What is Reddit's opinion of FlashDevelop?

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FlashDevelop - free and open sourced. This in concert with a library such as flixel, assuming you need such a thing depending on your AS2/3 experience.

OpenFL provides all of that:

1. HTML5 export (WebGL, Canvas, DOM)
2. Flashdevelop IDE support
3. Integrates with the Flash CC IDE

Also backwards compatibility with Flash, and has native export targets too.

> for which you can only develop with their proprietary tools

That's a common myth that's simply not true: http://www.flashdevelop.org/ http://www.swfwire.com/ http://www.adobe.com/products/flex.html

I would recommend FlashDevelop. It has a decent debugger by now. And it is OpenSource and is therefore free. You might wanna give it a try. I'm pretty happy with it.

I'm not sure if I'll have time to elaborate this game further by deadline, so I'll post what I have so far.

• Made in Flash + FlashPunk.
• Source code on mediafire.
• Hosted version so you can play right away.

Build Instructions: I actually don't know much about how Flash works, but I think if you have FlashDevelop installed, you can double click on the "LGP-2.as3proj" file in the source zip to open up the project, and just press "compile" from there.

1. Yes - Actionscript is the programming language used to control programs that use the Flash Runtime Player. Actionscript 3 is the current version.
2. The Flash IDE has all sorts of design and animation features that don't involve programming. This is the expensive part.
3. There are alternatives. Adobe releases the compiler for free, so it's available in other programs. My favorite editor is FDT, a favorite free one for Windows is FlashDevelop. You can run them in the IDE, in the standalone Flash Player (free from Adobe), or in any webpage for which you've installed the Flash Player plugin. You can also edit and view actionscript at a cool community called wonderfl

Good luck!

Your best bets are probably going to be either LÖVE (lua) or Pygame (python). Or if you're interested in learning Flash/Actionscript, FlashDevelop is a free alternative to Adobe's IDE.

Whilst making Flash games we all had Nintendo DSs in the office - a lot of the games were exactly the sort of games we wanted to make in Flash. We also took inspiration from popular indie games.

All the Flash games were made with Flash CS3/4/5 and FlashDevelop.

1. Download FlashDevelop
2. Choose an engine (FlashPunk or Flixel are the two best, although FlashPunk is now basically community maintained).
3. Look at some example games/code - AS3 is pretty easy to understand. Ludum Dare is good for this.
4. Look at the documentation for that engine and just make something.

FlashDevelop and the Flex SDK. The only problem (for some) is that this way you can't draw vector art like you do with the Flash ide.

are you talking about the FlashCS5 program it self? You want that to be open? cause if thats what you mean that would be super stupid. You can use FlashDevelop: http://www.flashdevelop.org/wikidocs/index.php?title=Main_Page an open Flash development tool to program flash sites. If you're talking about flash player and swf's that would be huge security risk even tho I think their is an open player available.

If you decide to go to Haxe, but aren't entirely sure yet, I would recommend FlashDevelop as a code editor. It's the basis of HaxeDevelop, but it will allow you to use AS2/AS3 if you want to, while also allowing you to use Haxe if you want to experiment with that. It was my favorite when I was attempting to write a platformer in AS3 using the FlashPunk library, and if you're interested you can take a look at the features list

Wow that was quite the indepth response, thank you.

Currently for Flash I program everything using FlashDevelope using an open source game engine (FlashPunk && Fixel are both engines i have tried) and I am really fond of straight coding things rather then relying on GUI systems. (Not that your system isn't impressive because it certainly is) Is there any IDE you would recommend using to start with HTML5 programming? I currently know several languages and learning a new IDE isn't really a problem so long as it works with Windows or Linux.

Thank you though for the response, I have already saved it for future reference.

If you're looking to do 2D work, I recommend Flash.

