http://gamua.com/starling The Cross Platform Game Engine en Fri, 02 Jan 2026 18:28:31 +0100 Fri, 02 Jan 2026 18:28:31 +0100 http://gamua.com/blog/2026/01/starling-28/ http://gamua.com/blog/2026/01/starling-28/ Thu, 01 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0100 Daniel Be honest: you wouldn’t have expected to see a new Starling version appear, seemingly out of the blue, right? It’s been more than 4 years since I wrote the last blog entry for Starling 2.7. And, truth be told – personally, I haven’t found a lot of time to move... http://gamua.com/blog/2021/08/starling-27/ http://gamua.com/blog/2021/08/starling-27/ Sun, 01 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0200 Daniel Starling actually celebrates its tenth birthday this year – isn’t that incredible? I can still vividly remember my excitement when I discovered the email from Adobe’s Thibault Imbert in my inbox, with his proposal of porting my Objective-C framework, Sparrow, over to the Flash API and the (then) brand-new Stage3D... http://gamua.com/blog/2020/02/starling-26/ http://gamua.com/blog/2020/02/starling-26/ Tue, 11 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0100 Daniel In the blog article accompanying the previous Starling update, I wrote that Adobe should hopefully soon decide how to move on with AIR. Well, shortly after that post, it actually happened: Adobe transitioned support and future development of AIR to Harman. That’s one topic of today’s blog post; the other... http://gamua.com/blog/2019/12/flox-is-phasing-out-a-post-mortem/ http://gamua.com/blog/2019/12/flox-is-phasing-out-a-post-mortem/ Thu, 05 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0100 Daniel First things first: the reason for this blog post is a major heads-up: I’m going to have to shut down Flox around August 1st, 2020. Yikes. I’m aware that this might mean a major hassle for the remaining users of Flox – depending on how much use you make of... http://gamua.com/blog/2019/04/starling-25/ http://gamua.com/blog/2019/04/starling-25/ Tue, 02 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0200 Daniel There’s no denying it: Starling has seen easier years than 2018/2019! The Flash Player’s end-of-life is looming ahead, and Adobe, it seems, still hasn’t quite figured out what they want to do with AIR. In other words, it’s time for a quick … Recap and Outlook Adobe started to fund... http://gamua.com/blog/2018/05/starling-24/ http://gamua.com/blog/2018/05/starling-24/ Thu, 31 May 2018 00:00:00 +0200 Daniel Summer is coming to the northern hemisphere, and it has become kind of a ritual to push out a new Starling release before it gets too hot, right? The new release comes with one major addition that has been on my to-do list for a long time, but I never... http://gamua.com/blog/2017/12/starling-23/ http://gamua.com/blog/2017/12/starling-23/ Thu, 14 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0100 Daniel The year is almost over and many of you will soon be going into a well-earned holiday season. Before you leave, I’d like to hand you a small gift — a new release of Starling! The update itself (we’re now at version 2.3) focuses mainly on enhancements of the text... http://gamua.com/blog/2017/11/black-friday-handbook-deal/ http://gamua.com/blog/2017/11/black-friday-handbook-deal/ Thu, 23 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0100 Daniel The title says it all: I prepared a special offer for the Starling Handbook. That’s kind of a big deal for me, because it’s the first time I can provide a discount on anything! After all, it’s hard to give a discount on a free, open source product. ;-) Black... http://gamua.com/blog/2017/06/starling-22/ http://gamua.com/blog/2017/06/starling-22/ Tue, 27 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0200 Daniel Hard to believe, but we are already halfway through 2017! Since I spent so much time with the Starling Handbook, there hasn’t been a new official Starling release for quite a while. With the handbook out of the door, however, I could finally put on my developer hat again –... http://gamua.com/blog/2017/05/starling-handbook-launched/ http://gamua.com/blog/2017/05/starling-handbook-launched/ Fri, 19 May 2017 00:00:00 +0200 Daniel My dear friends, it is with the greatest satisfaction that I can finally announce: The Starling Handbook is available. It’s just a click on the big red button away! And, honestly: who can resist clicking on a big red button?! Giveaway Winner In the previous blog post, I started something... http://gamua.com/blog/2017/05/starling-handbook-pre-launch-giveaway/ http://gamua.com/blog/2017/05/starling-handbook-pre-launch-giveaway/ Tue, 16 May 2017 00:00:00 +0200 Daniel First things first: the Starling Handbook is finally ready! W00t! Do you remember? If not, I can’t blame you: it’s been quite a while since I announced it in this blog post. In a nutshell, this book is going to be the official “bible” for all Starling developers, with lots... http://gamua.com/blog/2016/12/the-starling-manual/ http://gamua.com/blog/2016/12/the-starling-manual/ Tue, 20 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0100 Daniel For many of you, the holiday season is coming up. You’ll meet your loved ones, unwrap a present or two and hopefully have some time for yourself, maybe read a book? While I can’t give you the Starling Handbook quite yet (it’s going to be out sometime in Q1 2017),... http://gamua.com/blog/2016/09/the-starling-handbook/ http://gamua.com/blog/2016/09/the-starling-handbook/ Fri, 30 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0200 Daniel UPDATE May 2017: In the meantime, the Starling Handbook is available! Find out all about it here. Do you know the feeling? When you’re extremely familiar with a library or framework, it suddenly steps out of the way, allowing you to focus completely on your actual application. That’s when you... http://gamua.com/blog/2016/09/starling-21/ http://gamua.com/blog/2016/09/starling-21/ Fri, 30 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0200 Daniel The last Starling release, version 2.0, left almost no stone unturned. You can imagine that I was quite anxious about how everything would work once it was out in the wild! Would the new API really move your projects to the next level — or would it crumble once confronted... http://gamua.com/blog/2016/04/the-road-to-starling-2/ http://gamua.com/blog/2016/04/the-road-to-starling-2/ Thu, 28 Apr 2016 00:00:00 +0200 Daniel Here’s another quick update for all Starling developers — no worries, I’ll keep it short today! Starling 2.0.1 First of all, I wanted to tell you that I just released the maintenance release 2.0.1 on GitHub, which fixes a few minor issues that were reported during the last couple of... http://gamua.com/blog/2016/04/starling-20/ http://gamua.com/blog/2016/04/starling-20/ Tue, 19 Apr 2016 00:00:00 +0200 Daniel It’s been several weeks already since I offered you a first look at the brand new version of Starling (if you haven’t read my previous post yet, make sure to do so before continuing: Starling 2.0 Beta). Many developers were brave enough to take it for a test ride or... http://gamua.com/blog/2016/02/starling-20-beta/ http://gamua.com/blog/2016/02/starling-20-beta/ Mon, 29 Feb 2016 00:00:00 +0100 Daniel Seven months ago, I set myself the goal of bringing Starling to the next level. To completely rethink its rendering architecture; to make it more extendable; to clean up all the tiny little compromises that had built up since its first release, and make every single class something to be... http://gamua.com/blog/2015/11/introducing-starling-builder/ http://gamua.com/blog/2015/11/introducing-starling-builder/ Wed, 04 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0100 Daniel It’s been a while since we had a guest post on our blog! But when Johann Huang from SGN told me about the project he was working on, I knew we had to spread the word about this to as many developers as possible. Johann, thanks a lot for this... http://gamua.com/blog/2015/07/starling-17/ http://gamua.com/blog/2015/07/starling-17/ Thu, 02 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0200 Daniel Hey guys, it’s hard to believe, but it’s July already! So far, 2015 has been an extremely busy year for our little bird, so it’s high time to release a new stable version. After all, you ought to be able to make use of all the features and improvements that... http://gamua.com/blog/2014/12/starling-16/ http://gamua.com/blog/2014/12/starling-16/ Fri, 12 Dec 2014 00:00:00 +0100 Daniel It’s just a few days before this year’s festive season is beginning, so chances are that you’re currently looking for gifts and presents for your friends and family. It’s the same here at Gamua — and what better gift could we give you than a brand-new version of Starling? That’s... http://gamua.com/blog/2014/10/sprite3d-and-whats-next/ http://gamua.com/blog/2014/10/sprite3d-and-whats-next/ Tue, 21 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0200 Daniel Last week was the Flash Online Conference #10, featuring sessions about many current and upcoming projects around Flash and AIR. There were lots of really interesting talks from Adobe engineers as well as