Greetings & Questions

[zeveck]

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

http://www.gotoandplay.it,

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.

 

[billwatson]

1. depends on what you need flash for look at the cost of upgrades v advantages and then make decisions for sure go for flash 8 if you upgrade

2. actionscipt has come a very long way in just a few years and the promise is that actionscript 3 will be ecma compliant
thats a big thing for me but me may well be irrevalant for your purposes

3. i will leave your question on graphics for others

4. yip have to send it to a server side scipt using post and loadvars remoting is the way to go if transferring large data sets if its just a game then post and loadvars is fine nothing goes by a query string so not too insecure for other purposes (credit caed info) then ask again for reference to articles

5. big if but if budget goes to communication server then thats the solution

 

[pixl8r]

Here's my two bits...

1. Agree with Bill. Go for Flash 8.

2. I don't know that there is a place (other than possibly floating around on the

http://www.adobe.com

website) that discusses the pros and cons of one version over another.

3. Slicing bitmaps would have no positive effect on the delivery. Flash works on Library objects, and slicing up your image would just increase the number of Library objects that need to be maintained. Depending on size this could impact performance. The best practice is to optimize your images in an Image Editor (Photoshop, Fireworks) and then use (or don't use) the compression features in Flash to reach your desired target bandwidth.

4. Any server side script will do.

5. Ditto Flash Communication Server. Expensive.

Hope it's worth something to you.

Wow JT that almost looked like you knew what you were doing!

 

[zeveck]

Any recommendations on how to handle a server game assuming that Flash Communication Server is out of budget?