Best Software for Flash Game Programming?

Question

Hi. I just randomly decided I wanted to do some game creation in flash, but have no knowledge of flash what-so-ever. I have done some Java and C# and such, so I am not a complete newbie at programming, and am sure I'll be able to pick Flash up, but I have no idea what software to get. Is it worth torrenting Adobe CS5 (Even though the latest version is CS6), or is there some better (possibly free) software I should use? Any help would be appreciated, thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Adobe Flash Professional is the gold standard. But torrenting? Bad move



Don't trust Adobe torrents, most are backdoored

Answer 2

I'm not going to recommend pirating Flash (any version), I would instead recommend downloading the demo from Adobe's website (http://www.adobe.com/products/flash.html?promoid=DJDTE) and trying it out.



As far as Flash games go, I don't know of any other (free or otherwise) programs that allow for *Flash* game programming. There are programs out there for HTML5 games and such, but if you're specifically wanting to make Flash games, you're really gonna need to get Flash. How you go about doing that...well, that's your choice.



You can get a copy of Flash CS5.5 cheap off of websites (google "flash cs5.5" and click on the shopping tab) and with that you get a free upgrade to CS6. Or of course, torrents as you said. Still not recommending that, mostly because of viruses and such. Legality is a thing too, so keep that in mind.



Hope I helped.

Answer 3

There's no BETTER tool for Flash programming than Adobe's own proprietary products. However, if you don't have the cash (and let's face it, Adobe's products are priced for professionals only), you can acquire a compiler and IDE for AS3 at no cost. Adobe's free Flex SDK gives you the compiler, and there are a few free IDEs including FlashDevelop. In principle, you can basically do anything with these that you could do with Adobe's software, it just might take more work.