What is ActionScript 3? How does it work?

Question

I am actually new to android programming and I was wondering how an game engine such as the starling engine works. I have previously programmed in canvas, surfaceView and I was able to make simple 2D games, but now I want an easier way to make a much action game. Therefore, I had to pick a simple engine, and through research I found out that the starling engine is one of the easiest to learn, and deploy.

However, I wanted to ask how you use the engines in programming for Android, because in their tutorials, I am really confused on how you turn it into an android game.

So, my main question is what can you use ActionScript language with, and if you can use it to develop an Android app, just like you would on canvas SurfaceView.

Answer 1

So, in essence, yes - you can use Actionscript to develop games for Android (and the flash player and iOS.)

You'll need to use a couple of tools to do this though:

Adobe AIR is what you would use to package your flash app for deployment to an android device. You can write pure actionscript using Flash Pro or Flash Develop and deploy via and the performance will be...ok. If you want really good performance you'll want to use the starling framework that has been mentioned on this question.

You'll probably need to do a little research before you dive right in. Lee Brimelow has a site with a couple of starling video tutorials you could check out.

http://www.gotoandlearn.com/play.php?id=147

He does use Flash Builder which costs a couple of hundred bucks but if you're on windows you could try out FlashDevelop which is a pretty incredible (and free) app.

It's a lot to think about but I really enjoy the Flash Platform, once you get into it there's a lot you can do with it! I'd choose Actionscript+Starling over any other cross platform solution in productivity and app performance. But that's just me. :D

Answer 2

I think you can use starling-framework and built cool games for android but you have to use Adobe air to pack your game written in Actionscript 3 built over starling-framework. There are great tutorials over the web you can refer such as www.hsharma.com/tutorials/‎

Also if you like c++ like me then use cocos2dx.