Flash Actionscript 3.0 is Hard blog - jrjellybeans

So, we decided to change things up a little bit. We recently spoke about the changing video game industry in our article about EA's Battlefield Heros (check out our article HERE). And, well, we decided to try to make our next game in Flash.

Luckily, we've learned quite a few things from using Game Maker. In fact, we've only been working with Flash for about 2-3 days, and I think that we can already make a SIMPLE platforming game (oh, by the way, the new game is going to be a simple platformer - and it MIGHT be FREE!). We started learning by using Michael James Williams Simple Avoider Game Tutorial. It's a fantastic tutorial, and it really helps you get started with Actionscript 3.0! Just after finishing that alone, we're pretty much prepared to make a platformer (a simple one, however).

Being the ambitious bunch that we are, however, we're going to take things a little further. Now, our first Flash game isn't going to be anything major, but we are going to need to know how to do things more advanced than making that simple avoider game. And, figuring out how to learn these tricks has been tough...

Currently, we're using the forums at kirupa for our Flash information. Now, I'm not sure if that's the BEST place to do it as most of the people seem a bit more advanced than us :( But, overall, people have been friendly and supportive and have answered our questions quickly.

Interestingly enough, that exact thing is one of the things that drove us AWAY from Torque - ie having a community where we can ask lots of questions. There isn't a huge Torque 2D gaming community and we learn by using other people's example. We're not smart enough to do things on our own :(

One way or the other, Flash has been quite difficult. Yes, we expected it to be, but it really makes us appreciate Game Maker for all it's worth. Right now, we're building a simple level editor and that alone is making us want to pull out our hair.

Still... it's fun. It's an exciting challenge that we're really looking forward to. I don't know if it's because we've finished a game that we're quite proud of or just that we're ACTUALLY getting smarter, but we are getting the hang of things a bit more than the last time we tried to learn Flash.

Hopefully, we can get a working game within the next 3 months...