What are the advantages and challenges of using HaXe over ActionScript 3?

Question

I read this:

http://webr3.org/blog/haxe/bitmapdata-vectors-bytearrays-and-optimization/

And this:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5220045/what-are-the-pro-and-cons-of-using-haxe-over-actionscript-3

http://www.haxenme.org/developers/documentation/actionscript-developers/

I read there are only two books, is that right?

http://haxe.org/doc/book

I also see that using FlashDevelop you can make an Adobe Air project with HaXe and compile to exe.

And begun to wonder from a game making perspective:

I saw the example in the first link, are there any additional advantages in performance when using HaXe instead of AS3 for games development (for the web)?

Answer 1

At our studio we are working with haXe and NME, and the advantages are great. Performance and cross-platform are the more important points (at least for us).

Pros

• Even with only a few people in the forums, you can receive a lot of help. It's a very active community. Check at haxenme.org, haxe.org, and haxe group in Google groups.
• Numerous people helped port the many APIs. They can also help you to do your own.
• If you make a simple game, without many "social" features, then cross-platform is like doing ctrl-enter in Flash. You can target the following platforms with haxe and NME: iOS, Android, BB PLaybook, WebOS, HTML5 (with some limitations), Windows, Mac, Linux and Flash.
• The very best of the best: In FlashDevelop for Windows, you can do haXe projects targeting C++, Java, and NME (a framework that brings flash methods to haXe). Also, you can use MonoDevelop 3 with a haXe add-in. It's not as good as FlashDevelop, but it does the work. Another option can be FDT, though it's not free.
• If you have experience with ActionScript, then haXe won't be a problem for you. Of course, there are some language differences, like how they handle for loops and iterators.
• HaXe is great if you want to be able to transition from one platform to another, like from web games to mobile games.
• The performance is really, really great. However, we didn't test it against stage3D. You will need to work with different methods according to the final target, but it is not a big deal.

Cons

• There is not much documentation, and existing documentation is not very detailed. There are only a few books on haXe, many of which are outdated.
• If you are a flash game developer looking for sponsors, then you'll face some troubles when you need to add their APIs. The same applies for mobile development (iOS GameCenter, iAds, Google, etc)
• There are times that you'll need to know how to code in native Obj-C, Java, or C++. BB Playbook also requires a device (I don't know if this has changed).
• There are not many cross platform IDEs
• We've only worked with single-player games, so I can't recommend haXe for multi-player. I guess it won't be a problem, but I don't have the experience to confirm that.

I hope you find this answer useful, and don't hesitate in trying haXe. It is not hard to port code from Actionscript 3.0 to haXe and NME.