[Disc] Is it the Summer holidays here already ?

I used to be pretty active on here, but been away for a while...

I too have fallen to the iPhone gold rush craze I guess, but most of my work is still doing flash (mostly AS3 these days). I would love to post about some of my projects, for which I developed some pretty cool graphical effects (mostly with mode 7 things) but I'm bound by a very strict contract... (One of the games even made it on a national tv ad for a popular cereal brand!). Anyway, it's kind of sad to see that things have been declining, but then again... why was I away for so long?
Or maybe it's just a cyclical thing.

heya Oz =)
Yeah, would be cool if you could post about that mode 7 thing ;) :)
To Squize: Well, i think your posts show a misunderstanding of the situation, maybe even the same some people at Adobe have: You can´t just evolve a language or workflow towards a certain way and expect everyone of the old userbase to be more happy with that and accept that as "the future" they have to accept, learn and use.
There is a certain, not too small crowd who is happy with oop manners and then there´s another not too small crowd, which will never be into doing things in that way, maybe you could call it laziness, but maybe that´s way off and its just not the way they enjoy thinking and working.
I´ve spoken to many interactive designer type people for example who feel like its more intuitive to clamp code on a graphical object its related to rather than creating a class hierarchy for a project. For them it then often feels more usable to search for the code in their fla than to set up eclipse+fdt or flex builder or whatever other combo.

Well,its the good old discussion again, i guess this seperation of the flash platform userbase just won´t go away easily.

Regarding talking about unity 3d, iPhone and other stuff, generally more game dev in general rather than things with flash focus all the time: Well, some people here sure would like that but then there are others who want flash dev focus here and i can´t argue that much with em, after all this is called flashkit =( =)

"Well, i think your posts show a misunderstanding of the situation, maybe even the same some people at Adobe have: You can´t just evolve a language or workflow towards a certain way and expect everyone of the old userbase to be more happy with that and accept that as "the future" they have to accept, learn and use."

I think 6 years of a tech being available is long enough for the majority to both come to terms with it and move over to it, no matter how painful the transition at first.
You should know I've never been overtly a fan of oop for the sake of it, but I've come to realise it's a much better way of creating and maintaining a project and fighting against that to stick with the old, less effective way, is just pointless.

I can't empathise with anyone still using as1 on clips and having problems.

"For them it then often feels more usable to search for the code in their fla than to set up eclipse+fdt or flex builder or whatever other combo."

Because it's easier in the short term. Ever had to update a project that's written that way ? It at the very least doubles the time it should take if it was written in an oop way originally.
Also the majority of "Interactive designers" are designers who know just enough actionscript to blag there way in as Flash developers. These people aren't exactly the cream of coding. I've had to pick up the pieces of lots of interactive designers work where they're unable to complete a project because of their lack of knowledge and the way they've set up the code doesn't allow for changes easily. And yet they have no shame about accepting freelance jobs that they aren't capable of doing.

Anyone shunning oop is basically turning their back on papervision, box2D, away3D etc. They're missing out on, in Flash terms, cutting edge 3rd party support.

Squize.

I think that OOP really opens up new possibilities to people. With it, what someone might think is too complicated, can become a lot simpler, and easier to maintain. Personally, it feels very nice writing up some dirty work in a couple classes, and then using the classes in the big project, without having to worry about the behind the scenes works...

Regarding the fact that the Forum has slowly stopped recycling itself, do you think it would be handy to make a policy that for each person that receives help here, should help at least 2 or 3 other people? If we remind people, and make them notice that they should become a bit more active, they might choose to stay longer, and see that this is a community, not a walk-in clinic.

P.

I get where you're coming from, but you can't really force people into being helpful.

How many people even look at the Read Me sticky ( Or even how many people point new members to it ) ?
This forum is here for everyone, at every possible level, to ask what they want and to a certain degree say what they want. I don't think imposing more rules will help, but I really don't know what will.

It may just sort itself out, and I'll look silly for starting this thread :)

Squize.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Squize

I think 6 years of a tech being available is long enough for the majority to both come to terms with it and move over to it, no matter how painful the transition at first.
You should know I've never been overtly a fan of oop for the sake of it, but I've come to realise it's a much better way of creating and maintaining a project and fighting against that to stick with the old, less effective way, is just pointless.
I can't empathise with anyone still using as1 on clips and having problems.

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Well, again, anyone whos more a coder of certain thinking type will get to grips with the AS3 way of doing things and for many others it will always feel like its slowing them down, just cause they work and think in different way.
Just the argument that something is around for x many years so people should come to grips with it is no propper argument, because not all people want to come to grips with something. At the end of the day AS1 is around way longer than AS3, which itself is just a copy of Java to big parts, which, well not as many like for creating games as people like using flash.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Squize

"For them it then often feels more usable to search for the code in their fla than to set up eclipse+fdt or flex builder or whatever other combo."

