From now on every game I do I’ll try write a dairy about. I guess I got this idea from a C64 programmer called Andrew Braybrook (who created Uridium on the C64) who produced a series of game diaries in a magazine called Zzap 64 back in the 80’s. The diaries won’t be published until after the game is already out there on the net, and any sponsorship deal is sorted out (or not). These diaries are loosely about specific games, but because I’m usually working on more then one game at a time, I will often mention other projects I’m working on too. They are not going to be tech guides either, they are just going to lay out the general thinking behind why I did what I did, but some code might creep in there somewhere!

This is a very nice idea well implemented. I don’t think it’s done in Flash, but I wonder how long it will be until it is?

Which is better right now, for Flash game development?

There seems to be an obsession right now with trying to use AS3 for everything largely because it’s the latest thing out there. If you want to be a Flash developer working in an digital agency, then yes you need to know AS3 backwards. But this blog is about independent Flash game development! And it’s a question for developers like me who grew up using AS1, and then AS2. Is it worth the extra time/effort to use AS3? is it going to help me sell more games?

The answer to that question is…..no, but….

There’s a saying in the UK, “horses for courses”, which means use whatever is the best fit. I would say 99% of the Flash games that I see online can easily be done in AS2. Most people who started with Flash 5+ etc, are not hard core programmers, and as such have grown up using AS1, and then AS2. AS3 is quite a big jump from AS2 regardless of whatever people say otherwise. The argument for using AS3 would be a sound one if most of the games online were AS3 and were done in AS3 because they could ONLY be done in AS3, but that’s not the case. As a games designer/developer I don’t want to jump through hoops just to get Flash to do something simple, but with AS3 you do. I’m not saying it doesn’t have it’s good points, of course it does. It is faster for example for some things, but if your main concern is to be spending your time working on the actual game design/gameplay and not getting caught up in the complexities of classes, OOP and the “Display list” then I say use AS2. If you want to do something which is going to have a 100000 mc’s moving around or is 3D, then it’s worth taking the extra time to learn and use AS3, but most Flash games do not need that.

Interesting little game using physics.