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jano_alex_es
Inspiring
July 23, 2012
Question

Super noob questions about cs6 and air project

  • July 23, 2012
  • 1 reply
  • 709 views

Hi, I'm trying to pass a complicated game I developed few months ago with CS5.0 for desktop and I wanted to try, at least, how it worked in a android/ios simulator... but it's becoming something harder than I though.

1) How I know if I'm developing in flash or flex? I only see "flash" or "air"; should I try with flash builder instead? is it better for games development?

2) Why do we have the option to publish as swc if it's a mobile app? If it's IOS is supposed to created a IOS compilated file... so... swc??

3) I'm having really bad times with all the swf and swc I had before. Seems like it doesn't read the sfw in runtime, publish them as swc and add them in the as3 project's configuration doesn't work either. Any sort of known issue?

4) Can I ask you about tutorials or any sort of information? not about creating animations and launch them in the simulator, that's fine. About managing project and this sort of "more advanced" stuff. I don't find any sort of information anywhere!

thank you!!!

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1 reply

T
tanenbaumm
Inspiring
July 23, 2012

Lot of questions. Let me give you some quick answers:

1? Flash is a runtime, Flex is a development framework. So all Flex projects run in the Flash runtime, but not all Flash projects are Flex. If you're building in CS6, you're pretty much guaranteed to be Flash, not Flex.

2) Ios Apps publish to .ipa files, but while you might be working on an Ios app, you might still author a swc, which is a library file.

3) I doubt there's a "known issue" for a failure to read a swf (or any of the rest). Far more likely that there's something incorrect in your implementation, but of course that requires a far deeper investigation (probably on its own thread).

4) A quick search on Google for "Air Flash IOS tutorial" gives me a raft of tutorials for Ios development in Flash. It's a bit of a complicated process if you've not done it before (starting with getting registered as an Apple dev — though you can probably use the simulator without being a registered dev).

Best of luck!

Colin Holgate
Colin Holgate
Inspiring
July 23, 2012

There is a known issue with reading in swfs, on iOS you can't use ActionScript in external swfs. I don't know if making a swc would solve that problem, but it's just easier to have MovieClips in your library that do the same thing that the external swf would have done.

External swfs that don't use ActionScript work fine.

T
tanenbaumm
Inspiring
July 23, 2012

Sorry, I misinterpreted that part of the qustion. Yes, Colin is of course correct. Apple won't allow you to run any non-compiled code (C compiled, not AS-compiled) on IOS. So you can neither bundle a swf with the ipa nor call to a server to load a swf, if that swf contains any code whatsoever (even something as simple as a stop() action or a linkage identifier).

What you can do is embed a swf into your project, or link to your swc and use its assets in that way. This results in a single swf that gets compiled into your ipa, thus satisfying Apple's requirement.

Oh, and a little more on #1: You asked if you should use Flash Builder, and if it's better for games development. The answer is: "it depends". Most every "serious" dev I know develops in some sort of dedicated coding environment: FB, FDT (this is what I use principally), IntelliJ, FlashDevelop, emacs, etc. That said, I worked quite successfully in Flash for many years and its coding tools are adequate (arguably). If you start building large systems, though, you will probably rapidly get tired of the limited toolset and want to graduate to something with a bit more firepower.

<edit>

BTW...I'm talking about my experience, not passing judgement. Anyone who considers themselves a serious dev and yet codes in the Flash IDE, I respect your preference. If you consider yourself a serious dev and haven't *tried* working in another environment, I still respect you; but I also suggest you look at the advantages of other work environments.

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