Unity is a multi-platform game engine that is capable of producing games for consoles, PCs, touch devices, and the web. In particular, the engine has been used to create some of the most popular mobile games in recent years, such as Rovio’s Bad Piggies.

David Helgason, CEO of Unity, announced in a blog post on Tuesday that the company has stopped selling Flash development licenses.

Unity will continue to support its existing Flash customers “throughout the 4.x cycle.” Bug fixes will be made in future Unity 4.x iterations, but further development for the Unity engine on the platform has ceased.

The decision was made, Helgason stated, because of Adobe. Helgason called recent versions of Flash unstable and stated that, “We don’t see Adobe being firmly committed to the future development of Flash.” He also pointed out that Adobe has cancelled the Flash Player Next project.

Instead of Flash, Unity will be concentrating its development on its own Unity Web Player. Helgason stated that the Unity Web Player is installed on over 200 million computers and is used by one-third of all “Facebook gamers.”

Peter Shand cooperated with three organizations – RESN, Circul8 and Imagination – in 2012 to create various interactive video projects using Flash 11, Stage3D and other technologies. The results are exceptional:

To pull this off, Shand worked with Flash 11′s Stage3D and its Away3D library. The Away3D library is a free resource for Flash developers, and it can be used to create rich and immersive interactive experiences like the ones you see above.

Away3D is part of the Adobe Gaming SDK that was released last year, which includes Starling, Feathers and, of course, Away3D. To learn more about implementing Away3D, check out this tutorial from Away 3D co-founder Rob Bateman:

Another integral tool is the Starling 2D framework that allows developers to create hardware accelerated content. To learn more about Starling, check out this tutorial series that goes into how Starling can be used to create a game from start to finish:

If you want to get started on Adobe Flash development, especially for games, Adobe offers a free trial for its game developer tools on Creative Cloud.

Computer World reports that Adobe has issued a patch ahead of schedule that fixes the two zero-day exploits that hackers were using to hijack Windows PCs and Macs. Here’s the report from Adobe:

Adobe is aware of reports that CVE-2013-0633 is being exploited in the wild in targeted attacks designed to trick the user into opening a Microsoft Word document delivered as an email attachment which contains malicious Flash (SWF) content. The exploit for CVE-2013-0633 targets the ActiveX version of Flash Player on Windows.

Adobe is also aware of reports that CVE-2013-0634 is being exploited in the wild in attacks delivered via malicious Flash (SWF) content hosted on websites that target Flash Player in Firefox or Safari on the Macintosh platform, as well as attacks designed to trick Windows users into opening a Microsoft Word document delivered as an email attachment which contains malicious Flash (SWF) content.

If you don’t want to be hit by something that nasty, you might want to update to the latest version of Flash now. Most Flash users probably have automatic updating turned on, however, and won’t need to worry as the update will take care of itself. For those who do not, you’ll want to download the latest version from Adobe’s Web site.

There might be other zero-day vulnerabilities floating around in Flash for hackers to find and exploit users with. Always stay on guard and only use Flash on trusted Web sites. You can do this by installing a plugin that disables any Flash content from automatically playing unless you authorize it. This technology is built into Firefox. Chrome users can grab the popular FlashControl extension here. If you’re using Internet Explorer, especially IE8, you should probably just stop.

In a case study published on Thursday, Adobe looks to Buffalo Studios, developer of popular Facebook game Bingo Blitz, and how the studio was able to use Flash in conjunction with AIR to provide a solid gaming experience across both Web and mobile.

It’s important to understand first that Buffalo Studios comes from a background in native mobile development. That means the studio made their iOS titles in Objective-C and ported the game to Java for Android. It’s less than ideal, and can be frustrating at times.

For Bingo Blitz, the team did a little something different. They took a game built for the Web in Adobe Flash and ported it to mobile using Adobe AIR. The studio’s director for Flash Development, Lorenzo Nuvoletta, said that “having one Adobe Flash content pipeline and using Adobe AIR to rapidly port to all devices cut our development cycle in half.”

