Greetings, can you please tell me the difference between Flash and Director? It seems they're both aimed to create interactive content. I ask this because I have to choose a middleware: I'd like to develop a small 2d hex-based wargame, but I have no programming experience at all. The game I want to develop would have very very simple graphics, so I don't need Unreal 3 engine, but I need to implement multiplayer. Now the question you were waiting for: which one is the best for my needs: Flash or Director? or maybe Quest3d, which seems a very good environment but the manual lacks of content. Or maybe I should wait The games factory 2? I'll describe my game so that you can give me a hint: 2d top-down view hex-based turn-based, wego system (like in Combat Mission, the order are executed for both player at the same time) multiplayer Are Flash or Director capable to achieve high levels of interactivity? I already have a design plan, and I know that every program I choose it will take 6 months to learn it, and 6 years to see the final game completed. I just have limited free time to learn a new program, so I can't learn both Quest3d and Flash for example. Thanks M

Director is the big daddy of flash, it is geared towards high level professional presentations. It is capable of 3D and incorporates lots of DVD authoring options etc.

If you are prepared for spending 6 months learning a package and 6 years developing the game then why not just learn to program? You will need to program in flash to make a decent game anyway so you will need to learn actionscript.

If however you are adamant that you do not want to learn a full programming langauge then Flash will be able to do what you want (although as I said you will still most likely have to learn actionscript).

Games that have full 3D graphics and are professionally made rarelly take 6 years to finish. Of course,they have large development teams and vast amounts of experience. But, I still believe that within 3 years you could get your game done to a good level of satisfaction. At the most. I've just started learning c++ a year ago, and I've already made two original(albiet not so great, and a little buggy) games. They weren't as complex as the game you are talking about, but they are far more than pong clones. If you didn't include multiplayer, you could probably reduce that time even more.

I do have to agree with coolblue, if you don't mind spending 6 months to learn the platform and 6 years to make the game, then try out programming. Python will give you a great headstart into the programming world and will still let you create great games, so it would be a great choice for a language.