framework developers. For example, Chris Campbell spoke about the Flash roadmap, and Josh Tynjala showed the brand... http://gamua.com/blog/2014/07/8-easy-tricks-to-drastically-shrink-your-memory-consumption/ http://gamua.com/blog/2014/07/8-easy-tricks-to-drastically-shrink-your-memory-consumption/ Wed, 16 Jul 2014 00:00:00 +0200 Daniel When people start to develop for mobile, they usually have one top requirement: performance. That’s why Starling does everything in its power to make your game run as smooth as possible. I’ve also talked and written frequently about the practices to follow for best results in this area (this wiki... http://gamua.com/blog/2014/05/starling-15/ http://gamua.com/blog/2014/05/starling-15/ Tue, 20 May 2014 00:00:00 +0200 Daniel As always, it has been a busy spring here in Austria. Over the last weeks and months, I added a huge number of optimizations, bugfixes and new features. Our little bird learned something new almost every day! Thus, it’s high time for a new stable version, so that all of... http://gamua.com/blog/2014/02/starling-austria/ http://gamua.com/blog/2014/02/starling-austria/ Mon, 17 Feb 2014 00:00:00 +0100 Holger Hello everyone! Be warned for this is an absolutely useless intermission of your busy work day: I just received a pic from an anonymous source. It was taken while driving through a tiny Austrian town which apparently is only a few minutes away from our office! Granted it’s in the... http://gamua.com/blog/2014/02/starling-js/ http://gamua.com/blog/2014/02/starling-js/ Wed, 05 Feb 2014 00:00:00 +0100 Daniel When we first announced the JavaScript version of the Starling library on this blog and on the Adobe MAX, the feedback we received from you guys was phenomenal: A huge number of people showed their interest and encouraged us that we were on the right track. However, many months have... http://gamua.com/blog/2014/01/starling-game-development-essentials/ http://gamua.com/blog/2014/01/starling-game-development-essentials/ Fri, 17 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0100 Daniel The first Starling book came out shortly after the framework’s official launch, more than two years ago. Seeing a complete book about my work being written and published — it always felt unreal to me and left me speechless! Now, you can imagine how exhilarating it was when I found... http://gamua.com/blog/2013/12/generic-animation-format/ http://gamua.com/blog/2013/12/generic-animation-format/ Thu, 05 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0100 Daniel After a long pause, we’ve got the next entry in our “User’s Corner” blog series! Today, I give the word to Denis Balon from gafmedia.com. He and his team created an extremely promising solution that allows users to import their Flash CS animations into Starling easily. Thanks a lot for... http://gamua.com/blog/2013/10/flox-10/ http://gamua.com/blog/2013/10/flox-10/ Wed, 02 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0200 Holger It’s done! Today Flox has left its beta cocoon and became a “1.0”. I can not even begin to describe how happy I am to be able to write this blog post today. To the trained eye I may also happen to appear slightly tipsy later this evening. But before... http://gamua.com/blog/2013/09/games-round-up/ http://gamua.com/blog/2013/09/games-round-up/ Thu, 26 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0200 Daniel During the last months, developers all over the world created stunning games with Starling and Sparrow. From one-man shows to huge companies; from garage game to Triple-A; from card game to action platformer - it seems that everything is possible with Starling & Sparrow, especially in combination with Flox, Feathers,... http://gamua.com/blog/2013/09/starling-14/ http://gamua.com/blog/2013/09/starling-14/ Tue, 24 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0200 Daniel Time flies by, doesn’t it? Believe it or not, it’s already been more than half a year since the last Starling version was released. In other words, it’s high time for an update! Ladies and gentlemen, please buckle up: Starling 1.4 is AIR-borne! Overview This release is all about polishing.... http://gamua.com/blog/2013/06/users-corner-the-cadet-engine/ http://gamua.com/blog/2013/06/users-corner-the-cadet-engine/ Mon, 24 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0200 Robert Silverton Today, we’d like to reactivate our “User’s Corner” series of blog articles. In this series we give the word to developers who have used our frameworks to create interesting games or libraries, giving them a chance to share their experiences