First of all, I want to give some big thanks to the existing developers. You've done a great job, have a pat on the back.
I fully respect your work and absolutely do not want to insult neither you nor the work.
But I still feel that Flash could be used to enhance the player.
I know that not a single thing I am going to mention is impossible to to in JavaScript, however, I believe that it could be done easier and better.
Well, to start off, the existing work would have to be redone. And the existing trials obviously should not be lost, so it has to either use the same dataformat, or a converter.
Now, why do I suggest this? I believe that Flash has better rendering performance and better features than JavaScript. JavaScript mainly interacts with the DOM. However, the JavaScript DOM is hyper text based. And not just that, it is mainly block based.
Another advantage of Flash is the centralization, I have not even tried to reverse engineer the current engine (clear lie, I tried, I gave up after 2 min), but I do imagine that the engine is quite messy since it has to manipulate the DOM and the sound player.
Also, I did hear that the audio player is a hidden Flash movie. Moving the rest to a Flash Movie too would be a nice way of keeping stuff together.
Some features that Flash has that I believe that the player could use is:
- The better layering, Flash can layer objects with ease.
- The ability to design while looking at what you are making. It's OK, since there is no markup code generated. Just the raw shape data.
- It supports video, something that most definitely could be fun.
- It does vector graphics. Full screen with no pixelation? That would be very desirable.
- It has smooth animation playback. The current player doesn't exactly have this.
- Flash is supported in 99% of all browsers. Not even JavaScript has such a high compability rate.
- Flash has graphical filters and rendering modes.
- Flash does not need bloated HTML for the trials to run. You can use a custom compact format. Or good old huge, but easy to edit, XML.
- Flash supports text formating by some crude HTML.
- With libraries such as Papervision 3D, it can do 3D rendering. That 3d examination stuff sure was a nice break from the main gameplay where it was used.
- Flash provides excellent interactivity options to duplicate the examination minigames.
- Yup, blow off all that powder, Flash can read the microphone. And it's fast enough to animate each of the particles while you are doing it.
- That xray machine? Easy to do with the BittmapData class.
- The shoe printing would also be fairly possible, Flash can create visible shapes at runtime. Or you could just mask some circles. Either way works
- The mixing board? Yup, that's possible.
But even with all this work, I still believe that this is the future.
I am ready to help out with the development if needed to, but I just don't have the time to do it alone. Also, I most definitely don't have all the experience the existing developers have with the existing design.
Hoping that I didn't insult anyone or otherwise cause trouble, a new guy.