Because it's easier in the short term. Ever had to update a project that's written that way ? It at the very least doubles the time it should take if it was written in an oop way originally.

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Hm, dunno, it isn´t perfect by any means no matter which way a project is done. I had to take over and update many projects by others and each has different pros and cons.
In AS1 stuff its usually searching through the fla to find the code parts; in AS2/3 stuff its often that the developer worked in his own custom way of using a special compiler (setting), has half of his classes here, some in another class path there and then often also his own way of dealing with the combination of codeside controlling or instantiating display objects from the library.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Squize

Also the majority of "Interactive designers" are designers who know just enough actionscript to blag there way in as Flash developers. These people aren't exactly the cream of coding. I've had to pick up the pieces of lots of interactive designers work where they're unable to complete a project because of their lack of knowledge and the way they've set up the code doesn't allow for changes easily. And yet they have no shame about accepting freelance jobs that they aren't capable of doing.

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I think you´re insulting a big group of serious flash platform users there. Basically you´re putting anyone who is not using AS2/3 into a "barely can do anything" pot, which i think is far off. Many, many of the best flash games are done in AS1/2 mishmash way, so its clearly not just used by people who can´t code two lines.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Squize

Anyone shunning oop is basically turning their back on papervision, box2D, away3D etc. They're missing out on, in Flash terms, cutting edge 3rd party support.

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Well, cutting edge is a funny term because it always depends on the perspective. To me, not to blame people who have clearly put a lot of work into those libs, but just as its a fact: Anything that is seen as cutting edge in flash just due to technical limitations is of course not cutting edge at all by any means when done in various other technologies.
So its no real argument when those things that due to the lousy tech side of the flash player are only possible and only done in AS3 in flash are running way better even when coded in javascript like manners in other environments.
There´s just no way around it, some will always see it as advancment when the language and compiler enforces more encapsulation, strict datatyping, more handling of memory usage on developer side; another group will see that as step backwards towards lower level languages of the past they specifically didn´t choose in first place,always.

Personally, i get things done in AS1 just as i do in AS3, its just that usually when AS3 would be required for performance reasons its then usually the case that the project is more suited to not being done in flash at all and rather be done in a propperly hardware accelerated environment.

I personally think Adobe would do very good in making all api features available in AS1 and 2,too and then also improving the IDE so that one can use those and actually avoid many problems you talked about.
I like many things in unity obviously and some of those would be very welcome in flash. Like what about when one puts code on a timeline/movieclip that is saved in a file automatically and one can see the project hierarchy with all objects with code listed there so one can browse through the code files like as if someone manually created .AS files?
(Action Script Viewer funnily already has a similar feature for ages).
Or what about having a command like "#pragma strict" one can add at the beginning of a code file/block and then the compiler checks for type safety in that.
What about having a propper code editor inside flash ide?

I think these and some other things in that vein would help making AS1/2 code done in the IDE get more usable and readable and at the same time would ease AS1/2 people towards doing things in a cleaner, more going towards AS3 way.
Adobe instead of doing any of such things did this radical cut and sees all previously done things as clearly worse, not accepting many people will always want to use the higher level language more or the graphical workflow in the flash ide more, so yeah, hence why they have many of their userbase splitted off and unhappy now for several years, they also have this flash ide where there´s the question how its developed further at all and for which group its useful now at all with the workflow they enforce.

I´m not saying this way is worse or better than that way, but yeah, you gotta cater to all and make em be able to enjoy it and work together if you´re in Adobe´s place where you inherited people of so many types doing so many different things in so many different ways preferably.

"Juts the argument that something is around for x many years so people should come to grips with it is no propper argument, because not all people want to come to grips with something."

My point in starting this thread was to question why the board doesn't seem to be as good as it was.
I firmly believe that one reason is that a lot of people are still using outdated techniques to make their games, which makes it more difficult for them to both make the games they want and then to debug it, which has the knock on effect that it's harder for people to help them.

To use the same example as before, someone posting code with an enterFrame on their bullet with a hitTest in it is coding that in far from the best way, and to help them the choices are
* You're doing it wrong, code should all be on one frame
* Helping them kludge through their code just to make it work
* Actually going into great depth about how to do it an oop way.

Neither of those is a great option.

If more people started ( Or transferred over ) with a basis in oop, be it as2 or 3, it would help the board, instead of clinging on to outdated methods to do things.

