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[ChevyRay]

I wrote a new tutorial today.

Tweening with TweenMax

TweenMax is a tweening library for ActionScript 3, and it’s something that gets auto-dropped into every single one of my game projects no matter what. TweenMax does a lot of things, but to put it shortly, it’s there to help you animate, move, transform, squish, and squash objects and sprites around for visual effect.

I highly recommend learning and making use of tweens! They're a highly efficient way to add quick visual effects to your game without much trouble, and while they can easily be overused ("WHY IS EVERYTHING BOUNCY!?"), the amount that they've helped my visual workflow when working on games is immense.

Enjoy.

[Richard Kain]

You mention key-value Objects in the tutorial. This might be a tad murky for some beginning programmers. For more information in the official AS3 documentation, users should search for "Associative Arrays." These are also often referred to as Hash Tables, but you won't see that term crop up in the AS3 API.

I personally had a bit of trouble with these fiddly structures the first time I ran across them in Flash programming. AS3 approaches them in a rather odd fashion. Most other languages have specific classes reserved for them, while AS3 repurposes a base class.

[ChevyRay]

Yeah I wanted to just scoot past 'em so people could just tween stuff, might edit it to link to that page so people can read if they want.

[Richard Kain]

Heh, just a personal hang-up I have. I often find that programming books I read often gloss over or barely mention surprisingly useful syntax. I have an enormous AS3 book that I read while I was learning the language, and it barely even mentioned Associative Arrays. Their application is a tad bit more limited than regular Arrays, but in the proper cases they are incredibly useful. A C++ book I was learning from had less than a paragraph devoted to the constructor list, a vital piece of syntax for more advanced inheritance.

How does TweenMax stack up to other tweening libraries? I've been using Actuate often with my Flash projects. While Actuate performs well and gets the job done, it doesn't have the kind of support I would want for more advanced scripted sequences.

[nikki]

it doesn't have the kind of support I would want for more advanced scripted sequences.

timelinelite could be used for the more advanced sequences (also by greensock and part of the tweenlite/tweenmax/eases/ etc )

[Moczan]

How does TweenMax stack up to other tweening libraries? I've been using Actuate often with my Flash projects. While Actuate performs well and gets the job done, it doesn't have the kind of support I would want for more advanced scripted sequences.

The whole greensock package is basically the best tweening library out there, with TimelineLite/Max for sequencing and tons of 'plug-ins' (more like code snippets) for additional functionality.

[ChevyRay]

I can't say actually, as I haven't really used any others. First time I picked up and started using it, blew my mind so hard I never left, but I'm sure there are some other great open source tween libs out there.