I've tried to wrap my mind around the dizzying array of colored box Adobe calls products, but can't nail down what I really need. Is there an help guide or cheat sheet explaining all this somewhere?
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Given the forum, I assume you're referring to the Flash Platform products. To briefly summarize, the official Adobe Flash Platform product line consists of Tools, Frameworks, Runtimes, Services and Servers. Not all of them are particularly applicable to game development, and, of course, there are many third party libraries and tools available for working on the Flash Platform. Starting with Tools, Adobe has three development environments, each targeted to a specific type part of the spectrum from coder to artist:
The most popular alternative to these is FlashDevelop (http://flashdevelop.org). It is open source, and, though it's not as advanced in most ways as Flash Builder, FlashDevelop is quite usable. Its code completion and editing is at least as good as Flash Builder, but it lacks an integrated debugger or profiler. There is a debugger plugin, but it's not yet included with the official distribution. Moving on to Frameworks, there's really only one official Adobe framework right now - Flex. It's actually a really sweet framework for application development, but not particularly useful for game development. Looking next at Runtimes, there are two from Adobe:
The Services and Servers provided by Adobe are unsuited to game development & hosting, and are more targeted to media streaming and database integration. Obviously, Adobe also sells other tools that can be useful for game development, most notably their Photoshop line. |
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