First off, Welcome to my first Dev Journal Entry Number Ún. I’ll be documenting the process and my experience in developing my first Mobile Game. I’m planning on having one entry per week starting from this one, but, we’ll see how it goes from here.

I have two objectives with this Dev Journal: (1) To keep everyone updated with the progress of our game, and (2) teach anyone who is interested in making a game using Flash. I’ll be writing this Journal with a style of Tutorial, so you’ll see links to resources and references to where you can get more information about the subject I write about. With that said, let’s hop in!

First I’m going to tell you what our game is going to be about. I do not want to give away our game yet, but, I’ll give you an idea. We’re making a puzzle game. The player will be faced with multiple puzzles that he/she must solve before the timer runs out. These puzzles will be randomly selected and some will be randomly generated.

Now that we have the idea for the game, now comes our tools for making it, which are: Adobe Flash CS6, FlashDevelop and Axel the ActionScript 3 Framework for Games.
 

FlashDevelop: This is the program we’ll be using to do the programming of the game. This is an amazing code editor for AS 3 as it offers Code Completion, Project Management, easy integration with Flash, it’s in constant improvement and it’s supported by a great community. It’s also up to date with the latest version of Flex and Adobe AIR, which is what we need if since we want to make a mobile game with better compatibility. This is an Open Source program so, it’s free to use.
>> Check out Flash Develop here: http://www.flashdevelop.org/

Adobe Flash Professional CS6: We’ll be using Flash CS6 to create the assets for the game. Flash CS6 features tools that allow easy creation of animated graphics and it can a generate sprite sheet as well. Additionally, FlashDevelop offers great integration between Flash, so it makes it easier.
This is a commercial program, I’m not sure if you could still find Flash CS6 in the Adobe website, but, they do offer their latest version called Adobe Flash CC (Creative Cloud). You can acquire this program for a monthly subscription of $19.99.
>> More Information here: http://www.adobe.com/products/flash.html?promoid=KFOHS

Axel (AS3 Framework): The Axel framework is what we’ll be using as the game engine. If you’re looking to make a games in flash whether platformer or shooters, this is a good framework to use. It’s easy to integrate into your project, it’s easy to understand and it’s well documented. It also has an active community, so, any questions in using the Framework, you’ll get an answer for sure. This is a free library to use for both commercial and personal projects.
>> Check out Axel here: http://axel.io/

It is possible to just use Flash CS6 and Axel to make the game, but, Flash CS6 only supports Adobe AIR 3.4. The latest version of Adobe AIR is 18 (as of writing this entry). This will limit you with features with Google Play (for Android) and the App Store (for Apple Devices). So, to use the latest version of Adobe AIR you have to compile the game in FlashDevelop.

So, this pretty much covers the tools we’re using to make the game. In my next Journal Entry, we’ll go into details about setting up the Programs listed here as well as setting up the Library for use and more!

If you have any questions, leave a comment.

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Thanks for reading! We’ll see you next time!