Playing around with Adobe Flex

[NigeC]

It should load XML files, awhile ago I tried doing a platformer that used XML and it did work with an exe, its if it needs to write to a file it becomes an issue.

[ad7venture]

I must admit bandwidth for games was always an issue with the Lassie games, even a couple of meg game can eat it up at a scary rate.

I've been working on my game in the hope of putting it on a Flash game portal site.  That way they take care of the traffic and it tends to get more viewers.  I've heard some people say that some of the portals only want one swf file, so I've gone through this pre-loader trouble making sure it's all in one.  I suppose I should have found out what the rules were first.  I have unlimited traffic on my web site and I think it costs about 6 dollars a month on the 3 year plan.  Not sure if I'll maintain it or not after the 3 years is up, though.

[Tumetsu]

I'm also thinking about diving into this Flash stuff. What tutorials you would recommend for a starter to learn the basics of the AS? I'm going to use Flex and Flash Develop and hoping to get hang on the language soon to get use Flixel or Flashpunk libraries.

[Kickaha]

Can't you create a projector with Flex? or are you set on  web based?

I was thinking Flex and web-based . . . but that may change as I learn more.  If a game is mainly written in XML then it would be theoretically possible instead of using Flex to use Silverlight.

[Kickaha]

I'm also thinking about diving into this Flash stuff. What tutorials you would recommend for a starter to learn the basics of the AS? I'm going to use Flex and Flash Develop and hoping to get hang on the language soon to get use Flixel or Flashpunk libraries.

The little I know I've got by reading what's on the Adobe site, and a little googling.  Their docs seem pretty good to me.

[NigeC]

beware when they say "unlimited traffic" specially if the hosting is so cheap, unlimited is usually an amount they consider fair monthly usage a bit like  unlimited texting on mobile phones, I know loads of people that have been caught out and ended up with scary bills, you get charged on a daily basis and a lot more than the regular bill.
Luckily mine just shuts the site down, I hate to think what the bill would of been like otherwise 

[ad7venture]

Tumetsu: There's a tutorial for flixel I bookmarked a while back.

It uses flex.  I don't have any bookmarks for AS3 tutorials. 

[Kickaha]

I modified the HTML wrapper I used at http://www.alofmethbin.com/h10/builds/build1/index.html, and it 'worked' on a XP virtual machine after I installed the Flash plugin.  There is probably something wrong with the ActionScript code, but it'll be helpful if anyone can check they still get the same problem as before.  If it works you get a picture of a front door.

[Imari]

I see a door!   It opened the image very quickly... about half a sec.  Just FYI,  It takes up about 5/6 of the left side of my screen on a pale blue gray background and with the rest of the screen white.  It's a static image, so far as I can tell.   (I'm on W7 32 bit on this particular computer.)

[Kickaha]

Thanks for trying that Imari - your (and everyone else's) help is appreciated!  It is a static image, so rather a waste of Flex and Flash to just achieve that.

I don't know how big to make the image, the smaller the better for the web, but for a game using digital photographs the bigger the better . . .

[NigeC]

when doing PSP games you use png with 16bit compression, you don't lose any quality, but I've not tried with a hi res image
640 x 480 usually run well, I prefer 800x 600 but load times rapidly increase.
From the reactions I got people would rather wait for the game to load at start up than inbetween scenes

[ad7venture]

From the reactions I got people would rather wait for the game to load at start up than inbetween scenes

I think that too, although it's good to experiment.  If you can keep load times low enough, it would probably be all right for high speed connections.  Like you said, Kickaha, it's just best to experiment at first and not worry too much about those things.  The important thing is getting familiar with the library.  It's a pretty strange deal for me and it's taking quite a while.  I like Java a lot better, that's for sure.

[Tumetsu]

Tumetsu: There's a tutorial for flixel I bookmarked a while back.

It uses flex.  I don't have any bookmarks for AS3 tutorials. 

Yeah, thanks I was just thinking whether it would be wise to first learn a bit about AS rather than diving straighly into using a library like Flixel 

[ad7venture]

Yeah, thanks  I was just thinking whether it would be wise to first learn a bit about AS rather than diving straighly into using a library like Flixel 

That kind of depends if you've had much language experience.  If you have, it wouldn't be a big deal.  If you haven't and as3 is your first language experience, then I would recommend finding a book and going through it.  Finding tutorials on the net probably wouldn't be good enough.  It might be, because you are mostly calling Flixel library functions, but personally, I would rather go through a book myself.  You may find a book at a local library since it has been around for a few years now.  You would have to make sure it focused on using Flex, rather than Flash and it was aimed at a beginning programmer assuming that's what you are.  I know you've written at least one game, but some game kits like Gamemaker don't use much language.

[Lumlicious]

I learned flash by signing up for a 1 month subscription (about $25) to lynda.com and basically watched as many tutorials as I could.  They have tons of beginner to advanced flash tutorials plus lots of flex tutorials.  I would recommend it to someone who wants to learn flash/flex quickly, without taking classes or buying tons of books.