Hi sir,
after discussing what you mentioned in the morning with me and late afternoon to all the team members, we strongly feel that working on our project in a Linux environment will bring about many issues. No doubt there are the advantages that you listed like being used to and familiar with the Linux environment itself, which will make porting the game over to the touchscreen machine easier, we however feel that the disadvantages that we might face would be more drastic.
First of all, we feel that working on the project in a Linux environment would be unsuitable, reason being our main focus is coming up with the completed game and making sure that it is able to work in the touchscreen machine. Thus, working in an unfamiliar environment will only delay the production of the game itself. Of course, there will be a point of time whereby we would have to work in Linux in the porting phase. However, I believe if we were to delayed the completion of the Flash game , there won't be much meaning in it even if we managed to port the game over. Since the end result would be the same in Linux or Windows, a .swf file which is the game, working on Windows would definitely be the wiser choice. The main problem would only be the porting phase.
Next, our group also discussed the issue of working with Linux-based Flash Software Development Kits. As you have already know, we have decided to use Adobe Flash to develop our game on Windows and have some of us have already begun reading up on the program and ActionScript 3.0 documentations. If we were to work in a Linux environment, we would have to abandon some, if not most, of the information that we have picked up. This is because some of the information are Adobe Flash-based; it is only available in Adobe Flash. This would then result in us having to read up on the new Software Development Kit that we are going to use on Linux. As there ain't alot of Flash games that are developed in Linux, the documentations for the programs that we would be needing might be hard to find or not as detailed as compared to the documentations that are Windows-based. Besides, as we would be using open-source Software Development Kits if we are to work on Linux, it might put as at a technical disadvantage as they might not offer as much functionality compared to Adobe Flash ,which is a paid compiler.
We also estimated that the additional time that we might need in moving over from Windows to Linux would be at least a week. (issues like installing and making sure the Linux Operating System is stable, etc.)
Despite the disadvantages mentioned, we still understand the need to pick up Linux for the porting phase once the Flash game is complete. Thus, this would be our suggested proposal in overcoming this technical difficulty.
The 4 of us would continue to work on the Flash game in a Windows environment while 1 of us would pick up on understanding and using Linux. This would ensure the completion of the game is not affected much. In the process of producing the game, the member responsible for picking and learning Linux would share what he had learnt so we would know what are the game mechanics we have to change to cater to Linux. After the completion of the game, the team would then focus in porting the game over to the touchscreen machine. In this way, if there were any technical difficulty faced or unforeseen circumstances, we would still have a solid, completed game that would at least be able to work on Windows.
With all these mentioned, the team believes that the major technical difficulty would be the porting phase. As the team is totally unexperienced in Linux, we are unclear how the porting phase would work. Thus, we would like to hear from you about the porting phase so that we would have a better understanding on how to go about doing it and whether more manpower is needed for the understanding and learning of Linux in our suggested proposal.
I hope you would take this suggestion into consideration.
Kok Wei
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l’ouvrier
10 years ago