Now, every usage case is not going to be the same. Buffalo Studios may have had the right people at the right time, but it still stands to reason that developing with tools that are platform agnostic is much better than developing a native application in some cases. It’s especially true for games, but others could benefit from it.

As for the future of Buffalo Studios’ games, SVP of Technology, Barry Sohl, says that Adobe’s products are the future:

We are basing all our current and future titles on Adobe Game Developer Tools. It’s very cool to be able to simultaneously release all our platforms every week, which is extremely difficult for one team to do without Adobe AIR.

Adobe’s products aren’t the only development tools that can achieve these kinds of results either. Unity, another popular game development toolset, boasts that developers can create games using its toolset and port to any number of platforms, including mobile devices.

Until HTML5 becomes the go to platform for mobile Web development, Adobe, Unity and other similar programs will be the go to platforms for developing applications across multiple devices and platforms. Users demand that applications be the same across the Web and mobile, and developers must be ready to answer that call.

Like any game jam, the participants had a limited amount of time to move from pre-production to a finished product. In this case, developers had 24 hours to come up with a concept and develop the title into a finished product with Flash.

Adobe reports that five teams from the Chicago area competed in the game jam. The winner was a game titled Disaster at CP1 that puts players in the role of a firefighter. There’s even a playable demo if you want to check out the game that caught the eyes of the judges at the event.

Most of the games at the event were built using the Citrus Game Engine and the Starling Framework. Both are free, open source development tools for Flash that should help set you on the path to developing 2D games in Flash. If you want to make 3D games, you’ll want to get the similarly free Away3D framework.

As for the event itself, Adobe shot some video to show off the games that developers built with Flash:

If you want to get started on building games with the latest versions of Flash and AIR, check out the following video that has some tips on getting started:

While you’re a it, you’ll want to check out the latest release notes for the newest versions of Flash and AIR. There’s some new features that you’ll want to keep in mind whether you’re developing the next hit Web or mobile game, or you’re developing a new video app.

“In this increasingly multi-screen world, it’s important for marketers to easily run ads that reach people on different devices,” says Google Display Ads product manager Ashley Jiang. “But with different specs and standards across platforms, this can currently be difficult, especially for marketers who’ve invested in engaging rich media ad units. Since Flash isn’t supported on many tablets, and building a new ad in HTML5 can be expensive and time-consuming, often marketers’ rich media ads aren’t able to run on tablets.”

“Advertisers can now generate an HTML5 version of a Flash image ad with the click of a button, right within the Image Ad upload flow in AdWords,” says Jiang. “Because HTML5 ads can appear on browsers and devices that are incompatible with Flash, running an HTML5 version of an image ad alongside the Flash version in AdWords extends reach across devices. In this initial release, these converted HTML5 ads will show only on iPads, though we hope to extend support to additional tablet and mobile devices in the coming months.”

In the section on converting ads in Google’s AdWords help center, the company does note that ads may not be 100% identical to the Flash ads. You can, of course, preview it though. Filters and blending are not supported.

Wednesday, August 15 is the promised day. Adobe will be removing Flash Player for Android from the Google Play store. After that, nobody will be able to access the player. If you already have it downloaded on your device, you’re set until you upgrade to Jelly Bean. Adobe is leaving Flash Player as is. It will only support Ice Cream Sandwich and below.

In its place, Adobe has been pushing HTML5 alongside everybody else. They feel that it’s the future of mobile and are investing heavily in it with their Adobe AIR platform. The verdict is still out on whether or not Adobe will be able to convince people to adopt AIR on mobile like they have convinced desktop users to adopt Flash.

If you find yourself without Flash, the plug-in is still available on Google Play for today. It will be taken down at some point tomorrow so grab it while you still can. Of course, you can grab Flash for Android even after it’s taken down from Google Play. Some intrepid programmers have found a way to install Flash on Android even after Adobe pulls the plug.

While Adobe has given up on Flash for mobile devices, the plug-in still has its fans. The fate of Flash beyond 4.1 is still to be decided, but fans usually find a way. I wouldn’t be surprised if a dedicated group of developers kept Flash alive on Android operating systems.

