Open source flash development in 5 minutes!
There was a game development contest last weekend and the main goal was create a flash game in just 5 hours. Though I was not able to finish the game in the right time at least I had made a fast evolution in the opensource flash world. Basically, I’ve got a “Hello world!” message printed in a swf file fully created using only opensource tools. Below I’m going to explain the simple 5-minutes steps for you to get started.
I use 2 opensource programs: FlashDevelop, a well known actionscript editor and Haxe, the opensource compiler from Nicolas Canasse the same guy that created MTASC. Note that the FlashDevelop program have some dependencies that you may need to download, the .NET Framework and the Java runtime. But don’t worry, both are free.
First step, you can download the last version of FlashDevelop here and install it.
Then you just need to download the Haxe compiler here and install it.
Is everything installed? Great! Now we’ll just set up the Haxe configs and create our first project. Open the FlashDevelop and find in the menu Tools>Program Settings… or just type F10. The Program Settings window should open, let’s just configure the Haxe folder path. Click at HaxeContext in the plugins list, then you’ll see the options for the haxe compiler, just set the right path where the program was installed in the Haxe Path option, it should look like C:\[your windows program files]\Motion-Twin\haxe
Now we just need to create a new Haxe project and start the fun, in the menu choose the option Project>New Project… and then scroll down the list to find the Haxe options, choose AS3 Project and then name it and find an empty folder to create the project, click OK when ready.
Like magic your project is created and now you just need to browse through the classes at the right panel of the program and find the Main class of the application, it is already configured to Haxe standards and you just need to open it and type inside the main() function the following: trace(”Hello World”);. Now you just press the Test Movie button in the toolbar or press the infamous ctrl+ENTER shortcut.
Ta-dah! Like magic you should see your first opensource-generated swf in front of you. Now you go ahead and dive into Haxe’s world to find all the greatest features this compiler provides!
October 7th, 2008 at 11:12 am
It’s been a couple of months since I got started in using the FlashDevelop, but instead of Haxe I chose Adobe’s Flex SDK. And by following a simple game tutorial I ended up with a nice game and then I went on to creating my own game. Its development is paused for now, but I intend to go back to it soon!
Anyway, congratulations for your new blog!