I saw some game son the web and it was pointed out they are made with actions scripts in flash. They were 2d scrolling games which look professionally done. q)What i want to know is can actions scipts create this with code or is the code/game created somewhere else and imported. How do actionscripts compare to c++/directx in ease of understanding? q)Can I download any software to do action scripts or do you need to buy flash . I have already used up my 60day trial for flash.

-Actionscript is writen directly in the flash enviornment, IMHO Actionscript is simpler than C++ and especially DirectX and, it gives you a good understand of how to solve problems using many elements used in C, C++, Java, etc.

-You would have to buy Flash, there is a student version for 100 bucks, I'll look for it a bit later. . .

Quote:Original post by kevtimc
-Actionscript is writen directly in the flash enviornment, IMHO Actionscript is simpler than C++ and especially DirectX and, it gives you a good understand of how to solve problems using many elements used in C, C++, Java, etc.

-You would have to buy Flash, there is a student version for 100 bucks, I'll look for it a bit later. . .

I am in australia so i doubt it will be that cheap here.
What I needed was to know how to create say 2d simple games using actionscript, given that i can do it in c++/directx . I take it the graphics themselves are created elsewhere and AS just is the engine like c++.

MOst graphics on the net inc. games seem to be in flash. Java was supposed to be the thing to do this but flash now seems the standard.

It is learning how to do at least 2d games is what I want to find out in flash.

Flash professional academic is selling for $360 Australian which is about $250 US, if anyone tell me where i can get a cheaper version (within the law) I would be happy.

[Edited by - jagguy on August 18, 2006 5:52:54 AM]

The Flash swf file format is to some extent an open format. This means that you dont need to purchase Flash to make Flash files. There are other packages from other vendors which can create Flash files too.

For gaming, where most of your flash will consist of actionscript code, you may want to consider:

www.mtasc.org

which is a free open source actionscript 2 compiler

and

www.swfmill.org

for compiling resources.

This setup isn't going to be as friendly as the Flash environment, but for programmers looking for a free alternative it might be worth considering.

The flash environment consists of a scene and a timeline which makes it possible for animation. In order to create games, the most common thing is to create Movie clips which are like objects. They can contain code themselves and also an instance name which you refer to in other objects. Every frame in the timeline can also contain code.

If you have a player character for example in a scene with one frame. You could add code into the player itself, for example code that makes it change x position with the arrow keys.



onClipEvent(enterFrame) is almost the same thing as a game loop, it processes the code all the time. Frame code could be used to redirect the flash app to the first frame, or make the app stop at a certain frame. This can be used to make every frame a new level.

Objects interact with each other by referring to their instance name. Let's say you add a wall Movie Clip and add collision detection in the wall. Then you could do something like this in the wall MC code:



In this case _root.player was used to refer to the player Movie clip. Flash is very easy to work with because you can see everything and organise the code into many pieces. Think of it as an image editing program, where you can drag and drop and create objects which you can put code into. Everything is visible and every frame can represent a new scene if you make a game. I think the code is somehow similar to &#106avascript and slightly similar to c++ in some ways.<br><br><a href="http://www.flashkit.com">http://www.flashkit.com</a> is a good site where you can learn more about actionscript.

Quote:Original post by abstractworlds
The Flash swf file format is to some extent an open format. This means that you dont need to purchase Flash to make Flash files. There are other packages from other vendors which can create Flash files too.

For gaming, where most of your flash will consist of actionscript code, you may want to consider:

www.mtasc.org

which is a free open source actionscript 2 compiler

and

www.swfmill.org

for compiling resources.

This setup isn't going to be as friendly as the Flash environment, but for programmers looking for a free alternative it might be worth considering.

Ok so I didn't know this.

q)I am confused about www.swfmill.org as I don't understand what this does. The other www.mtasc.org seems to be the standard to use, and what drawbacks does it have.

q)I want to learn actionscript to create simple 2d games that can be used on a website. Will this (www.mtasc.org )allow you to do that and do you need flash at all to include it in a website.


q)can i get a graphical ide for the open source compiler, i tried http://www.protozoo.com/ and didn't find a thing.

mtasc is used mainly to compile your actionscript source text files and create a Flash swf. swfmill is mainly used to create a Flash swf file from other non-actionscript resources, like graphics, fonts, etc.

You could probably get by without swfmill if you load your jpgs etc at runtime using actionscript commands rather than embedding them into your swf. Since actionscript source files are text files you can use any text editor including notepad.

There are drawbacks using mtasc, including no friendly IDE, no support, slightly different code in some places than standard Flash acionscript code, etc. ... but it is free.

plus you dont need Flash to include it in a website. The swf files that mtasc creates are standard Flash files, you just upload to your site and use the appropiate HTML code to embed them. Visitors only need the standard Flash runtime to run your game, and you can use MTASC to target different versions of the Flash runtime (e.g. Flash 6).