with our readers. The topic of today’s post is a... http://gamua.com/blog/2013/05/a-bird-for-the-modern-web/ http://gamua.com/blog/2013/05/a-bird-for-the-modern-web/ Thu, 02 May 2013 00:00:00 +0200 Daniel Starling has become extremely popular since its launch – much more so than we could ever imagine! It is regarded as one of the best solutions for cross platform game development. Deploying games to iOS, Android and the web has never been easier! We know, however, that the web is... http://gamua.com/blog/2013/04/hello-flox/ http://gamua.com/blog/2013/04/hello-flox/ Fri, 26 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0200 Holger Today I’m very happy to introduce you to the latest addition to our game-development universe: It’s called Flox and it will make your game-dev endeavours an even greater pleasure than they already are. What Is Flox? I hope you don’t mind me asking a few questions first. ;-) Have you... http://gamua.com/blog/2013/04/gamua-at-the-adobe-max/ http://gamua.com/blog/2013/04/gamua-at-the-adobe-max/ Fri, 12 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0200 Daniel Adobe’s “Creativity Conference”, MAX, is just a few weeks ahead: it takes place from May 4th to 8th in Los Angeles. For the first time, Holger and myself will attend the conference. We’re very excited about this! I hope we’ll meet many users of Starling and Flox there, and maybe... http://gamua.com/blog/2013/01/starling-13/ http://gamua.com/blog/2013/01/starling-13/ Mon, 14 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0100 Daniel A new year has started — it’s about time that our little Starling bird was updated to the next version, to show off all that it has learned over the past months! 2012 has been an amazing year for our little bird. I’m especially happy to see how the community... http://gamua.com/blog/2012/11/hungry-hero-goes-open-source/ http://gamua.com/blog/2012/11/hungry-hero-goes-open-source/ Mon, 12 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0100 Daniel Do you remember the great series of video tutorials Starting with Starling that I mentioned a while ago? In the course of this tutorial, Hemanth Sharma showed you how to create the game Hungry Hero from start to finish. Now, Hemanth went one step further: the game is now available... http://gamua.com/blog/2012/10/incredipede/ http://gamua.com/blog/2012/10/incredipede/ Mon, 29 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0100 Holger Hello Starlingers, we at Gamua get the belly butterflies every time we see a new game based on one of our frameworks and we tend to subsequently fill the office with Uuhh’s, Awww’s & Cool’s. (Yes, we play games at work.) Today I’d like to direct your attention to a... http://gamua.com/blog/2012/09/happy-birthday-starling/ http://gamua.com/blog/2012/09/happy-birthday-starling/ Fri, 21 Sep 2012 00:00:00 +0200 Holger Everybody cheer! Today is our red birds first official birthday! I must admit that this took us a little by surprise just yesterday: We knew it had to be some time this month, but where not exactly sure when. Fortunately there is evidence in our archive of relatively useless screenshots.... http://gamua.com/blog/2012/09/starlingmvc/ http://gamua.com/blog/2012/09/starlingmvc/ Thu, 20 Sep 2012 00:00:00 +0200 Daniel During the last months and weeks, we noticed (with great pleasure!) that Starling is transforming from a mere framework to the center of a whole ecosystem of libraries and tools. Here is a short overview, to name just the most popular ones: Feathers (formerly know as Foxhole) provides a great... http://gamua.com/blog/2012/08/starling-12/ http://gamua.com/blog/2012/08/starling-12/ Wed, 15 Aug 2012 00:00:00 +0200 Daniel During the last months, our little red bird has gained a lot of traction. A great number of games have been published, including ones from major studios like Zynga. You can now learn Starling via online video courses. Heck, the bird even showed up on several development summits! Still, it... http://gamua.com/blog/2012/07/learn-starling-with-online-video-courses/ http://gamua.com/blog/2012/07/learn-starling-with-online-video-courses/ Thu, 12 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0200 Daniel As with every new technology, the hardest part is getting started: installing the right tools, getting used to the new workflows, finding your way around in the API. This process is much simpler when you know somebody who has been there before, somebody to look over the shoulder to see... http://gamua.com/blog/2012/06/the-starling-roadmap/ http://gamua.com/blog/2012/06/the-starling-roadmap/ Tue, 05 