I am not a completely inexperienced developer, but I often find myself struggling with tools and workflow related questions due to not understanding the related compilation process well at all. I have worked with FlashDevelop before, and with Haxe, but one simple thing that I’ve never understood is what occurs when choosing a specific "project type" for a new project.
The primary reason I want to work with Haxe is to be able to more easily target multiple platforms, but I am very new to this. I’d like to make a play-project, a game, with the purpose of learning. One thing I would definitely like to get more experience with is the process and pitfalls of simultaneously targeting web-host-able platforms like Flash and HTML5, tablets, and potentially one day, consoles, etc. In addition, I’m told that targeting Neko can make early-game debugging easier. Finally, should I have the bulk of my 3rd party libraries chosen before deciding on this, or will all of these project types allow me roughly the same flexibility on this as well?
With that in mind, even though I have a rudimentary understanding of the differences between Flash, OpenFL, and Lime, I don’t know which project type to choose to get the best balance of flexibility and ease of setup. I found one answer that seemed to indicate that adding a second target isn’t that difficult. My instinct is to use the OpenFL Project because I have AS3 experience, but I’m not entirely in love with the Flash-centric structure of building games using the display list. Might I be better off just starting with the Haxe “Empty Project” and learning to set it all up myself?
Basically I’d just like to understand what FlashDevlop projects are, and how do I chose the appropriate one to start with Haxe, without losing flexibility to add more targets and various libraries later on.
I hope I phrased that well and that it is an appropriate question. Thank you!
Start with OpenFl project. Haxe is a language that allows you to compile your code to other language(c++,as3,js...). But it's Lime or other frameworks that make it work in all those platforms(c). OpenFl is build over Lime. OpenFl implements all the flash API, so if you know As3 that's a great place to start. You can start there implementing things and getting to know the language. You can start programming immediately, but it's cool to learn all the other cool features that as3 doesn't have.
You have other frameworks, but not all let you export to all platforms.
some popular frameworks are http://snowkit.org/2014/09/20/about-snowkit/ http://getflambe.com/
I use openFL because I think its the easiest to use, and I think it has the biggest community.
My personal experience, I never had an experience as great as OpenFl. Flash is awesome and OpenFl is like flash on steroids. As any framework you need to know how to use it to get the most out of it.
Best of lucks!