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a pound of raw flash

 
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kirkjerk
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Joined: 12 Apr 2006
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PostPosted: Wed Sep 17, 2008 12:38 pm    Post subject: a pound of raw flash Reply with quote

I know I might've asked this, or variations of this, before, but...
what are people writing browser games in these days?

I find the accessibility of these things to be terrific relative to the more common Game Factory etc thing.

"Processing", my go to language, kind of splits the difference, in terms of it's a bit of a performance hog, and sometimes the jar takes its sweet time getting downloaded and started.

During the summer I took an intensive-ish 2-day, 12-hour "Intro to Flash" class. I'm sure I don't remember half of it, and it was an annoying class geared at visual designer types, and not coders. I'm debating taking the second class, which promises to be more action scripty, but given that I don't have plans for actually owning the software, I dunno.

Do people tend to write flash games in "raw flash", or something that kind of compiles into flash? Or splitting the difference with heavy use of gaming-specific libraries?
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Last edited by kirkjerk on Wed Sep 17, 2008 7:32 pm; edited 1 time in total
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aderack
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Joined: 15 Jun 2005
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PostPosted: Wed Sep 17, 2008 5:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

You should rename this "a pound of raw flash".
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kuzdu
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Joined: 03 Dec 2005
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PostPosted: Wed Sep 17, 2008 10:55 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I would avoid classes that advertise teaching 'Flash' because they'll probably be visually focused. Look for a class that teaches ActionScript, the scripting language for Flash. Also, make sure that it's ActionScript 3.0 and not 2.0. A lot of folks still use 2.0 but 3.0 is much closer to a real programming language.

If you know Processing then you might just want to transition to Java. Processing is built on top of Java and I'm pretty sure that you can just write Java code right into your Processing code.
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kirkjerk
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PostPosted: Thu Sep 18, 2008 11:03 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

kuzdu wrote:
I would avoid classes that advertise teaching 'Flash' because they'll probably be visually focused. Look for a class that teaches ActionScript, the scripting language for Flash. Also, make sure that it's ActionScript 3.0 and not 2.0. A lot of folks still use 2.0 but 3.0 is much closer to a real programming language.

Good point.
This is the description:
http://www.ccae.org/catalog/courses/course_details.php?id=535287
I think if I wanted to get serious about Flash game programming it might not be the best plan... I'd get a taste, but unless I had the plan for further study/actual development on my own machines, I probably wouldn't build with it.
Quote:
If you know Processing then you might just want to transition to Java. Processing is built on top of Java and I'm pretty sure that you can just write Java code right into your Processing code.

Actually it's more the other way around... I'm a Java guy who picked up Processing-- I had done a few servlets before, but Processing gives you such a nicer API - that's what processing is, Java w/ an API and an IDE that makes it feel more like a scripting language in a very positive way. (I've done some infoviz stuff for work in it)

I don't know if there's a PyGame-like environment for Java...

Maybe I should stick w/ Processing and just build up more of my personal toolkits...
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kuzdu
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PostPosted: Thu Sep 18, 2008 11:14 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yeah, that blurb makes is sound like it's going to be pretty limited.

Actually, if you already know Java you might be able to pick up ActionScript 3.0 pretty easily, I'm told they're very similar languages. Might be simpler and cheaper to just pick up a book and try translating what you know already.

Either way, good luck with everything man!
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kirkjerk
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PostPosted: Thu Sep 18, 2008 12:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

kuzdu wrote:
Yeah, that blurb makes is sound like it's going to be pretty limited.

Actually, if you already know Java you might be able to pick up ActionScript 3.0 pretty easily, I'm told they're very similar languages. Might be simpler and cheaper to just pick up a book and try translating what you know already.

Either way, good luck with everything man!

Yeah, all those C-derived (Simula-derived, I guess) languages are kind of the same

kind of a chicken and egg thing:
kind of not worth investing in flash software (dunno about the torrent situation) 'til I know Flash a bit, hard to learn Flash a bit until I have the software...
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ApM
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PostPosted: Thu Sep 18, 2008 4:36 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Kirk, you would totally use Flash just for making little animations of AlienBill.

kuzdu wrote:
Actually, if you already know Java you might be able to pick up ActionScript 3.0 pretty easily, I'm told they're very similar languages.

You're probably thinking of Javascript, which is actually a pretty different beast than Java. ActionScript is basically the latest draft version of JavaScript (aka EcmaScript).

If you just want to mess with the language, there are free toolchains that compile to .SWF (see MTASC, haXe, swfmill, FlashDevelop). I have no experience with any of it, but it totally exists. You might be interested in hearing about this guy's setup, though he used Flex, I think.
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