had a good time in recent months, as Apple has released the Sprite Kit, which is very similar to Sparrow. At first it was hard for us! However, I still think Sparrow has its own audience. In the end, it's Open Source: you can fiddle inside and fix any problem yourself. If there was a problem in the Sprite Kit, then good luck, write a bug in Apple! Perhaps they will not answer you; and if you decide to fix it, you will need to wait for the next iOS update.
The new version of Sparrow is getting ready for release in the next two weeks! The update includes major improvements, such as a triple increase in performance! Moreover, the set of features is similar to those that Starling has, and this makes Sparrow a powerful tool for game development.
Do Starling innovations migrate to Sparrow and vice versa?
There is no way to migrate from AS3 to Objective-C. However, Sparrow uses the same file formats for bitmap fonts and texture atlases. And since the classes are also similar (even the names of the classes and methods sometimes coincide), you can easily port the game. Objective-C is actually a very good language and in some areas it is simpler than AS3! For example, there is no need to worry about the garbage collector; because recent versions have become very smart in the field of memory management.
Tell me a little about the new AIR mode for background tasks, how does it even work? In Starling 1.5 features it is often mentioned.
The background mode for performing tasks is not associated with workers (who still only work on the desktop). This mode means that you can execute some code when the application is in the background. You won’t be able to do much, iOS restricts tasks to save battery power, but in some cases the background mode is useful, for example, you can finish the download.
How did you meet a work colleague?
Actually, I know Holger from kindergarten! He was always one of my closest friends; we even went to the same school! After university, we worked for a while in various companies. And then together they founded Gamua.
Are you planning to expand the team? For example, additionally write games.
Not now. First, we want to keep the team small and intra-team processes simple. Usually, as the company grows, more time is spent on holding meetings and agreeing on plans. I want to program, not to be a director. Although of course the possibilities of a company of 2 people are very limited. Therefore, for example, if we want to start another project, we will have to expand, because we are fully loaded with current work.
Do you write tests on your code?
You found my weak point! Starling has unit tests, but they do not cover the entire framework. It's not so easy to write tests for code related to Stage3D, you need to prepare a special environment, and I do not have enough time for this.
How does Adobe sponsorship work if I want to create a super duper tool?
As I said, Adobe themselves turned to me, and not vice versa. So I don’t know how to arrange sponsorship with them! I guess you need to work on something very well aligned with Adobe tools and strategy, as well as a bit of luck!
For us, sponsorship works great, better I can not think of. Adobe provides enough freedom to develop Starling. They just want game developers to have a quality tool.
What are your plans for future Starling releases?
I have many ideas for new features, but requests from the developer community always have the highest priority. I want Starling to be as stable and reliable as possible! Therefore, I add new features when the current functionality works flawlessly.
How old are you? When I first sat down at the computer, how did I get into IT?
I am 33 years old and have been interested in computers since the time we got the first Commodore 64 in the 80s. I began to study programming in high school and learned the basics of playing with BASIC. It always seemed fascinating to me that you can in some way tell the little gray box what you need and it will fulfill your orders!
Where did you study?
I studied in the specialty “Media Technology and Design” at the University of Applied Sciences of Upper Austria, which gave me knowledge in the field of design and programming. That's why I always liked game development: in this area, both talents are needed.
Family Children?
Actually, I got married a couple of days after the first release of Starling in 2011! I want to tell you that it was a busy time ... organizing a wedding and preparing for the release at the same time (while I was still working at my main job during the day), which required a lot of effort. But not in vain, because now I can work on Starling as my main job, and of course I have much more time left for my wife.
Rest where? how often?
Actually, I like to spend my free time with a good book on the couch or in the sun. Or playing in the toys of the Zelda or Super Mario series, I did not miss any of them at all! Also, I like to ride a bike through the Austrian outback. And sometimes traveling abroad. I do not like to lie on the beach, it is much more interesting to go around the country by car and see as much as possible. I would like to someday travel around Russia! If you still know the language ...!
Bike, great! Which bike? We have many developers riding bicycles.
Haha, most of you will smile if they see what I use to move around! I don’t know why, but I'm a fan of everything small and portable. As a child, I did not have NES, but there was a Game Boy! And now I have a Smart and folding bike! They are great and I can easily put my bike in the trunk.
Here are a couple of pictures to understand the idea. (These are not real photos of my vehicles, but they are very similar).
Is it the first time in Russia? Liked? What do you remember?
Yes, I am the first time in this beautiful country! To my shame, I managed to see only a small piece of Moscow. But I met many really good people and really want to somehow come again, so that there would be more to get to know the country and its people!
In conclusion, it is worth adding that the Gamua development team, although it consists of only two people, makes a very high-quality and complex product. How they do it I don’t know. Perhaps these are personal qualities (both developers are total perfectionists “energizers”), maybe the European mentality, or the sponsorship of Adobe (with a large degree of freedom in development). But an example is illustrative, the same Sprite Kit at Apple (and many other frameworks), most likely, is being developed by some group of developers (as is customary in the enterprise development).
An interview in English can be found on the link: Talks about Starling. Daniel Sperl Q&A session, comments on the translation and the text write in a personal promptly correct. If you have anything to ask the developers, write in the comments I will ask and write.
