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[lithander]

I'm wondering what's the state-of-the-art approach to develop flash games. I found a number of 3D Engines (like Papervision), Physics implementations (like Box2D) but nothing suitable to help the development of the "typical" 2D flash games.

Are there any APIs, Librarys, Frameworks or Engines based on the Flex SDK or pure AS3 you could recommend?

[Don Andy]

http://pushbuttonengine.com/

PushButton Engine is pretty much the only one I know of. I think the basic idea of it is to provide a "framework" that allows you to write "components" or basically wrappers of engines like Box2D or FLINT to work seamlessly together in the engine.

How well that works I can't really say, but it should have you covered for 2D game needs.

It IS free (and I think partially Open Source) but there will be some components later on (like networking) you'll have to buy for money.

The engine IS pretty new. It just finished its closed Beta and was released onto the public just this month.

I personally found it hard to get it to work with FlashDevelop/Flex in the Closed Beta (in fact, I didn't manage) but they have a tutorial for that up now, which I haven't tried out yet (it's under Documentation).

[agj]

Elsewhere around these parts, Edward, by GirlFlash, was mentioned. It's a platforming engine for Flash. I haven't tried it yet, but seems solid.

[tylerjhutchison]

Look what was just posted today on Another Early Morning http://www.anotherearlymorning.com/2009/03/flash-game-engine-demo/

It looks pretty slick  :D

He has not posted code for it yet... but it sounds like he eventually plans on sharing it.  So it is probably worth watching.  His blog is pretty excellent as well so if anything it at least gives you an excuse to keep reading his blog.

[rogerlevy]

http://pushbuttonengine.com/

PushButton Engine is pretty much the only one I know of. I think the basic idea of it is to provide a "framework" that allows you to write "components" or basically wrappers of engines like Box2D or FLINT to work seamlessly together in the engine.

How well that works I can't really say, but it should have you covered for 2D game needs.

It IS free (and I think partially Open Source) but there will be some components later on (like networking) you'll have to buy for money.

The engine IS pretty new. It just finished its closed Beta and was released onto the public just this month.

I personally found it hard to get it to work with FlashDevelop/Flex in the Closed Beta (in fact, I didn't manage) but they have a tutorial for that up now, which I haven't tried out yet (it's under Documentation).

I'm REALLY interested in their "flat" component-based methodology.  This is something that sounds like it could be a great jolt in the neck to game development.

[lithander]

I had some problems to get PushButton Engine working too. The hardest part however was to actually build the librarys (*.swc) - setting up the Engine Demo in Flash Develop was trivial as this guide explains it step by step: http://www.jeremyeasoz.com/flex/pbengine/pbefdsetup/pbefdsetup.html

From what I've seen the concept of the engine looks very thought through! Sadly there aren't any real sample projects to show it's power... I like to find my way with a new technology by looking at sample code so I'm a bit lost here. Nonetheless... interesting stuff! Thx for pointing me at it!