Best for game design, Flash or Flash Builder?

Question

For sometime, I have used to make some simple games with Flash Professional. But lately, I want to do some advanced stuffs such as build some facebook game or mobile game. By searching the internet, i found that there is something called flash builder and it seems to work kinda well with exporting the project into apk files or connecting API. However, Flash can also do those jobs, too. So which holds more advantages to build a professional game? Flash or Flash Builder? What is the big deal of using hxml in a game project? Can I export my game project to Flash builder and continue developing it?

I'm just a novice so really hope to have some advice from you guys. Thx a lot.

Answer 1

To my mind, Flash Builder has two main capabilities: 1) it is GUI oriented (through Flex, an extension of the Flash library) 2) it is a programming tool for developpers

By 1), I mean it provides capabilities to very quickly create menus, buttons, windows, and things like that. More interesting, Flex helps greatly when the screen is resized. With Flash, you have to process window/screen resize by hand if you don't want a mere scale, but Flex allows more possibilities by providing containers to place components.

According to that, is Flash Builder useful to develop a game? I would say no. Well, actually, it depends: sometimes, you would like a clean configuration menu, dialog boxes and button and so on, so Flash Builder could help. But for a pure graphical point of view, it is not very useful.

With 2), Flash Builder provides tools to quickly code. But you have to learn these tools. Code completion, code management, correction as you type your code, automatic compilation, "Easy" integration with source code control with Eclipse plugins, ... these are tools for developpers.

You do not really need MXML. It can provide some useful tools, like states (you define a "start" state, a "game" state, a "game over" state"), but it is not so difficult to have that with Flash Pro by loading/removing some movie clips or SWF files.

About exporting a FLA project for Flash Builder: beware, Flash Builder cannot work with the timeline and the graphics from Flash Pro. You can use them. But you will still need Flash Pro to modify them. Flash Builder can help to type your Flash Pro code, but that is all.

Personnaly, I use both. Flash Pro is used to create animations, to draw some graphical elements, to set them in the screen. Flash Builder is used to quickly type my code, to add some GUI components.

But it is not straightforward: you have to learn how both tools can interact, and the documentation is sometimes confusing. You must have a kind of well defined methodology.

For very graphical games, my conclusion would be to stuck with Flash Pro. The CS5 version has better code completion capabilities than CS4: it is not at the level of Flash Builder, but it already is of a great help. Flash Builder is rather for full time developpers.

Answer 2

In my experience, when you're trying to develop a complex game or something that takes a lot of custom code along with a lot of custom graphics, it's best to leverage the strengths of both applications.

Flash Professional is great for creating the graphics and doing simple scripting, like stop(); but really difficult to do a lot of heavy coding in.

Flash Builder is kind of the opposite. It is a true coding environment and makes ActionScript development far easier but is much harder to use for working with graphics.

These two can actually work together quite easily. In Flash Builder, you can create Flash Professional projects that will publish through the Flash Professional application. You just need to associate the project with the right .fla file. There's no need to export anything in either direction.

I would ignore mxml (I assume hxml was a typo in your question) unless you have a need to use the Flex framework. Flex has an additional learner's curve and a fair amount of overhead, so your final product would be larger in size than it would otherwise.

Answer 3

It depends on what type of game. Most "Flash games" are best done in Flash. But a very stats and UI-intensive game (strategy, RPG, etc) could benefit greatly from using Flex (w/Flash Builder) if you're willing to customize the skins of the components.

Answer 4

I have used both programs in depth, and I like Flash Builder much better. At first I was like "what the f*** is this mxml crap I have to learn?" but it is a breeze to learn almost effortlessly. Flash Builder is much more intuitive and comfortable to use than Flash Pro and can do almost everything Flash Pro can except animation.

The two programs can work together very well because they were designed that way. I think it is important to note that Flash Pro can be a real pain the ass, from simple stuff to more complicated things. You just need to know Flash Pro really, really well and have a lot of experience to be comfortable with it.

Flash Builder is the opposite, everything smooth and easy to create and implement. I spent hours and hours very frustrated trying to do stuff in Flash Pro because you have to be just short of a master/expert at it to use it comfortably.

Anybody can fumble through Flash Pro and spend hours trying to create a simple user interface if you want but avoid the headache and go with Builder. Flash Pro is for "Pro's" simple as that, it's very powerful for animating if you have the time and patience to learn how to deal with Symbols, Graphics, Movie-Clips, and all the other terminology that that gets confusing as f*** to anybody but the expert.

Unless you really want to spend a lot of time learning Flash Pro and even more time trying to keep up and maintain the knowledge of how to use it, GO A DIFFERENT ROUTE. With Flash Pro you have to be all-in, not just using it occasionally or you will end up very upset, i promise you.

Flash builder is wonderful for cross-platform UIs and data-driven apps and websites.

Oh and the "overhead" that one of the replies mentioned about, there are ways to strip down all that overhead so that the Flash Builder final app will be tiny. You do need to pay attention and make some adjustments when finally creating the project and that way you can customize how much overhead, if any exists in the final compiled app. It is very easy to do and a quick google search will get you up and going with what boxes to check at compile-time to strip the project down. I have seen some very complex FLEX apps that ended up quite small, so no need to worry there.

If you can, get the "Flex 4 Cookbook", it's great. It's an O'reilly brand book. I love it, it's priceless. Flash Builder also makes creating mobile apps for almost any mobile OS effortless.