[casual_games] Casual Tools?

[Austin Haas]

IMO, the best thing a Flash developer can do is think of a movieclip as another art asset, like a bitmap or video, otherwise it becomes a significant handicap. I often see people trying to reinvent every last wheel assuming things have to be done "the Flash way." Unless you are doing very trivial things, like a Flash website, that movieclip-centric way of coding is only going to make things more scattered, complicated, and inflexible in the long run.

The only benefit to the movieclip/timeline-centric style is that it can be quicker to do very trivial things.

The few times we've used movieclips in the past three years were for some animations that were either easier to set up using the Flash IDE or resulted in much smaller files than if we had made sprite sheets.

-austin

-- 
Austin Haas
Pet Tomato, Inc.
http://pettomato.com

On Tue Sep 23 18:34 , Hal Barwood wrote:

> Flash timeline:  it's there, but one rarely uses it.  For practical 

> purposes, an entire game can ride in 1 frame.  There are wrinkles, of 

> course, but timelines in Flash are mostly for embedded movie clips running 

> inside a larger structure with traditional main loops, etc.

>

> Lennard wrote:

>> A quick Flash question since we are on the topic from a caveman C/C++ guy. 

>>  My 15 year old is working on a game design and talking about timelines 

>> and movie clips in Flash.  I've always assumed you could use Action Script 

>> in a more traditional "main loop" kind of programming model as well - is 

>> that correct?

>> Sorry for the hijack - dinner conversation was interesting tonight - he's 

>> at that point where he kind of knows how to do things in a certain way and 

>> is bull headed about accomplishing them that way.  Which is all fine - I 

>> just want to make sure I'm not leading him down the garden path by telling 

>> him that there are other ways to skin this cat.

>> Thanks in advance,

>> Lennard Feddersen

>> CEO, Rusty Axe Games, Inc.

>> www.RustyAxe.com

>> Lennard at RustyAxe.com

>> P. 250-635-7623 F. 1-309-422-2466

>> P. July & August 518-863-2317

>> 5014 Walsh, Terrace, BC, Canada, V8G-4H2

>> J R wrote:

>>> There is always room for improvement and growth. There are some good

>>> engines out there depending on your needs and most of are rather

>>> extensible.

>>>

>>> My personal favs of the crossplatform variety are Unity 3D, Torque

>>> Game Builder, and Flash.

>>>

>>> Most types of titles can be put together in any of the packages.

>>>

>>> On Tue, Sep 23, 2008 at 5:30 PM, Audry Taylor <talshannon at hotmail.com> 

>>> wrote:

>>>   

>>>> Are there many game engines or middleware tools for the Casual sector?  

>>>> Are

>>>> they good or would you say this is an area that has room for growth?

>>>>

>>>> (I thought the subject might spark a little conversation!)

>>>>

>>>> -A

>>>>

>>>>

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