Question

I have decided to get back into flash development, and when I last left (shortly after adobe had purchased Macromedia), AS3 was relatively new onto the scene.

I’ve got FlashDevelop just now, which is purported to be one of the best (and free) IDEs for AS3, however, I notice it does not come with a built in drawing platform like flash 8 or its predecessors did.

Doesn’t this defeat the “vector” style usability of flash? How does it affect the built in hit-test methods? This seems to rob actionscript of all the advantages I’ve experienced in the past, and I am wondering how exactly people are using it nowadays and if I should be changing my expectations.

Thanks for your input.

Answer 1

There are more ways than the Flash IDE authoring tools to use graphics in flash. The Flash IDE is probably the easiest way to use if you are designing hand drawn animations, though I’m sure there are libraries that can read other vector based graphic formats. It really depends on what you want to do.

• Complex vector graphics can be created with the Graphics API (lineTo, drawCircle, setPixel …)
  • computed images (fractals, graphs, plotting, abstract generated art)
  • scalable, distortable graphics
  • prototyping
• Bitmaps are used frequently
  • textures, photos, background images
  • image manipulation
  • non-scalable graphics
• 3D models and animations
  • usually created using other application and imported with AS
• Create graphics in the Flash IDE and use them with FlashDevelop
  • easy animations
  • Flash ‘hand drawn look’ vector graphics

Externally created assets can be integrated with tools like swfmill. Some animations can be created by tweening libraries. Bitmap animations are usually many ‘sprites’ that are displayed sequentially. There is no difference with the hit tests, you can still use the same methods.