• The barrier for entry is incredibly low: it's one of the easiest development environments to learn.
• It's absolutely free.
• There are tons of reliable, powerful engines available if you don't want to build from the ground up. (Check out Flashpunk & Flixel.)
• Flash sponsorship is the easiest and most reliable way to monetize indie games. (The sacrifice is that you're never going to make a million dollars off a single Flash game - the odds of getting a good payout are much higher, but it's not really possible to "hit it big" - until you port to mobile, of course.)
• Games built in AS3 can be exported through AIR to iPhone, Android, and Blackberry, with almost no code changes, as long as they are written efficiently.
• Flash's browser plugin penetration is enormous (>99.8%), which means everyone can play your game.
• The skills you learn in Flash will transfer very easily to Unity when you're ready to start working on 3D/console games. AS3 also translates very nicely to Javascript, if you ever want to do web development.

An IDE that supports flash would be needed, haven't touched flash in years, but http://www.flashdevelop.org/ seems pretty well recommended.

There seems to be a plugin for eclipse available: http://fdt.powerflasher.com/buy-download/ but I have no experience with it.

One you have a good tool downloaded, consult the documentation on how to import/reference a .swc file.

Yeah I imagine that was one of the reasons people like it so much.

I mostly have been using Flash because even if its closed platform its been around for a long time so much it has had a lot of game engines fine tuned (Fixel and FlashPunk are both great examples) which was a major draw for me to start with it as being a college student I don't have a lot of spare time and when I do I don't want to be spending it building a 2D game engine from the ground up on my own, I would rather spend it actually developing game concepts and learning for the future (and to have something that I could show future employers)

Down the road though I will probably end up checking it out for the sake of learning.

>Plus, HTML5 dominating Flash is a great thing for open-source. Imagine a day when you'll be able to create great, interactive web-content with free software instead of shelling out 700 bucks for Adobe's stuff. (For all I know, that day has already come, but I'm a natural scientist instead of a computer scientist, so I tend to be a year or so behind on these things.)

[](/cutealoo)Personally I don't even own flash for development I use the FlashDevelope IDE which has proved to be a fantastic IDE, not sure about the legal implications if you try to sell a game but again I am looking to learn not sell.

The latest set are pretty nice but you'll need to be using Flex to use them. Doing it in Flash Builder is very easy or an alternative free route is Flash Develop.

You can style them to look the same as iOS components and they function pretty much the same on the whole. Performance with 4.6 is nice too, you'll run into problems if you start doing lots of skinning but if you stick to entending the components with AS3 rather than Flex you should be ok.

You can most probably run the flash movie (.swf) from within the schools internet browser. This assumes that the school has flash player (which it most likely will do). If this is the case, it can also be used to embed the .swf into PowerPoint Documents for viewing.

Editing is a different matter. If your project is class-based (using .as files, which any big project should be), you will be able to edit the .as files in almost all text-editors (from memory, you should remove all breakpoints in the file as they break the newlines in notepad).

Unless you have a flash compiler on the system, you will not be able to create another .swf at school, so you will need to recompile the movie at home to see any changes.

Unless you have Adobe Flash (or an equivalent) at school, you will not be able to open the .fla at school (flash project file). Therefore you will not be able to edit any animations or code inside that .fla

I'd recommend that you ask your school IT administration to check out and see if they can install: Notepad++ (to allow for better actionscript editing/code highlighting) and FlashDevelop (this is an Actionscript only environment, so you can code a movie in actionscript and compile it, but you will not be able to access or use the flash drawing tools in a project compiled by it, as far as I know). You may also want to warn the IT adminitrators that it is a large download (~500MB for me AFAIR).

EDIT:

As for transferring the files, I would highly recommend using the Desktop Client of Dropbox at home, and the WebClient at school, this will allow for instant syncing of the files between school and home. A memory-stick will work fine too (but understand that the terminology 'flashdrive' has nothing to do with Adobe Flash).

TL;DR: Viewing should be fine, editing will take some work.

