Looking for a bit of info

I’m currently a bit interested in getting into developing flash games, and I’d like to know a couple of things… First off, just to give you a little idea of what you’re dealing with, I’m a 15 year old homeschooler. Although my age is lacking, I do have quite a bit more knowledge than most my age. I’m very good with math, which is partially the reason I want to do this. I enjoy the number crunching that something like this (I imagine) would have.

1. Would it be possible for me to become strictly based on programming with my work or would there need to be some sort of artistic values associated with it? What I’d like to be able to do is be in a (minimum of) 3 man team, me programming, one guy doing the art, and one doing sound. Now I don’t care who would do the story line if that’s the type of game we’re going for, or just the idea itself. We might need a 4th for that as well, who knows.

2. Are there any free programs I can use that will get me acquainted with the Flash interface? I don’t mean layed out exactly like Flash, but something that’s easy enough to use that if I switched from ______ programming to Flash that I’d only need to look for a tool every here and there.

3. What kind of time does it take for a team of about 3 to complete a game that could measure up to…I dunno… Sonny 1 I guess? It took the team that did that quite a while to put out 2 after I heard about it, so I imagine quite some time, especially with a smaller amount of people than what I imagined would have been working on Sonny 2.

4. Any additional information would be greatly appreciated. Links, Information on what I should be looking into, videos, whatever, it’d all be awesome.

Thanks for your time.
Mana~

If you’re going to be focused on the programming, I would recommend not using Flash at all. Seriously, it’s a pretty poor IDE for coding in.

Instead, I would recommend grabbing the Flex SDK, and using an IDE like FlashDevelop to code in – not only is FD far better than Flash for writing code, it’s entirely free when used in conjunction with Flex.

Originally posted by Jabor:

If you’re going to be focused on the programming, I would recommend not using Flash at all. Seriously, it’s a pretty poor IDE for coding in.

Instead, I would recommend grabbing the Flex SDK, and using an IDE like FlashDevelop to code in – not only is FD far better than Flash for writing code, it’s entirely free when used in conjunction with Flex.

Hehe..I started with FlashDevelop tonight. I already had Flash Pro, but in order to try Flixel it would be easier with FlashDevelop. Now that I’ve started, I’m beginning to like Flash Develop quite a bit because I never needed the stage in the first place.

I recommend getting "FlashDevelop"www.flashdevelop.org and starting with the game engine Flixel. They have a lot of tutorials and can get you started pretty easily.

1. You can become strictly a programmer, but getting an art guy might be difficult if you have zero experience and nothing to show them. Then again, its usually artists looking for programmers so it might be easier this way.

3. I’m guessing, but probably a few months. For a team of beginners, more like several months.

Hello, welcome to the wonderful world of flash!

1) It is very possible, and it is also a done thing. I myself am a programmer with very little art skill. The problems I’ve run across is that it is difficult to get a partner with a long enough attention span to finish a game, and when that does happen they haven’t been sticking around for more projects… hopefully you’ll have better luck than me in finding a decent, permanent partner. Ideas are easy enough to come by. If you can’t come up with one on your own, lots of people post free ideas on these forums or over at Newgrounds. Or just send me a whisper – i have a ton of ideas that I don’t have time to turn into games.

2) When I started out I used the 30-day trial of Adobe Flash CS3. Then I loved it so much I got myself the full version. They probably have the same deal with CS4, but you should probably listen to the others who know better.

3) It will take a while to pump out a quality game. The first alpha that I made (Champion’s Fist; you can see it in my profile) took about 8 months to get to where it is. If I worked at it more dilligently and I didn’t have to go through 3 artists I could have probably had it done in 4 or 5 though. That’s with a bit of a background in programming and mathematics – if you don’t have a background in programming then you have a lot of learning to do.

4) The best resource for learning flash that I’ve found is the help document that comes with CS3. It is thorough and comprehensive and goes through basically everything you need to know. If you just stick with that and ask LOTS of stupid questions in these forums (and at the newgrounds forums… shhhhh!) then that’s all you really need.

Start using Arrays as soon as possible, and move into using Classes quickly too. Those are two of the things that seem to give beginners the most trouble, but once mastered they will make your programming tasks SO much easier.

Best of success!

sorry homeschoolers are banend from making games.

:p obviously I’m joking I just thought it was funny how you mentioned that as if it mattered at all :) i know people muchyounger than you who’ve come up with games with ~40k plays, so stop worrtying and get learning :)