So if people don't want to come to grips with something, in your example, oop, then like I've already said I can't be sympathetic when they reach a ceiling of what's possible.
If something is available for a long time, then it is a proper argument to say more people should be using it, the excuse that people just don't like doing it that way is hardly an excuse.

It's like saying "I prefer scripting html 1, and I can get the results I want so I'm going to stick with that" and expect people to be able to help them should the need arise, or be limited by what they can produce.

"Hm, dunno, it isn´t perfect by any means no matter which way a project is done. I had to take over and update many projects by others and each has different pros and cons."

Updating someone else's code is never great, but I know I prefer to do it based on a class structure than on code on nested mc's.
Also working in a team based environment is near impossible using old school procedural methods.

"I think you´re insulting a big group of serious flash platform users there. Basically you´re putting anyone who is not using AS2/3 into a "barely can do anything" pot, which i think is far off."

Nope, re-read what I wrote:
"Also the majority of "Interactive designers" are designers who know just enough actionscript to blag there way in as Flash developers."
No mention of oop, as2 or as3 there. I've worked with a lot of people who call themselves interactive designers who are barely above newbie in their knowledge, and yet command huge day rates because there is a huge shortage of actionscript developers.
There are exceptions of course, that's why I said the majority.

Like wise there are exceptions to people who don't use oop and still produce great games, but these are the exceptions rather than the norm.

"Anything that is seen as cutting edge in flash just due to technical limitations is of course not cutting edge at all by any means when done in various other technologies."

That's why I put "in Flash terms". Obviously papervision on most other platforms would be sub-standard in terms of performance.
My point being that if a developer is not willing to move over to oop they are restricting what they are able to do.
Again developers with papervision experience can charge a premium rate because it's outside the scope of a lot of interactive designers ( I'm using that as a catch all term for designers who "can code a bit", technically I'm an interactive designer, as a lot of game developers are ).

I must admit I'm really surprised I'm having to justify my comments about people using oop when it's far from a new thing, and pretty much industry standard in whatever language you use.
Tom, if you honestly believe the board is better due to people using sloppy coding approaches because it's peoples right to be able to develop in whatever way suits them, then that's your view. Personally I think if there was more of a move to structured development people would be able to both give and receive more help and the bar of what is possible would be raised.

Squize.

I´m not saying the board is better due to "people using sloppy coding approaches".
You know what? To me any approach available with flash platform tools is sloppy anyway, each is just sloppy in its own way :)
In AS1 stuff code is all over the place, with AS3 stuff people regularly stumble into memory leakage (if they notice it at all that their apps use so much ram, look at whether your game runs at using below 100 mb ;) ), have problems using movieclips and nested movieclips at all or loading in and controlling loaded in swfs (i specifically listed those as being able to do such things were some of those things that made flash more attractive to people wanting to control graphical stuff with code in first place).

Would it really make it easier to help someone with his coding problem if you´d have to look through his custom class based inheritance hierarchy to see the basis for the problem?
Dunno.
I feel like helping someone with his coding problem with an oop setup project only gets easier if its about a general usage lib you know or the guy has a similar setup and structure as i use myself, otherwise it can be just as time consuming as opening the search panel in flash and searching where he has his AS1 code.

Sure its right that someone who codes in one way isn´t that much into looking at stuff someone did in another way that feels alien to him; but again, i think its just unrealistic from you or adobe to expect the majority of people now switching over to a (to many) totally different workflow they don´t enjoy.
I think that 6 years passed and it still hasn´t happened shows something there.
Also, again, its no use to say AS3 way is the way of the future cause before AS there were other things like C,C++ etc and many prefered the higher level AS over those, so to them going to something lower level is feeling like a step back again.
Sure one can sit there and say: You better switch over, but that the majority does that is actually more unrealistic than Adobe doing some of the things i suggested there which would bring the different people closer in workflow some at least.

I don't think that the point of AS was it's high level, it was more the ability to make something online, fast. I say for designers that only need buttons, sure, go ahead and use as2.0, but if you really want a serious application that can compete with other ones around on the net, then use as3.0.
Also, we're not talking about C++ and stuff like that, this is web development!

Looking at class hierarchies is much much easier to understand, since first of all most classes will have descriptive names, and second it's easier to see the process of the program. All you have to do is start at the Main class, and then just go line by line, and you'll eventually find what you need. With Movieclips, it becomes a hassle to check if there's code on the movieclip, or in the movieclip, and so on so forth.

I also disagree with you that even AS3.0 is sloppy. Then again, I somewhat disagree with both of you...every version of Actionscript can be sloppy or not sloppy depending on who coded it. It's just that as3.0 forces you to be less sloppy, and really take care in your coding practices. Even if you don't need that extra neatness, it's not a bad thing.