Some people did not like that ultimatum so they went about getting Flash to run on Jelly Bean. Even if Adobe wasn’t going to provide support, the intrepid folks over at XDA were going to put Flash on Jelly Bean one way or the other.

Stempox over at the XDA forums created a guide for installing Flash on Android 4.1 devices. Censura_Umbra created a similar guide for installing Flash on the Nexus 7. The guides detail how to install Flash Player on Jelly Bean devices that will work just like Flash has always worked before.

For regular Jelly Bean devices, you’re going to want to download the .apk of Flash Player. After that, copy the files to the SD card of your Android device. Install it using a file manager and start up the browser. In the browser, uncheck the Flash Player option and you will now have the latest version of Flash installed on Jelly Bean.

As for Nexus 7 users, you’re going to want to root the tablet first. After that, download this browser to the tablet. Place the app in your /system/app folder and change the permissions from rw—– to rw-r–r–. If you see a file named browser provider.apk or browser provider.odex, you will need to add a 1 to the end of the file name. From then on, you should have Flash installed on your Nexus 7.

Stempox notes that Flash is not officially supported on Android 4.1, so there might be some compatibility issues. He does say that it works just fine for now. There might be other issues that arise over the next few months, but other developers will find workarounds. With the Android platform being as open as it is, it’s nice to see developers keeping software alive on devices.

[h/t: Talk Android]

HTML5′s humble origins began in 2004 with the creation of “WHAT.” The organization gathered members from leading tech companies like Apple, Mozilla and Opera to develop what would become HTML5. Two years later in October 2006, the World Wide Web Consortium offered their expertise to further develop HTML5.

The magic year was 2008 when Ian Hickson published the first draft of HTML5. It was pretty barebones at launch, but the best was yet to come. The best was only going to come with major adoption from the big players in the browser market with Mozilla leading the way by being the first to implement HTML5 capability into Firefox 3.

What really kicked off the development of HTML5, however, was one Steve Jobs. He famously rejected Adobe’s Flash in an open letter back in 2010 by saying that it would not be allowed on any of Apple’s iOS devices. Adobe themselves would follow suit two years later by halting development of Flash for Android devices.

Google made great strides at the end of 2010 by opening the Chrome Web Store in HTML5. Other companies like Pandora also began to experiment by switching over their applications to HTML5 to rave reviews. LinkedIn is the latest to join the HTML5 party by releasing a 95 percent HTML5 native iPad app.

So where do we go from here? Research has indicated that there will be over 1 billion HTML5-enabled smartphones in people’s hands by the beginning of 2013. Couple that with the fact that people are increasingly relying on smartphones for Web browsing and you have the HTML5 revolution kicking off in full swing.

We don’t know what the future holds, but HTML5 is sure to be a part of it. The relentless efforts of companies like Mozilla and Google are making sure that the Web is free and open for all to use.

by Wix. Browse more data visualizations.

Adobe announced some changes to its Flash Player Updater. This is the little annoying box that pops up every time you restart your computer asking you to install the newest version of Flash. It’s about to get a lot less annoying and bette for consumers who don’t take precautions when they are searching for updates.

When you install Flash Player 11.2, you will be asked to choose an update method. These include “install updates automatically when available,” “notify me when updates are available” and “never check for updates.” The default is set to install updates automatically and you probably should keep it that way.

The new updates works like so: Flash will check for updates every hour until it hears back from Adobe. If there is no update available, it will not check again for 24 hours. This will all be done in the background and never interrupt your experience. As a nice touch, the background updater will also update every browser you have installed.

The background update isn’t permanent though. If the update is important enough that Adobe wants you to know about it, they will bring the lovely update box to the forefront of your desktop again. This is much better, however, than having to sit through updates for every little security update.

As a final note, Adobe will be dropping support for Internet Explorer 6 with the latest security release for Flash Player 10.3 for those who can’t update to 11. On a related note, the current background updater is only available for Windows XP machines and later. A Mac version is currently in the works.