FlashPunk

By: Derek Yu

On: January 10th, 2010

ChevyRay has created a new 2d Flash game library called FlashPunk (v0.73).

FlashPunk is a free ActionScript library designed for developing 2D Flash games. Its goal is to provide you with a fast, clean framework for prototyping and developing games; this means most of the dirty work – reliable framerate, sprite rendering/animation, player input, and collision detection (to name a few) – has been covered with a set of base classes and functions for your ease of use. This gives you more time and energy to concentrate on the design and testing of your game.

It’s important to note that FlashPunk is targeted towards the development of games with 2D raster/bitmap graphics, as opposed to vector graphics. It can manage thousands of animated bitmap sprites on-screen at a time without slowing, a lot faster than Flash normally could, because it operates under the assumption that your game primarily uses bitmapped graphics.

The library is released as an alternative to Adam Saltsman’s Flixel framework, which is also geared towards 2d, sprite-based Flash games. You can read a list of differences between the two libraries here, in ChevyRay’s announcement thread.

The video above depicts a game that ChevyRay is creating using his engine, called Fight! Mechanical Shooting Device. The graphics are by Pietepiet. Jumper creator and RunMan: Race Around the World co-creator Matt Thorson has also announced that Jumper 4 will be developed in FlashPunk.

Posted in Browser Games, Community, Developers, Tools, Videos | Tags: ChevyRay, MattThorson

http://www.phubans.com phubans

This looks like it would be perfect for one of my projects, but unfortunately I never worked in Flash :(
Mr. Podunkian

this is probably not intentional, but that logo sure does look an awful lot like an ejaculating penis.
muz

That game looks crazy awesome :D.

Also really cool news about the engine.
http://www.gmlscripts.com/ xot

Fear not, phubans. The FlashPunk tutorial is geared to the bright-eyed neophyte as well as the seasoned Flash hack.
Captain Obsolete

Wow, thousands of objects in real time. What’s next – hardware acceleration? 3d graphics?
AdamButcher

Wow, first time I’ve heard a ManMan song outside of my own media player. Good choice!
Grummler

What is this song called?
bateleur

“It can manage thousands of animated bitmap sprites on-screen at a time without slowing, a lot faster than Flash normally could”

I do wish people would stop talking nonsense like this! Any Flash app can make use of BitmapData rendering without needing either FlashPunk or Flixel. Their use is simply as a prewritten library of commonly used techniques.
http://0xdeadc0de.org Eclipse

I agree with bateleur, Flash API is already quite high level, frameworks like this one and Flixel just use common design patterns and are a lot more “frameworks” than engines. Said that, sometimes it’s still nice to have some well written classes laying around.
AdamButcher

The song is Black Mission Goggles by Man Man. From the album Six Demon Bag. Punky burlesquetronica, not often seen around these parts!
StephenM3

Since this seems to work more like GML than Flixel does, I think it’s wonderful! I now won’t have any reason to waste money on GM8! Screw you, Sandy, I don’t need you anymore… I’ve found someone else!
FakeSandyDuncan

You’ll come crawling back, just you wait!
Drazzke

I’m really enjoying Flash Punk. It’s easy to get the hang of, and a lot easier then trying to make a game in just AS3. It also has some functionality in there similar to Game Maker, which is really awesome.
http://jrjellybeans.wordpress.com/ jrjellybeans

And, just when I was worried about not learning Flash quickly enough, along comes this program to make things super easy.

Thanks a lot… jerk…
Tom

Y’know when you see a game that’s so perfectly suited to your tastes that it actually makes you angry you didn’t think of it first?

Those HUD graphics are excellent >:(
Nic

Something about the thermometer feels off for me…
Tom

It fills up from the wrong end.
http://flashpunk.net ChevyRay

@Podunkian: :O You’re right! That must have been subconscious, yes…

@Nic/Tom: Yeah, it’s been pointed out to me already that the thermometer is the wrong way, and I’ve since fixed it. Silly mistake.

@bataleur: It sounds better for me when I say it that way, though. Of course Flash can do it, FlashPunk is made in AS3, what FlashPunk tries to do is just apply a combination of techniques to make this accessible and easy for people to do, while stripping down some of the extensive functionality that Flash provides for folks who develop games like me.

@Captain Obsolete: possibly, if Adobe keeps taking steps with Flash like they did with the step from AS2 to AS3. I realize that your comment was sarcastic, but despite so, not all amateur programmers are aware of the facilities available to create fast in-browser games, and it’s nice to give those people a step up.

Heheh, glad you guys like the music in my video. Been a big fan of Man Man over the past couple years. I should really record a new video, though, the game looks even better than that now.

Cheers for all the comments, guys, feel free to email me if you have any direct questions or anything like that.
xhunterko

I was just wondering, if there is something that Flashpunk might do that flixel can’t. Couldn’t you just use both by simply extending both frameworks?