Flash Development

[SumDood]

So I'm wanting to develop a Flash Game. I've built a 'prototype' in javascript, but I want to make the move to Flash for better features, experience, etc. Like many programmers, I'm cheap thrifty, so I'm hoping to go the free route. I've found FlashDevelop, which looks promising. Does anyone have any experience with this or any other free flash IDE? Would I be better off spending the $20/month for Adobe's official product?

Also, any information about the legal aspect of creating games would be appreciated. I believe video games themselves cannot be copyrighted, but certain aspects can.

 

[ceptimus]

The coding part of Flash is free anyway - it's only the 'paint/animation' tool that's not.

For lots of Flash games, you wouldn't need the graphics tools anyway as you would be drawing the screen direct from your code - and for things like backgrounds and small graphic patches you can easily import graphics created outside Flash (such as from your favourite paint program).

Look for guides on getting started with actionscript or flex. I used this guide a few years back when setting up flex on Ubuntu, but there are similar ones for other O.S. - Windows or OSX.

Flash is a platform that is in decline. Maybe you should go straight to HTML 5 games (essentially javascript with a few add-ons).

 

[paulhutch]

While the name of the game (as with all product names) can not be copyrighted (names can only be trademarked), all the unique game text (including source code), images, video and audio can be copyrighted.

 

[oody]

You might want to check out swish at swishzone.com, which offers what many consider an easier way to make flash pages. I played with it for the free trial period a few years ago, and got a few interesting things writ.

 

[jeremyp]

Flash is a platform that is in decline. Maybe you should go straight to HTML 5 games (essentially javascript with a few add-ons).

Even Adobe sees HTML5 and Javascript as the way forward. They were going to move their Flex told (Flash for "Grown ups") to be able to emit HTML5.