Unity vs Flash?

What are the strengths and weakness's of each? In which situations should I use flash over Unity? Unity over flash? This is not exporting to flash, but building games with flash over unity.

 

There are zero reasons you will want to use flash. Ever. The technology is officially dead as a doornail.

 

Ok, thanks.

 

Flash is alive and well, and I use it every day for my job. That being said, there's very little reason to use it for game creation. Unity does everything that Flash does, plus a whole lot more. The big reason not to use Unity is that it's yet another language to learn, and if that freaks you out, then the world of technology isn't for you. The user community is extremely robust, and there's almost nothing it can't answer for you.

 

Victor is right on the mark. A lot of studios are still using Flash even though other tools are much more powerful :

Grand Budapest Hotel : http://www.akademiezubrowka.com/
Adidas : https://www.adidas-archive.org/#/intro
Disney : http://disneyworld.disney.go.com/new-fantasyland/

The catch : Unity is not supported in any browser without a plugin. No client is going to purchase a web project that is locked behind a download wall.

Conclusion : Unity is the better option, unless you go web. Here's to looking forward to Untiy 5.0 and the openGL support.

PS: before anyone starts talking mobile web, only 13% of mobile web traffic comes from the browser. The rest is in app.

 

I ran a website with both flash and unity games and I see very little difference between the two in respect whether users prefer one over the other. But those are mostly simple games and I pick only simple and small ones.

As a web site administrator I would generally prefer flash over unity because

a) files are smaller - less bandwidth is used. some new unity games have more than 100 MB - that's just huge. Also files load faster and that improves the overall user experience
b) no plugin needed. flash is basically enabled by default on most computer systems, while unity needs to be explicitly installed. If user is not aware of that, or does not know how to do it himself, he leaves the page. that in turn has multiple negative effects (earnings, bounce rate)
c) Sometimes I experience problems with unity engine. Web page freezes while unity is loading ... Sometimes, the whole browser freezes and sometimes even the whole PC slows down. What I do is I re-install unity for web and than everything gets back to normal, for a while...
One thing I must admit to Unity.. In respect to quality Unity is waaay above the flash. For instance, take a look at streets of gotham http://www.batmangamesonly.com/game/streets-of-gotham-3d.html . The quality of graphics and animations is much closer to serios consoles than plain arcades for kids.

I think that Unity time is just about to come. With better file optimization, engine bug fixes, faster internet connections, unity will become choice no 1 for web. I think that mobile games are just a trend that will pass. nothing can replace the comfort of your pc. People will realize that, again.

 

Basically Flash is a smaller platform native to browsers. If you want to create small games for browsers, Flash is quicker and much more accessible.

If you want to create either big/3D games for browsers, or games for mobile/Pc/Mac, Unity is the way to go.

 

No, flash is dead. WebGL is the best choice. Flash won't even work on the world's top browsers - at all, period, in a couple years.

It's WebGL or nothing, simple as that, no negotiation, no choice. Chrome and other browsers will stop supporting plugins.

Unity has this covered on several fronts:

It'll be possible to make very, very small / light web apps in Unity - we're talking an estimated 200k or so light with its future modularity. Unity's taking this very seriously.

 

Flash is very bad for web.Not all browsers work with it, especially on mobile. Many users won't see your Flash content at all, Google won't either. Plus soon enough even those brothers that suppot Flash now will stop working with it. I would advice to use Unity if you just start a new project. If you already ahve a flash project, you should start planning on moving from it

 

There is a great deal of miss information in here.
Flash is not dead, it may certainly be dying but it is by no means dead.
(anyone saying it is dead now has their head buried in the sand)

If you are making a game for desktop, then you don't even have to consider mobile users, you will not serve them your content anyway.
Games that run on both desktop and mobile are rarer than those that run only only one target.

So as far as making a game is concerned I would base decision based on your needs and the games requirements.
If mobile is required either flash or unity can target devices as apps, but neither plugin can run on the mobile web.
Unity can however target html5, so that CAN run on mobile browsers if that is your goal.
Reality is though, that most developers for mobile use apps as they are easier to monetize at the moment.

Assuming you are targeting desktop:
If you game is 2d, lightweight then I would suggest flash is the much better choice at the moment.
(Sorry unity, I think you are great but flash offers so much more control here)
If you game is 3d or 2d but more heavyweight with use of physics and a more complex structure this is where unity shines!

Unity is amazing but to just outright say you should use it because flash is dead is nothing but pure embarrassing silliness.
There are many GOOD reasons to use unity and that is not one of them.

Do the people asking a honest questions a service and try and answer them with decent explanations and critiques.

Both technologies are powerful and both have a place on the web and on devices, learn their strengths and weaknesses and choose accordingly. Neither are perfect.

 

Flash is not dead, develops use AIR to create game for mobile platform.
I use Flash to build casual games for mobile, while if the game contains some physical effect, I prefer Unity, just easy to use.

 

I'm new to Unity, coming from a Flash background. It does not give me any confidence in this community when someone with "Moderator" status is spreading such uninformed nonsense. It seems very unprofessional to me. Of course Flash is not "dead", depending on your application. bwhiting gave the proper answer to this question.

 

Flash is dead though (for specific platforms). You like it, and have experience in it, but it doesn't change these facts:

1. the top browsers in the world will soon not be able to run flash, or any plugins.
2. all apple mobile devices do not run flash. This includes tablet devices.
3. Adobe have mostly abandoned it in favour of Air (which is a good move)

If you persist on feeling outraged, it is because you aren't aware of that yet. What will happen when chrome does not support flash? More importantly, can you demonstrate why it's a good tech? Unity themselves abandoned flash support. It now supports WebGL which is lauded as the replacement (with good reason).

Adobe considers Flash as a web technology dead. Will you now be up in arms and take the argument to Adobe instead? The replacement as far as Adobe is concerned is Air, which is pretty similar but not quite - it is supposed to have feature parity with Flash Player 13. I am talking about web-based flash, which has zero future, due to a number of parties simply not supporting it.

However the Flash application is alive and well, along with Air, so you probably meant that use case while I meant web and mobile use case. I meant this because that's the context Unity supported Flash in.