Web-based Game Development: Flex Builder or Flash CS3? [closed]

Question

I'm researching game development in Flash and Flex. I've downloaded the Flex Builder trial and have worked with older versions of Flash. I see that generally, Flex Builder is a developer's tool, and Flash is a designer's tool. It's not clear to me whether one is better suited to game development than the other, or if it's necessary to have both to effectively design games. To my mind, games are equal parts design/art and programming. Which tool is more commonly, or more intensively, used for game development?

Answer 1

Flex builder: Way better development/coding environment than Flash CS3/CS4

Flash CS3/CS4: Way better design environment than Flex

"Flash Style" application: (Sprites, MovieClips instead of flex UIComponents) Generally better performing for game type work.

So how do you get all those benefits? You can make plain old flash apps in Flex Builder, they don't have to be Flex apps (File->New->Actionscript Project). Prepare art assets in Flash CS3/CS4, do all your code in Flex Builder get the best of both worlds.

Answer 2

A hypothetical workflow that gets me drooling is a dedicated team of artists/designers creating assets in Flash, and exporting them as swfs to a programmer wielding FlashDevelop.

The designers need not write code, and they work on one or more asset repositories in the form of Flash documents. Each asset is "Exported for Actionscript" (under the Linkage menu) and given an appropriate class name. The flash doc(s) are then published as swfs to the developer.

The developer copies these published assets to a project directory, where they can be embedded into an Asset class (or similar) with the [Embed] metadata tag...

public class Asset {

    [Embed(source="./assets/Enemies.swf", symbol="asset.KohrAhMeleeShip")]
    public static var KohrAhMeleeShip:Class;

    // etc.
}

Then, in the game code ...

var enemyFighter:EnemyFighter = new EnemyFighter( Asset.KohrAhMeleeShip );
addChild(enemyFighter);

The developer can then publish a monolithic swf, which contains the entire game code and all assets. This doesn't preclude the developer from "import loading" additional assets at runtime (using the Loader class), which would reduce initial load time.

Daydream ends.

PS. FlashDevelop is a very compelling environment for Flash game development, particularly when compared with Flex Builder, which is geared toward a very specific type of application (RIA).

Answer 3

Or a third player: Haxe

Haxe is used in game development. Some of them are mentioned on the page People Using Haxe.