Heeeya! not sure how many of you iPhone game developers on here create non-3D games… or have programmed for Adobe Flash… but I have an article that was just posted on insideRIA.com about combining your Flash → iPhone workflow.
Check it out when you get a chance:
http://www.insideria.com/2008/12/actionscript-to-cocoa---protot.html
PS. Sadly this article was written right before I purchased my copy of Unity last month… but I’ll make sure to give Unity a shoutout in my next one.
Although the idea is nice, I don’t see the real benefit on using Flash, instead might be better to work in the actual development language. One of the greatest benefits of Flash is how easy you can make animations and integrate them with your code, all in the same IDE. But when you have to export them as PNG, the aid is lost. Also the Flash vector designer is not that good, it’s pretty limited, and you might get better results with other tools like Photoshop, Illustrator, Corel Draw, etc. That’s why most Flash games look the same.
Also actionscript has its own bugs and optimization techniques that can’t be translated to other environments. Maybe creating very quick and featureless prototypes might be helpful, to get an idea of the whole work, but you can also do that in the target language with draft artwork.
It would be great to run Flash Lite directly, instead.
You’re absolutely right… that’s why the title of the article is “Prototyping in flash” … 80% of the target audience are Flash developers… so it would’ve been pretty useless introducing a tool for them to prototype in that they don’t normally use on a daily basis. The whole porting discussion was more about getting actionscript developers to understand that coding on the iPhone is a lot like coding in Flash.
All in all, it’s an introduction into iPhone development… and getting actionscript developers to easily transition themselves into iPhone programming by first letting them use their own tools.
It may sound strange… but it’s almost like reverse psychology (but not quite).
Actually myself and numerous other who use Flash for illustration would totally disagree with you. As a matter of fact how you adjust shapes and vectors in flash is very akin to sculpting with paint. The tool is not what makes all flash stuff “look the same”. It’s the artist.
:?: :?: :!: How is Flash any different than any other vector art application in that respect? Have you used Illustrator?
Totally agree, I have seen people doing great artwork in Paint (Windows). My point is that if you are thinking in Flash just to make the arts, as you have to export them as PNG for the iPhone, you might better look first into other graphic applications, that have more tools to work with. But what the artist feels comfortable with, that’s ok, i didn’t mean to start a Flash-vs-Graphics_Editor_X battle.