How can I develop Flash games without expensive software?

Question

I've been playing with writing flash games in my spare time, but up to this point, I've just been using a trial version of Adobe Flash Professional. I'm aware of FlashDevelop, but their documentation is basically non-existent when it comes to the workflow of developing purely with FlashDevelop.

Does anyone know of any good tutorials for developing Flash games purely with FlashDevelop?

Alternatively, does anyone have any other free/cheap software recommendations to use in place of Flash Professional?

Answer 1

Here is an article about setting up the environment for FlashDevelop so you are purely working with it.

Answer 2

If you're looking for free, you can take a look at haXe

Answer 3

If you are a programmer then I'd recommend Flex, which is Adobe's free SDK which compiles flex (essentially ActionScript) projects into Flash SWFs. This way you never have to muck around with the horrible Flash timeline etc.

The SDK to compile is free, and Adobe sell the IDE Flex Builder (now called Flash Builder for some reason) for loadsa money. But instead you can happily use any IDE you like; I'd recommend FlashDevelop which is totally free and can integrate the Flex compiler.

I'd also recommend the Flixel framework which works nicely with Flex + FlashDevelop. See http://flashgamedojo.com/wiki/index.php?title=Hello_World_-_FlashDevelop(Flixel)

Answer 4

There's a lot of open source resources at osflash.org, I remember having seen a Flash with Eclipse tutorial but can't find it right now...

edit http://osflash.org./getting_started_with_fames

Answer 5

What I did (like others suggest) when I wanted to play around with flash, was use Flex. Since I am too lazy to set it up from scratch, I used Flixel (a retro 2d library) and stripped it to all but its bare guts but at least it showed me how to set up my environment, and compile my project - which I find the hardest part of programming, getting to grips with a new toolchain - after that it's just another language.

Answer 6

I definitely approve of Flash Develop and the Flex SDK as other people have offered. I'll contribute this article which is where I learned Actionscript 3 from: http://www.brighthub.com/internet/web-development/articles/11010.aspx

Answer 7

There's OpenLaszlo which allows you to write applications/games in its' own declarative language and then compile them to Flash (or other targets).

Answer 8

Some people tells me I misunderstood the question, but others tell me that its a nice answer, so I will let it stay, eventhough its not providing an answer for an alternative Flash editor - sorry about that

I'm currently moving FROM Flash and Actionscript 3.0 to Unity3D Framework. Its a GAME-ENGINE made for GAMES and there is a free "Indie" license where you get 95% of the engine features for free forever.

You can later on, upgrade your license to PRO (1500$ or something) and then you will be able to use the latest game technologies for bloom-effects, realtime shadows etc.

With Flash I had to develop everything from scratch and spend a lot of time preventing people from decompiling my sourcecode so they could cheat.

Dont take me wrong, I like Flash, but it wasnt made for Game-development, eventhough its possible.

Unity3D has never been made to make "banners" or "movies", but is a pure crossplatform real-time game engine.

You can choose from webplayer (small plugin around 2 mb install) that works on both MacOSX and Windows. Or you can choose installer (real Windows EXE or similar MacOS bin) and if you buy the license, you can also transfer the games/applications to mobile devices, consoles like Xbox, Playstation and Wii.

So, if you want to make sure that you develop on a gameplatform that also is "allowed" on Steve Jobbs iParanoid system, you should consider switching to Unity3D platform as I currently am.

www.unity3D.com for more info.