First off, Welcome to my first
Dev Journal Entry Number Ún. I’ll be documenting the process and my experience
in developing my first Mobile Game. I’m planning on having one entry per week
starting from this one, but, we’ll see how it goes from here.
I have two objectives with this
Dev Journal: (1) To keep everyone updated with the progress of our game, and
(2) teach anyone who is interested in making a game using Flash. I’ll be writing
this Journal with a style of Tutorial, so you’ll see links to resources and
references to where you can get more information about the subject I write
about. With that said, let’s hop in!
First I’m going to tell you what
our game is going to be about. I do not want to give away our game yet, but,
I’ll give you an idea. We’re making a puzzle game. The player
will be faced with multiple puzzles that he/she must solve before the timer
runs out. These puzzles will be randomly selected and some will be randomly
generated.
Now that we have the idea for the game, now
comes our tools for making it, which are: Adobe
Flash CS6, FlashDevelop and Axel the ActionScript 3 Framework for
Games.
FlashDevelop: This is the program we’ll be using to do the programming
of the game. This is an amazing code editor for AS 3 as it offers Code
Completion, Project Management, easy integration with Flash, it’s in constant
improvement and it’s supported by a great community. It’s also up to date with
the latest version of Flex and Adobe AIR, which is what we need if since we
want to make a mobile game with better compatibility. This is an Open Source
program so, it’s free to use.
Check out Flash Develop here: http://www.flashdevelop.org/
Adobe Flash Professional CS6: We’ll be using Flash CS6 to create
the assets for the game. Flash CS6 features tools that allow easy creation of
animated graphics and it can a generate sprite sheet as well. Additionally,
FlashDevelop offers great integration between Flash, so it makes it
easier.
This is a commercial program, I’m
not sure if you could still find Flash CS6 in the Adobe website, but, they do
offer their latest version called Adobe Flash CC (Creative Cloud).
You can acquire this program for a monthly subscription of $19.99.
More Information here: http://www.adobe.com/products/flash.html?promoid=KFOHS
Axel (AS3 Framework): The Axel framework is what we’ll be using as the
game engine. If you’re looking to make a games in flash whether platformer or
shooters, this is a good framework to use. It’s easy to integrate into your
project, it’s easy to understand and it’s well documented. It also has an
active community, so, any questions in using the Framework, you’ll get an
answer for sure. This is a free library to use for both commercial and personal
projects.
Check out Axel here: http://axel.io/
It is possible to just use Flash
CS6 and Axel to make the game, but, Flash CS6 only supports Adobe AIR 3.4. The
latest version of Adobe AIR is 18 (as of writing this entry). This will limit
you with features with Google Play (for Android) and the App Store (for Apple
Devices). So, to use the latest version of Adobe AIR you have to compile the
game in FlashDevelop.
So, this pretty much covers the
tools we’re using to make the game. In my next Journal Entry, we’ll go into details
about setting up the Programs listed here as well as setting up the Library for
use and more!
If you have any questions, leave
a comment.
Thanks for reading! We’ll see you
next time!
-GerLuNiMa