Angry Birds for Mobile

Angry Birds  is a strategy puzzle mobile game developed by Finnish computer game developer Rovio Mobile. Inspired primarily by a sketch of stylized wingless birds, the game was first developed for Apple’s iOS in December 2009. The game was immediately very popular. The game is now readily available for most every tablet and smartphone.

The game play in Angry Birds (AB) is simple, physics based fun. It inspired dozens of clones – games which copy the signature control-scheme and style of the original.  It is generally considered to be the most successful mobile game to-date.

Popularity

November 2011, Rovio Entertainment announced its hit mobile game Angry Birds has been downloaded an “astounding” 500 million times since its 2009 debut. Here’s a by-the-numbers look at the milestone’s reported by The Week magazine:

• 23 -Months it took for the game to reach the 500-million-download milestone. It was first released for Apple’s iOS in December 2009.
• 79 – Number of countries in which Angry Birds is the top downloaded game
• $1 billion – Amount Rovio is estimated to be worth by Chief Marketing Officer Peter Vesterbacka
• 10 million  - Number of Angry Birds toys sold worldwide, says Chloe Albanesius at PC World

There is a feature film version of the game in development too.

Angry Birds for Browser

So when porting a popular brand from one platform/language to another typically you look at the developer community and the players communities. There are developers using a wide variety of technologies, and web browsers offer several options for gaming. Since the game is (relatively) simple in 2D graphics and physics – two major choices are HTML5 [1] and Flash[2, 3].

1. In May 2011, a pure HTML5 (or was it?) game. Actually the game reportedly uses Java, not JavaScript. The playable game is branded with the Google chrome logo, and the manner in which it encourages use of Chrome is nothing short of Google advertising. There is also a Google+ social version of the game.

• I assume (and am too lazy to research further) the Google Angry Birds version is some type of sponsored collaboration between Rovio and Google.

2. In Fall, 2011, Adobe’s MAX Conference debuted a version (See Video) of Angry Birds using Flash. Obviously a huge software tooling company and creators of a huge game have many reasons to team up.

• I assume (and am too lazy to research further) the Adobe Angry Birds version is some type of sponsored collaboration between Rovio and Adobe.

As an FYI, As of February 2012, both of these versions are still showing ‘BETA’ in their logo.

Angry Birds on Facebook

3. Now we come to the Facebook version. The tremendous audience of FB matched with the popularity of AB will surely bolster both brands and provide a valuable, social experience for users. On Valentines Day 2012, the Facebook, Flash version of AB launched and uses Flash Player 11′s “Stage3D” feature to render its fast accelerated 2D graphics. The project plays really smoothly and introduces some decent social game play.

Obviously excited, Adobe made the following press release;

Rovio launched Angry Birds for Facebook using Flash Player 11 with support for 3D graphics. The most social version of Angry Birds yet takes advantage of hardware accelerated graphics in Flash Player to bring a silky smooth gaming experience to a wider audience than ever before. More than 130 million people play Angry Birds every day – now with Flash Player, hundreds of millions of Facebook users can do the same. New, enhanced special effects like lighting, smoke and explosions running smoothly at 60 frames per second bring the game to a whole new level and allow players to have a more connected and engaging experience. Angry Birds on Facebook game makes it even more exciting to play with friends, offering amazing new power-ups like Sling Scope, Birdquake, King Sling and Super Seed to extend players’ gratifying arsenals.

Here is a video;

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Summary

Angry Birds

As a game player I think Angry Birds is good. Do I play it? Not much. Like many mainstream ideas from the perspective of a die-hard game player, I think its just good, not great. Part of this is evident when you look at the big budget titles that copy the exact gameplay and fail miserably. Angry Birds is a good game that came out at the right time and was very lucky for it. Its popularity brings it more popularity and for that its #1. I cannot argue with its success. It’s phenomenal. Any game developers would be happy to have this game in their portfolio. To now have the game on Facebook, that is great too.

Flash

As a long-term game developer, Flash has defined my career. With new platforms and devices arriving over the past 5 years, there is again much choice for independent game development teams. I compiled a great start-set of learning links and I also offer free HD video training on AS3 and other subjects. Also, here are a few recent articles;

I’ve written about the Starling Framework Used by Angry Birds

• Intro To The Starling Framework for AS3
• Starling Extension -  Dynamic Texture Atlas – Finally Vector Graphics in Starling!

I’ve written about Flash and about Flash Mobile;

• ActionScript 4.0 Revealed
• Considering Flash-To-Mobile Development
• Flash-To-Mobile: Flash Vs Flex?
• Unity3D Now Exports to Flash
• More ‘Flash’ Articles

HTML5

I’m excited for HTML5, for app development and gaming and have written a bunch about it.

• Flyer Game for HTML5 (Same game in 8 different Frameworks) Full Source-Code Included.
• More ‘HTML5′ Articles

Here at Rivello Multimedia Development, we design and program with a variety of popular platforms. Contact us today with your game and app project ideas.