You can do so much these days using only free and Open Source tools (although I couldn’t surive without the Flash IDE). I’ve been collecting a list of the best ones – apologies to Mac users, some of these are Windows only.
- FlashDevelop. Up there with FDT and FlexBuilder as one of the best ways to write ActionScript. I use it together with the Flash IDE (using the IDE for layout, animation and compiling), but it also works with the official free Flex SDK and with unofficial free alternatives MTASC, swfmill and haXe, so you can create Flash games without spending any money at all. If you’ve ever used Microsoft’s excellent Visual Studio, this is the closest thing for Flash developers. FlashDevelop knows the contents of all your classes and provides amazing code completion that seems to know what you want to do before you know yourself. This also gives another good reason to use static typing if you’re not already.
- Paint.NET. Lots of people know that Gimp is a popular free alternative to PhotoShop, but I much prefer the simplicity and ease of use of Paint.NET – it’s easily as good as PhotoShop for doing simple tasks like cropping an image. Also, for a open source tool for creating vector graphics, check out Inkscape – it looks pretty handy if you don’t have Illustrator or the Flash IDE. It exports SVG, which I believe you can include directly in Flex SDK projects.
- Audacity – for recording and editing your game’s sounds. To create wicked retro sound effects check out sfxr!
- Blender – a powerful free alternative to 3D Studio Max and Maya. Plug-ins are available to export directly to PaperVision3D and Away3d – sweet!
- Subversion, Tortoise SVN and WinMerge – invaluable tools for managing your source code. As a recent convert, I highly recommend you do this!
- Easy PHP and Red 5 free server-side environments for developing high score boards and multi-user games, etc.
- Eclipse or NetBeans – primarily Java development IDEs (useful when developing SmartFox Server extensions), they also support a range of other languages, such as PHP. The notepad days are truly over – get an IDE!
- FileZilla – you’ll want to upload your game at some point – I recommend using this!
- Firefox. Firefox is a great place to test Flash games, thanks to useful plug-ins like FlashTracer, LiveHTTPHeaders and Tamper Data.
- Open Office – use the word processor to spell check your instructions screen, and the spreadsheet application to count your piles of money!
That’s your lot! More open-source Flash projects can always be found at OS Flash.
This is a repost of a helpful article Iain wrote originally on his blog which he has graciously given us permission to share with MochiLand readers. I’d also recommend checking out Badim’s follow-up on this articlefor some useful additions. Do you have any other useful tools to add? Let us know in the comments! -Ada
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Thats a nice list that you got in there!
That looks like my toolbox, mostly! :)
I’d also recommend http://pixlr.com/ for a photoshop-on-the-go replacement :)
I used FlashDevelop, that’s great!
I’d also like to recommend Tile Studio http://tilestudio.sourceforge.net/ for drawing sprites, tiles and making maps. You can define how graphics and maps are exported. There is a little example for Flash (using haXe) on the site.
Nice post, but want about encryption?
Are there any good open source tools for protecting your code from decoders?
Cheers
Simon, about encryption you can use Mochi encryption and version control.
Iain, great article, thanks for sharing. Just wanted to add that if in case you don’t use FlashTracer (Firefox plugin) you can use BareTail instead which does the same job as flash tracer plus other couple of useful things (like highlighting specific words).
I wrote a “tutorial” in the mochiads forums.
salut
Inkscape (www.inkscape.org) is my opensource vector editor of choice. You can import and embed the SVGs using flash develop right into your flash project. There are downsides (still waiting for gradient support) but overall, it’s a solid free alternative.
Flash Develop looks interesting. I’ve always wanted a really good IDE for flash.
Nice, they are very useful for me.
Specially those which are realted to the multi-player game.
Thank at all.
I think someone asked about protection against decoders. I just checked out a few swf decompilers. Don’t sweat it. Decompiled code is more than a bitch to read — its impossible. You might be able to find a cheat or something or rip graphics easily — but stealing your code is not a worry — at least not with the few decompilers I’ve played with!
I came across this post on the topic of flash obfuscation. It might be worth at least a glance..;)
http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878_11-5111586.html
About SFXR (generator of 8-bit sound), you have a good archive here :
http://woolyss.com/chipmusic-generators.php?s=sfxr
Cheers!