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3.5Cats_AndHalfAFish

FlashDevelop.

October 16, 2014 game dev
A free and open source ActionScript3 editor.

Looking for alternatives to Flash Pro CC, I found FlashDevelop, a free and open source ActionScript3 editor.

I have to say that getting everything set up correctly was not straightforward. Most of the documentation I was able to find, seemed a bit outdated.
But in the end, I got it running on both Windows7 & Windows8.
This is what I did (actually quite simple) :

  • download & install jre 1.8.0_25 32-bit (FD requires the JRE 1.6+ 32-bit version)
  • download & install FlashDevelop 4.6.4
  • in FD : tools > install software > check 'air sdk + asc 2.0' > install
    (asc 2.0 is the newest compiler)
  • in FD : tools > install software > check 'Flash Player (SA)' > install
    Notice the installation path displayed on top of the window. In my case, it points to ...\AppData\Local\FlashDevelop\Apps.
  • in FD : tools > program settings > FlashViewer > External Player Path >
    make sure this points to the installation path from the previous step, and find the flashplayer.exe file : ...\flashsa\15.0.0\flashplayer_15_sa_debug.exe.
  • in FD : Project > new project > AS3 > choose a name & location, and make sure the 'create directory' is checked.
    FD creates the new project ... > press the blue arrow in the menu to run the project in debug mode. You should see an 'Adobe Flash Player' popup window with a white background.
    Close the player window to stop debugging. You can now start using the FD editor to create AS3 projects.

Screenshot : FlashDevelop editor.

Next, I started looking into some open source libraries for game development. This is what I found :

  • FlashPunk : free AS3 library for developing 2D Flash games.
  • Starling : cross platform game engine.
  • Flixel : free AS3 game library.
  • Away3D : open source, real time 3D engine for the Flash Platform.


I will try them out, & let you know what I think ...