I know very little about Flash (Am a big Director user), and was quite surprised to learn recently that in Flash as of AS2.0 you have full OOP capability and in general a now quite rich programming environment. At least that's what I've been told. I'm firstly just curious to hear people's thoughts about to what extent Flash could theoretically be pushed to make really in-depth and finished games (set aside the issue of graphics, and suppose that vector was your preference anyway). Has it been done already? Can it be done? The second thing is - I'm starting to move away from Director, despite loving it as a dev tool - especially game dev, because I want to move a level down in programming to broaden my abilities. I'm thinking since I have to learn Flash anyway as a good fallback option job-wise (just simple web work), it may be worth getting right into the scripting (further than I would have otherwise) considering its comparatively similar syntax to C# an C++. Just to clarify, this is a comparison against Director, which has no syntax whatsoever in common with any lower level language I know of. Eventually I'll be aiming to get into C#, and flash (since A.S2.0) seems like a good bridge in that direction. Am I wrong in this assumption? I know that no scripting language will do anything to help me get a handle on graphics libraries and whatnot, but at least in flash I'd be writing functions with the same syntax and presumably other things as well. Anyway - would love to hear some thoughts on the subject. Cheers.

Here's a brief example of A.S.2.0: (edit: btw this is just the first thing google gave me)
----------------------------------
class Enemy implements Moving {
var x:Number;
// constructor
function Enemy(px:Number) {
x = px;
}
function moveLeft(lx:Number) {
x -= lx;
trace("moveLeft = " + x);
}
function moveRight(rx:Number) {
x += rx;
trace("moveRight = " + x);
}
function moveUp(uy:Number) {
// leave it empty , dont need it
// but must implement it.
}
function moveDown(dy:Number) {
// empty again
}
}
------------------------------

This confirms my initial assumptions. Of course it isn't exactly the same as anything else, but it's a hell of a lot closer than it used to be, and it's miles closer than Director lingo (which is still full fledged OOP and very powerful for a scripting language, but nowhere in the same vicinity in terms of syntax or even code layout - it's just totally different).

Before recently, it was just impossible (to my knowledge) to do any OOP at all in Flash. Programming anything serious in Flash was, as you say, a joke, by most accounts I heard. Things are now different as you can see.

As for learning Java, it doesn't appear like it would be any easier for me to pick up than C#, so I'd rather make a straight jump. Sun and MS bickering also tends to turn me away from Java in terms of user accesibility. And Python - I don't really know anything about that language...Would I use it over Director? (I don't know). The idea behind jumping to C# is for speed/performance.

Back to the original question though...any other ideas/comments from anyone regarding Flash's abilities?

I know that Flash users on a site like this would few and far between at best, but you could still throw some food for thought my way even as a neutral observer.

Man...thanks for pointing out N. That has to be the coolest Flash game I've seen.

The tutorials will also be extremely useful.

Cheers. :)