[AS3] Creating a standalone game in Flash

[duran3d]

According to a client's petition, I'm considering creating a standalone game in Adobe Flash CS3 (via Publish Settings->Windows Proyector/Mac Proyector) that can be distributed as a standalone game (so no need for web browser) for commercial purposes.

This game would be a graphical adventure in 2D (or may be fake 3D) to be
played in fullscreen or windowed mode (not sure about that). As a very raw estimation the game could contain, lets say, 100 different screens, each of them with a different background and several characters and items plus the GUI.

As far as I know, using [Publish Settings->Windows Proyector (.exe)] to create the executable will create a single .exe file containing all of the game resources, so I fear the .exe file will be huge.

So my question is: Is this a good idea? Has anybody tried something like this? Do you think the final .exe file could be a problem in terms of size and/or performance?

Thanks.

[finaiized]

Well, Flash never has been great for stand-alone games I guess, but as long as you optimize all your graphics it will be fine. Your file size will be quite big though- but look at other 2d games and they're files will be big too. Uploading it online as a .swf will probably make a similar sized file anyways.

[bluemagica]

the difference will be aprrox 100kb from your swf, in a average situation! However, I would suggest you use AIR while creating a desktop app instead of publish as exe!

[runawayprisoner]

I hope you are familiar with the concept of using... a loader to load external data into the game?

Basically you can have small bits and pieces of the game data, in different files for, say, different scenarios/stages, and you can load/unload them as the game goes. That should take care of the size problem. Otherwise, a Flash file that is larger than 5 megabytes in size is just plain ugly in my opinions.

So... my suggestion is to cut it up into multiple files. Unsightly as that might be, it would potentially reduce memory usage as well as performance hit significantly.

Performance should not be a problem as the projector is more like a Flash Player with a .swf file embedded. Likely, you might want to use AIR to have more control over the interface (at least hide the ugly stuffs that might reveal that the game was done using Flash).