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0200 Daniel It’s hard to believe, but at this date one year ago, not a single line of code had been written for Starling. It did not even have a name yet - it was just an idea, featuring lots of question marks and some wishful thinking. And look where we are... http://gamua.com/blog/2012/05/starling-11/ http://gamua.com/blog/2012/05/starling-11/ Mon, 07 May 2012 00:00:00 +0200 Daniel During the weeks after the “1.0” release, our Starling didn’t think about slowing down or relaxing; on the contrary, he made some excessive flight-training and has learned several cool new tricks! Thus, without further ado: we present to you, the Starling Framework: version 1.1! Multi-Resolution Development With AIR 3.2 out... http://gamua.com/blog/2012/04/introducing-the-starling-wiki/ http://gamua.com/blog/2012/04/introducing-the-starling-wiki/ Wed, 11 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0200 Daniel The new Gamua homepage has now been online for a while, but it lacked an area where the Starling community could organize itself; a dynamic place to collect and showcase all kinds of information. A place like that is now finally available! It’s the Starling Wiki. What is the Starling... http://gamua.com/blog/2012/03/how-to-deploy-ios-apps-to-the-iphone-via-the-command-line/ http://gamua.com/blog/2012/03/how-to-deploy-ios-apps-to-the-iphone-via-the-command-line/ Wed, 14 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0100 Holger In a productive development environment it’s usually a good idea to think about the automation of recurring processes like compiling, testing and deploying development code to test devices. For iOS apps this becomes a pain as soon as you develop outside Xcode: That’s why this article explains how to deploy... http://gamua.com/blog/2012/03/powered-by-logos/ http://gamua.com/blog/2012/03/powered-by-logos/ Mon, 05 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0100 Holger Good news everyone, I just finished the official “Powered By” badges for the birds! They are available in the standard bright side colors and in a dark side fashion for those who like to paint it black. Click on a badge to follow the direct link to the image: Bright... http://gamua.com/blog/2012/02/starling-1-0-ready-for-mobile/ http://gamua.com/blog/2012/02/starling-1-0-ready-for-mobile/ Wed, 29 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0100 Daniel Some of you will already have noticed it: Starling silently went “1.0” with the launch of the new website. As the new logo clearly indicates, our young bird has left the eggshell and is looking for adventures in the real world! But that’s not all: at the beginning of this... http://gamua.com/blog/2012/02/new-website-launched/ http://gamua.com/blog/2012/02/new-website-launched/ Tue, 28 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0100 Holger Good news everyone: It’s done! The new website is online and it went live in almost perfect sync with the Adobe AIR 3.2 RC release. Is this a coincidence? ;-) Well … it’s not! Daniel and I have been working on the new website for several weeks now and had... http://gamua.com/blog/2012/02/angry-birds-powered-by-starling-framework/ http://gamua.com/blog/2012/02/angry-birds-powered-by-starling-framework/ Tue, 14 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0100 Holger Hello everyone, we have big news … again! Rovio’s facebook port of their incredibly successful smash hit Angry Birds went online today and it is based on Sparrow’s brother – the Starling Framework! All you facebookers absolutely need to check it out right now! Update 1 Here is a screenshot... http://gamua.com/blog/2012/02/the-future-of-sparrow-and-starling/ http://gamua.com/blog/2012/02/the-future-of-sparrow-and-starling/ Mon, 13 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0100 Daniel Wow, it’s been quite a while since I wrote the last blog post! I think it’s time that I give all of you an update of what has been going on and, more importantly, what will be happening in the coming weeks and months. Gamua The most important news first:... http://gamua.com/blog/2011/09/say-hello-to-the-starling-framework/ http://gamua.com/blog/2011/09/say-hello-to-the-starling-framework/ Wed, 21 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0200 Daniel Hi folks, I’ve got some busy weeks behind me, working hard on Sparrow’s new sibling, the Starling Framework. I already hinted that a new project is in the works in the Cocos2D Podcast, and some forum members might have read some mysterious remarks on that topic, too. Well, I’m excited...