Could my game design be developed in Flash?

[Limdallion]

So after hundreds of pages of design documentation and concept art, I'm just about ready to actually begin developing this little game project with a small team.

First of all, let me point out that I'm not a Flash developer. I dabbled a little bit in it years ago. I never really considered flash as a viable option for this game project. But last night I was discussing the idea with a friend, and he suggested something to me that I had previously not thought about - it could be doable in Flash. I was skeptical at first, but he pointed out several very useful advantages that Flash affords.

* Web-based. No messy downloads and installations. Much easier and safer to simply play through a browser.

* Easy updates. If I want to make changes to the game, or improved versions, I can make them on my end since it is web-based. This sort of game will likely require a lot of retroactive tinkering, so this is good.

* Cheap and easy development. He tells me there are lots of people experienced in flash programming and if I wanted to I might simply be able to spend a few thousand dollars to have it developed since the blueprints are detailed enough.

Of course, you're going to need to know what my game is like to help me with this. It's a turn-based RPG, pretty much along the lines of Final Fantasy 7. Except it will be 2D instead of 3D (for the most part, read on). The backgrounds are pre-rendered and static and so are the sprites. Now, if it's possible, I would like to have a simple invisible 3D mesh grid to automatically scale the size of sprites and handle lighting - but I am not married to this idea.

I keep hearing about advances made in Flash gaming, but I'm pretty ignorant about it. But I understand that Flash isn't very kind about allowing you to import extremely high res graphics and it's better to make them within Flash instead. That would be a pretty big sacrifice, but we'll see.

Also, I'm sure there are a lot of RPGs made with C and other languages so maybe there is a lot of open source C code that could be used in a non-flash game. Or maybe there is a lot of open source RPG code for Flash. Or maybe it could easily be converted. I don't know.

Your insight and wisdom is greatly appreciated. Let me know if I should give more details on anything.

[majicassassin]

Just kinda a random slew or responses:
1) 3d scaling is a visual trick, its not difficult to pull off with just a little thought
2) Flash can handle high-res well enough, its just if you plan on having it play in a browser you have to think deeply about how to intelligently preload content and similar... see the mmorpg Dofus for an example of this (they have the player install into a folder their large collection of their base images, then stream anything missing)...
3) You can make a fully functioning exe with projectors and similar (this will let you get by the lack of right click functionality and simialr)
4) Open source is open source... if you look hard enough for either flash or C you'll find something. The learning curve on Flash is much less than C (especially in terms of interacting with graphical devices and memory management)
5) Flash offers a 30 day trial, I recommend you and your development team sit down and use it to make a simple game that uses some concept from your actual game then see how you feel about it.

[Limdallion]

Those are pretty useful points. Thank you for replying.