Reconsider Flash?

[Theodore Truong]

I've just learned that there are free IDEs for Flash and ActionScript
out there for both Windows and Mac. Of course you won't get the
WYSIWYG from adobe's proprietary IDE but the one I'm trying
(FlashDevelop) is very close to Eclipse for Java and it works
perfectly so far. Since ActionScript was built based on Javascript,
its syntax shouldn't be too hard to grasp for UNO CSCI students (look
up ActionScript on wiki and see for yourself). There are also many
ActionScript libraries made specifically for games that you can
download for free. Flixel and FlashPunk are two good examples. You may
want to visit their websites and see some sample games created using
those libs. Therefore, I wonder if we should reconsider flash for the
card game.

After spending 6 hours working with JOGL I'm afraid learning JOGL
right now is not a good idea for 4 main reasons:
_ It's is immature. That is no common standard yet (different
tutorials for JOGL show you very different ways of creating a polygon
using different JOGL libraries)
_ Lack of instructions. The only two JOGL book on Amazon.com have very
low rating and the online ones wont go further than creating a
bouncing triangle.
_ Programing in JOGL, though easier, is much less efficient than
programing directing in C and C++. Hence, it won't benefit much in the
long run.
_ The newest JOGL is built on top of OpenGL 2.0, which will soon be
obsolete. OpenGL 3.x is vastly different than 2.0


In the end, I plan to study a bit of C++ before learning about OpenGL
(The newest 3.3 to be specific). JOGL is a possible shortcut but I
don't think it's worth it. Just my humble opinion.

Peace,
Theo