FlashPunk AS3 Library

January 10, 2010 12:32 AM

Howdy, Flash game developers! Remember flixel? Well, a new raster-based ActionScript 3 library has just been released: FlashPunk by Chevy Ray Johnston, creator of Skullpogo and Beacon.

TIGSource thread with tons of info, including the technical differences between FlashPunk and flixel. Here's an engine demo.

posted by archagon (21 comments total)

Okay, I'm pretty sure we covered this when you posted flixel a while ago, but while Metafilter is certainly above-average in terms of tech-savvy, posts of libraries for a programming language might not fly here.

In other words, show us the damn games, not an Actionscript library and a Youtube video of a demo of said library.
posted by Jimbob at 3:02 AM on January 10, 2010 [1 favorite]

Woo-HOO! It's half past four in the morning on a Sunday - LET'S DEVELOP SOME FLASH GAMES!
posted by koeselitz at 3:33 AM on January 10, 2010 [3 favorites]

Jimbob - couldn't disagree more. I almost never play flash games but am extremely interested in how they're written and the technologies developers are using generally.

I'm one of those weirdos that watches a movie and at the end of it can't remember the names of lead characters or actors, but can explain at length the type of film stock (or digital methods) that were used in the production and why they were picked.

More often than not the how it was done is more interesting and enjoyable for me that the what was done.

And I'm a metafilter user. And there are (some) others like me.
posted by samworm at 4:42 AM on January 10, 2010 [5 favorites]

While I take your point, Mr Samworm, any game development news is aklways bettter if there is a game behind it...
posted by Sparx at 5:22 AM on January 10, 2010

Woo! I love flixel, but it's nice to have options. Thanks for posting this.
posted by GameDesignerBen at 5:39 AM on January 10, 2010

"...while Metafilter is certainly above-average in terms of tech-savvy, posts of libraries for a programming language might not fly here."


...while Metafilter is certainly above-average in terms of sports savvy, posts of minutia of your favorite sport might not fly here.

...while Metafilter is certainly above-average in terms of music savvy, posts of 40 year old blues recordings might not fly here.

...while Metafilter is certainly above-average in terms of film savvy, posts about the making of some Kubrick film might not fly here.

Yeah, I'm not super interested in Flash libraries myself but that's a pretty poor argument against posting about them.
posted by majick at 6:25 AM on January 10, 2010 [5 favorites]

I'm not sure this makes for a great MeFi post, since I can't program shit, much less a game, but woot! Better flash games!

I'm cool with being unproductive if I'm having fun! Being unproductive is my natural state!
posted by mccarty.tim at 6:44 AM on January 10, 2010

posts of _____ might not fly here

You know doesn't fly here? Pooping in thread on posts you happen to not be interested in.
Flagging your comment and this one as not relevant.
posted by freebird at 8:29 AM on January 10, 2010

Flag it and move on! Given that the flixel post was pretty successful, I thought people might be interested in this, too.
posted by archagon at 8:45 AM on January 10, 2010

I love it when game developers publish their source. I find it really interesting to see how others have organized their code: how they structure game logic, what classes they create, etc. The TIGSource thread is particularly illuminating.

flixel's structure, to me, seemed quite messy-- it looked very much like something that had evolved and grown crufty. I didn't think a beginner would be able to understand it and a more experienced developer would have their own solutions. But to my surprise, at least some people have started using it and made complete working games.

This one seems much cleaner, better commented and easier to understand. But it lacks a game demonstrating it, which may make it less desirable, since a beginner can't just take a working game and start messing with it to see what stuff does.
posted by justkevin at 9:00 AM on January 10, 2010

[Folks, take the metacommentary to metatalk if this is a discussion you need to keep having.]
posted by cortex at 9:24 AM on January 10, 2010

I wonder how easy this is to do. The thing that turned me off from Flixel was that I was developing outside of Flash using other tools. Granted, there's a darn good reason for that too.

Hmm, I only have 2.5 hours before I have to go anywhere, I wonder how long it takes for me to make pong.
posted by hellojed at 9:48 AM on January 10, 2010

After developing one (1) flash game, in which the hardest part was getting the collision going and then everything after that was rapid-prototyping, flow-inducing, hey-let's-add-this-feature-with-only-three-variables, I was very excited about this.

But then I read you had to use another IDE (on Windows! or Virtualized!), and considering how basic my level of Flash expertise is, that seems like just asking for trouble. Oh well.
posted by Brainy at 10:21 AM on January 10, 2010

Hey Brainy, I've been following this tutorial to get the environment up and running. It's kinda sorta easy.
posted by hellojed at 10:35 AM on January 10, 2010

Count me as interested! Plus, we got to rock out to Man Man over a crazy 8-bit game video. What's not to like?
posted by buriednexttoyou at 11:20 AM on January 10, 2010

Hrm. From their code examples, this doesn't look correct:

public class Main extends Sprite {
  public function Main():void
...

AS3 constructors don't have returns, void or otherwise.

That said, I'm always up for a new AS library!
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 2:36 PM on January 10, 2010

(from hellojed's link)
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 2:36 PM on January 10, 2010

As someone trying to get his head around Actionscript for university I think this post is the Bizzle's Knizzles. And its going straight into my Favrizzles.
posted by AzzaMcKazza at 3:36 PM on January 10, 2010 [1 favorite]

Stuff like this is especially interesting to me given Adobe's Open Screen Project, which apparently has google's support in anticipation of Flash 10.1 support for the Nexus One. People have wildly varied opinions about flash as a content platform, but I'm anticipating flash being a huge player in the smartphone app game at some point very soon. Smartphone technology has advanced so heavily since the iPhone came out that we're already at the point where platform compatibility is a very real problem that app developers who want to reach as many users as possibly have to face. Flash could be a solution to that soon.

Imagine being able to create a game with a framework such as this (tailored to be easily playable on touchscreens, of course) and being able to deploy it on the next generation iPhones, Blackberrys, Palm and Android-enabled phones all at once. I've got a bit of Flash/Actionscript experience from when I was a much less responsible website designer, and I'm seriously wondering if I should be reading up on and learning as much about ActionScript 3.0 and MXML as I can. This could really be big.
posted by kryptondog at 10:27 AM on January 11, 2010

Well I tried it. Unfortunately it's not very well documented, the original writer of the library has a smattering of tutorials but so far. It's quite easy to set up, though.

I also tried Flixel, having figured out the rest of the steps for AS3 development, and it's a bit trickier but has much more stuff written up about it. I'm going to wait a while for the community to mature before I dive into FlashPunk.
posted by hellojed at 10:46 AM on January 11, 2010

Yeah, it's still very much in development, though the forums have a ton of tips and (unofficial) tutorials.
posted by archagon at 2:59 PM on January 11, 2010