Creating Games in Flex

[heywazup99]

I'm a Flash Developer, with minimal experience in Flex and intermediate knowledge of OOP. I've created several engines within flash. My question comes to how do I go about creating a engine in flex. I've had alot of interest in the open multiplayer API that ImInLikeWithYou.com has created (check it out: developers.iminlikewithyou.com ) and from what I understand they use flex to create the entire games in Flex. My main question comes into how do go about creating art and most of all character sprites with in flex. In Flash it was simple, create each of your character's actions in a series of frames and link them them frame flags.(iminlikewithyou has an example of a game that would require dynamic sprites, it's called Hamster Battle) I really don't see anyway to do that in flex, but as I said before I don't have much experience with flex. If you could explain a little bit of this or resources that would help me in my pursuit.Thx.

[Peter Cowling]

Hi,

The flex _framework_ does not really add too much to game development.

The flex builder tool provides better access for working with actionscript 3, which is where game development on flash (beyond the basics) is really at.

With regards to the specifics:

1. there are a load of physics/maths classes in actionscript out there that would provide a good base for an engine if you want to roll your own. Probably, you could tailor an existing engine if you want...

2. your can create sprites/art in code. Or you can use images, and (pre) embed or load them into your application. One way to do the latter is to tie an xml list up with an image asset, and use this as the basis for loading your assets.

3. With actionscript 3, you can achieve movement and interaction in a much richer way than the frame linking approach you described. To get an insight into how this works, and a good overview on the subject, I would search for "actionscript 3" and "games".

HTH