HaXe NME for game development

I never even touched the subject of flash games or AS3. It’s just something about flash I always disliked, it just seemed more “mature” to program desktop applications, maybe also, because flash never seemed professional (at least to me). There are thousands of flashgames, many of them created by hobby gamedevs. Maybe it was just that: flash is used almost exclusively (as far as I know) for videos/games. So is it something one could take serious? “I’m a AS3 coder.” – “Ah, you create these annoying games for schoolkids with no money, ey?”. Or maybe just the prospect that “flash is a dying technology” – a opinion that is well represented in the internet.

I created a few games (most of them I never truly completed) and used Python/PyGame, Java or even HTML5 for them. I also followed each ld48 compo in the last 2 years or so. And while browsing the entries I noticed that there were quite a few games written in haXe. So i checked haXe and it seemed interesting, but I abandoned the notion of trying it, because of its obvious flash/AS roots.
Another obvious thing I realised is that one could reach far more people with games that run in the browser, but I did not yet make the connection: haXe -> flash -> browser ;).

After I completed my first #1GAM game I realised that I could handle Java and other similar (“serious”) OOP languages quite fine, so why limit myself? Why not try that one technology that seems perfect for the medium games in the internet: flash.
Of course I like to learn new stuff, so the #onegameamonth challenge seems like a good chance to do just that. And it prompted me to look into haXe once more. More specifically haXe and nme which seems awesome enough. At first it seemed like pure haXe nme would offer to little to really be used for games, so I looked into Haxe Flixel and HaxePunk (flash game frameworks ported to haXe). They seem fine to create games fast (and I will definitely use HaxePunk for a game at least once), but I don’t like to be limited/dependent by/on certain frameworks.

After exploring pure HaXe NME I realised that it offered more than enough for me to create games, the only one problem I have so far is that I’m really not used to the “flashy” stuff (structure and similarity to AS3 code). How do I handle collision the best? How do I implement character/enemy classes? That’s the stuff I have to figure out now. Judging from what I learned until now I feel that I will really like it, but sure enough it will be some work to get familiar with the language. BUT: If I succeed it will be AWESOME!

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