If you know actionscript 3 it is pretty straightforward. You can do it with an open source development tool called flash develop, which is good if you are a programmer. If you need the timeline and animation tools go for flash CS5.5 which has templates to get you started, good luck.

Skip the books, skip the SFML, go get yourself Flixel (http://flixel.org/) and FlashDevelop (http://www.flashdevelop.org/). You'll be able to put together a game super fast that is cross platform and easy to distribute. Once you have a basic game in flixel, it's not hard to take the lessons learned and start to build knowledge. Seriously. Flixel.

I've been using FlashDevelop with the Flex SDK. Both are available for free which is much less expensive than Adobe Flash Professional.

My biggest advice: GET FLASHDEVELOP (it's free)

When moving from timeline code and the awful, awful editor built into Flash Pro, you'll be amazed at how quickly you'll get stuff done in a real, purpose built editor. It'll practically type the code out for you, and things like snippets and class templates will save you a ton of set-up time. I wish it had been around when I made the jump, back when AS3 first arrived.

You can stick with using Flash Pro to compile too, but I'd also advise looking into compiling your graphics as .swcs in Flash Pro, then linking them in your FlashDevelop project and compiling with the free Flex SDK (which FlashDevelop will download and set up for you automatically when you install it). That way, you get autocompletion for your instance names when writing your code, and compiling will be much faster too. If you want, I can help you get set up with that, just shoot me a PM.

If you have Java experience you should consider learning ActionScript 3, since it is very similar to Java. If I remember correctly, Flash 8 only has AS2, which is more like JavaScript syntax.

If you are strapped for cash, there are some cheap/free tools out there for AS3 development such as FlashDevelop.

Depending on whether you go with AS2 or AS3, I would recommend Essential ActionScript 2.0 or Essential ActionScript 3.0. These aren't really game-oriented books, but they are indispensable for language reference.

Nah. If you have no need to make the art or animation in Flash, then you don't need the IDE. In which case, why pay for one? Flash Develop is a free Flash IDE and is a stellar one at that.

Flash is almost everywhere (except the iPhone/iPad), quick to load, and there are lot's of tools and learning resources. FlashDevelop is a free open source IDE so you don't need to spend money to get started.

Java is also almost everywhere, but much slower to load. Since you already know java, this may be a better choice.

Silverlight (.NET in the browser) is somewhat quicker to load then Java but is not everywhere. However the plugin can be downloaded is pretty quick. As you already know C# this is also a good choice. Microsoft has a free IDE for development.

HTML 5 is the next generation browser HTML syntax. People are just starting to use it and unless you want to learn next generation technology, I'd not go this route.

What language would you like to learn? Do you want to make a little game or would you rather make some kind of web application?
For beginners, I'd start out with python and this book
If you want to make a quick and dirty game, you could build it in flash. It's actually fairly simple, all the tools are there for you, just download flash develop and start looking for tutorials on action script 3.
In both cases, google is your friend remember this: the amount of new skills and ideas that can be independently taught is only hindered by the motivation one has to teach themselves new things.

AS3 is really easy to use now that it's more object oriented, plus FlashDevelop is free and much better that that coprolite Adobe product. As far as game libraries go, I have a soft spot for flixel, but flashPunk might be more your scene.

I'd recommend checking out FlashDevelop http://www.flashdevelop.org/wikidocs/index.php?title=Main_Page and using it to develop alongside either the Flash IDE or just coding with it and compiling with the Flex SDK. I use the Flash CS5/FlashDevelop workflow and its really amazing.

that's fucking amazing.

is there any way to download an .exe for this on the off chance that the website ever gores down?

E: there's source code here https://github.com/watabou/TownGeneratorOS

and here https://watabou.itch.io/medieval-fantasy-city-generator/devlog/22717/future-plans-for-mfcg he said he is planning to make a paid desktop version with more options.

still, does anyone know how to make an executable out of the source code?

E2: Downloaded http://www.flashdevelop.org/community/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=13028 to see if it will let me build an exe or even debug but Main is pulling from the website so the files are not self sufficient I don't think. I only have basic knowledge of these things.

