Game Development: Flex or Flash IDE?

Question

Which would be more comprehensive for game development?

Answer 1

It depends.

• Are you working by yourself or in a team ?
• Are you more a designer or a developer ?
• What's your level of comfort with actionscript ?

If you're just starting with actionscript, you're somewhat comfortable with the Flash IDE and you want to make fun indy games for people to bash buttons and destroy mice, go with Flash. The look will weigh more at this stage and interaction will be simpler. Never the less you can create some addictive games with very simple interaction.

If you're more of a developer, I would suggest using Flash to generate your assets (characters, animations, etc.), or have your designer do that for you, but use a proper IDE to write your code. As Flemish Bee Cycle mentioned, you can try Flex Builder or if you're on a PC, Flash Develop is an awesome IDE( free, lightweight, fast ) You could try to write you're own mini game engine, or use an existing one, like the PushButtonEngine.

As far as I can see SWF is the dominant output for online games:

• Miniclip
• Kongregate
• Nonoba
• MochiMedia
• FlashGameLicense

HTH

Answer 2

Use Flash for games. Games involve more animations (suits flash) than data driven user interface controls (suits flex).