Greetings!
I am new to these forums, so I figured I would start by asking a number of questions to get my bearings and then go from there. I have quite a bit of general programming experience, but have only been using PHP for about a year and Macromedia Flash MX for the last couple of months.
It might be better if I asked these as individuals threads...but again...new here so thought I would start with this. Sorry in advance if some of them end up reappearing as individual threads. ^_^
My questions progress from more general to more specific:
[ul][li]Which version of Flash should I focus on? I currently have Macromedia Studio MX, but it is an Academic copy so I figure I need to purchase a new one anyways. Is it worth going for Flash 7 or MX 2004? Or perhaps waiting for the next release?[/li]
[li]As a more refined version of the above, where is a good place to look at the benefits of Actionscript vs. Actionscript 2.0 vs. Actionscript 3.0?[/li]
[li]What are best practices Flash design? Especially in regards to efficiency? For instance, it seems like it might be worthwhile to slice any large bitmaps up into pieces so that Flash can invalidate smaller areas...but I have no idea if this is actually worth the effort. I have had trouble finding sites discussing best practices / efficiency.[/li]
[li]Say I have a Flash game where I want to maintain the high score on a server. Is the best way to do this just to POST from within Flash and have a PHP script catch it? How do I have the Flash game poll the server to update its local high score table? Thoughts on how to do all this securely?[/li]
[li]How about a more complex game? What are the recommended methods for making, say, a multiplayer Flash game where a server marshals data between clients? I have heard of Flash Remoting MX, and looked briefly at but do not know if these methods are a good direction or overly complicated for what I want to do.[/li]
[/ul]
Uh...I guess I am requesting a massive amount of information...but as I said...it's a place to start. Hopefully it is in keeping with forum etiquette.
I am new to these forums, so I figured I would start by asking a number of questions to get my bearings and then go from there. I have quite a bit of general programming experience, but have only been using PHP for about a year and Macromedia Flash MX for the last couple of months.
It might be better if I asked these as individuals threads...but again...new here so thought I would start with this. Sorry in advance if some of them end up reappearing as individual threads. ^_^
My questions progress from more general to more specific:
[ul][li]Which version of Flash should I focus on? I currently have Macromedia Studio MX, but it is an Academic copy so I figure I need to purchase a new one anyways. Is it worth going for Flash 7 or MX 2004? Or perhaps waiting for the next release?[/li]
[li]As a more refined version of the above, where is a good place to look at the benefits of Actionscript vs. Actionscript 2.0 vs. Actionscript 3.0?[/li]
[li]What are best practices Flash design? Especially in regards to efficiency? For instance, it seems like it might be worthwhile to slice any large bitmaps up into pieces so that Flash can invalidate smaller areas...but I have no idea if this is actually worth the effort. I have had trouble finding sites discussing best practices / efficiency.[/li]
[li]Say I have a Flash game where I want to maintain the high score on a server. Is the best way to do this just to POST from within Flash and have a PHP script catch it? How do I have the Flash game poll the server to update its local high score table? Thoughts on how to do all this securely?[/li]
[li]How about a more complex game? What are the recommended methods for making, say, a multiplayer Flash game where a server marshals data between clients? I have heard of Flash Remoting MX, and looked briefly at but do not know if these methods are a good direction or overly complicated for what I want to do.[/li]
[/ul]
Uh...I guess I am requesting a massive amount of information...but as I said...it's a place to start. Hopefully it is in keeping with forum etiquette.