Article: GAME ENGINES

List of Flash Gaming Engines

January 11th, 2010

Recently there has been a lot of buzz about creating Flash games, especially social ones. Flash makes you cash as proved by Zynga, Playfish, Playdom,WonderHill and others. Check their websites and portfolios to get a picture about Flash social gaming.

I’ve put together this list of libraries and engines to help you start building Flash games or to explore new possibilities.

·         2D Engines

·         ISO Engines

·         Physics Engines

·         3D Engines

·         Social Gaming Platforms

·         Useful AS3 Libs

We’ve also launched the Flash Platform Game Technology Center, which is definitely a great resource for every developer.

These are the libraries I personally consider highly useful for game development. Some of them are just for games - others are great complements. I am not going to write a lot about each of as they are mostly doing the same kinds of things, such as collision detection, physics, tilemaps, optimized rendering, levels, sounds/volume, game states, scores, and more. Some of them even offer multiplayer support. It’s better (and more fun) to try some demo games and see them in action.

2D engines

Flixel
Full featured game engine for 2D bitmap platform game development. Check out thefeature list here.
You probably know the legendary game Canabalt built with this engine.

FlashPunk
Another great and pretty fast engine for 2D bitmap games.

PushButton Engine
Another great engine with Box2D physics and multiplayer networking support. TryYouTopia on facebook.

ISO engines

AS3 ISO LIB
As3isolib includes utilities, primitives and views. As3isolib was developed with simplicity, speed and performance in mind so that developers can focus on actual implementations rather than having to learn a complex API.

TheoWorlds
“TheoSDK is a kit based on our original Theo Isometric Engine™ and it lets you create your own map-based games fast.”

Source: Isometric Game Engines

OpenSpace - ISO engine

Physics engines

Flave - verlet physics engine 2D JigLib - 3D physics engine Box2D - 2D physics APE (ActionScript Physics Engine) - 2D physics WOW Engine - 3D physics

*Particle Engine - Stardust

3D engines (related)

Alternativa3D, Away3D, Papervision3D, Five3D, Sandy 3D

TankiOnline - popular Flash 3D game in Alternativa3D

Publish Your Game: Social Gaming Platforms

Platogo
Build your games and publish to Platogo and earn money - social platform for games with ActionScript 3 API (Score, Levels, Ranking, Multiplayer, etc.)

Geewa.com
Develop games for this social site with multiplayer support. Get the SDK

Facebook
Surely facebook is great platform for your games. Get the Facebook ActionScript API. See how to develop Facebook apps in Flash at Devnet.http://www.adobe.com/devnet/facebook

Other Useful ActionScript Libraries

AS3 Data Structures For Game Developers (AS3DS) - lot of useful structures for general game development

BaseUI
Layouting like in Flex, but for Flash (pure AS3, no Flex).

vancura-AS3-libs
Set of pure ActionScript components with skinning and styling support. Scale9Bitmap support

BrowserCanvas
Easiest way to dynamically resize Flash

FreeSpin3D
Plug-in for Flash CS4 and CS3 enabling realtime interactivity, animation and coding right on stage of Flash Professional.

Now go ahead. Looking forward to your games!

Btw: try SmallWorlds

Note: If you know some other cool libs, just leave a comment and it will be added.