Guess I'll hope the website won't be going down, ever, or that he comes out with an actual app. Unless you fine people know a way to make this work.

Just to point out, you can use Flash Develop for free. You won't be able to use the Flash timeline, but you can still code and publish SWF and AIR programs with it.

You'd need whatever tools are used to create flash files. I used FlashDevelop for my PoC, but you can probably just download and find some Hello-World-style SWF you find elsewhere on the net. The Rosetta Flash documentation covers a similar issue (though using JSONP callbacks, instead of file upload) which has some basic proof of concept code.

The file extension doesn't matter.

FlashDevelop comes to mind, as does minibuilder. I'm not well-versed in ActionScript development, though, so YMMV.

Before you shoot me down have you consider Air? You can download FlashDevelop, and assuming you already have Android sdk you can have something up and running on your Android device in less than a minute (it will take longer first time if you haven't used the software before - familiarity helps).
The pros::
You can run your game in the broswer too - so easy to get feedback from others, no need to send APKs around unless the game relies on device specific input.
You can run it on IOS right off the bat with no changes.
You can package it to run on desktop. It is very very easy to get up and running and a little game displayed on desktop, browser, ios and android.
cons::
Actionsript 3, is not as advanced as c# or c++, but starting out simplicity can be a good thing. Learn the principals before you leverage the features.
Lack of rock solid frameworks to use, there are a few out there from 2d, 3d engines to game frameworks to physics engines, sadly none of them in my view (I have tried a lot of them but not all) are lacking it proper tuning and that can lead to performance issues that are out of your immediate control - and that is not ideal. This can cause use issues if you are relying on other libraries to do some heavy lifting for you!
TOOLONGDIDNTREAD:
try FlashDevelop, create an air for mobile project, see if it works for you on android and ios. If is does then great stuff, go make some games. If not, well you wasted zero money and at max an hour or two of your time.
I have used Unity quite a bit and I get on with it, but on a PC I couldn't publish to ios... and when I did finally get hold of a mac to publish on... A WORLD OF PAIN was rained upon me!!

I know people here hate AS3 a lot, but it can be pretty interesting for learning programming because you can see results right away.

You just need FlashDevelop for it.

• FlashDevelop
• AS3 101

Flash costs money. What you pay for there is largely the ability to create assets using Flash's Vector rendering tools. If you want to learn the programming of it all, get Flash Develop (http://www.flashdevelop.org/) which is free. Flash Develop is actually a much better IDE for actually programming AS3 -- used by all the pros I know.

The installer is useful and most non-web games (Air or otherwise) will require an installer anyway, but it is possible to create an exe file instead.

Check this out: http://www.flashdevelop.org/community/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=9053 just zip and distribute the standalone folder that those modifications will create.

FlashDevelop (http://www.flashdevelop.org/wikidocs/index.php?title=Main_Page). We use it at work, and I also use it for freelance at home. Although originally designed for Flash/Actionscript it works for CSS/PHP/HTML as well.

You can target mobile and web platform with AS3 (mobile with AIR and web with regular flash). Also with molehill it's performance would be better than what we have now. I'm not saying you shouldn't look into other language, but you are already have 5 years experience with AS3 might as well just use it :). For IDE, if you are working on Windows than I'd recommend FlashDevelop, hands down the best IDE for AS3/haXe on Windows.

Also you might want to look at haXe + NME.

Flash Develop is pretty good from what I've seen. You'll have to learn a bit about programming though if you actually want to make anything with it though.

You're welcome. Here is a discussion on getting flashdevelop to work on a usb drive. Not sure if it's still valid for current versions but they can probably tell you in that forum.

I'm writing a plugin for FlashDevelop, with it one could write code in the same fashion code is written in the Flash IDE (without classes declaration etc., just write what you want and click run). Supposed to be a beginner aid tool and quick code testing environment for experienced developers.