Yes, as3.0 may be a copy of Java, but I think that's because as3.0 was more targeted to the coders for more power over their apps. You can easily tell with a quick glance that as3.0 was definitely not meant for designers. With that Adobe Catalyst product, it seems that Adobe is trying to make people work in Designer+Coder relationships, rather than a self-sufficient developer.

And if Squize isn't, than I certainly am putting anyone who doesn't use as2/3 into the "can't do too much" pot. Just look at the capabilities of as1! It's all about just doing simple, graphical changes in the Flash program, whereas as2.0 already introduced the loading of external stuff, and working with images you load, and many other things, and even further with as3.0, now we can even change binary data!
Not to say that all those extra features are always needed, but they certainly expand what's possible in as3.0 apps, which in comparison is a whole whole whole lot more than as1 ever could.

P.

"Would it really make it easier to help someone with his coding problem if you´d have to look through his custom class based inheritance hierarchy to see the basis for the problem?"

I don't think anyone would have to post their whole class structure if they've got an issue in one class or method.
If they can't narrow it down then yes, they will need to post more, but at least that's code which can be posted easily to the forum rather than a fla with code dotted everywhere that people have to d/load first.

"but again, i think its just unrealistic from you or adobe to expect the majority of people now switching over to a (to many) totally different workflow they don´t enjoy."

Then to put it simply those people will be left behind. In terms of how that affects the board ( Which is what this is all about, not a oop vs procedural debate, that's just one aspect of it ) it means there will threads posted asking questions about out dated approaches that have already been answered before, ie more noise and less good substance, which I think most people who have posted in this thread have noticed already, and which won't get any better.

I really don't think adopting the coding standards of the tool you use to create games as being unrealistic in the slightest. I think it being more realistic that this forum will end up dying if it doesn't get new blood who are interested in pushing things forward, and as1 / non-oop isn't the root I see to be able to do that.

And about the majority not using oop / as3, that doesn't mean to say those figures aren't skewed a little.
To quote some data Tonypa posted,

"* Yet only 10% of games use FP10, 40% games are still F8 so no AS3 there and we dont know how many of F9/10 games use AS3. We can assume over half of games made are using AS1/2 "

( Those details from Mochi ).

Around half the games still in as1/2. We can't tell what percentage of as2 games are oop, but think how many reskinned tutorials are making up that percentage. How many newbie games, people who post the same usual questions over and over here, make up that percentage.
So yeah the majority of people may still be using outdated methods, but you have to factor in quality to that.

Now I'm not saying that a game written using oop is automatically fantastic and bug free, I'm just sticking with my original point that the board has gone very stagnant and I don't think poor coding practises help that.

"Also, again, its no use to say AS3 way is the way of the future"

It's the future (Well, for a language that is already two years old) for Flash, that's why certain API's aren't supported by as1/2, and why should they be ?
Of course Adobe is pushing people towards as3, but that's because that's the direction Flash is going in. It's a trade off between performance and development time ( Like anything. It takes a lot longer to do a game in Unity than in Flash ), although development time does approach as2 levels after using as3 / oop for a while.

Pazil, pretty much everything you can do in as2 you can do in as1 too. I've written some huge projects using as1. It's just that with it being procedural development and the bug testing took longer than if it had been in pure oop ( I still used objects and object methods etc. it's just that in as1 it was quite hacky to do those things )

Squize.

I´m actually in a hurry finishing something up so i´ll reply later to you Squize, but man
Pazil, that post was priceless.
Sorry to say, but it does reek of some ignorance when you bash AS1/2 so much and praise AS3 so much and afterwards it turns out you seem to just not have a lot of an idea of what´s doable with AS1/2.

to Squize: You know, i thought about posting another lengthy reply to you and all your points once i´ve got a bit more free time again in a few hours.
I´ve changed my mind though, cause i think i brought up some suggestions for things Adobe could do on their end to make the Flash IDE more attractive again to many people aswell as bring the user community closer together again.
You don´t like those? Ok, no problem.
But yeah, its no use trying to tell me what "the future" is,cause clearly you can´t tell just as i can´t and clearly Adobe tried several years ago and clearly failed cause the majority of their userbase does not agree.
Who knows, maybe sometime in the distant future the majority of users will switch to AS3 and like it, who knows, maybe instead Adobe will introduce propper hardware acceleration and people will do things in flash in AS1/2 that makes current AS3 stuff look old, or, who knows, maybe in 4-5 years noone uses flash anymore cause there´s something way sexier; or, who knows, maybe i´ll grow a beard next week.
Or maybe not.

well guys, I am neither a "pro" nor a experienced user of multiple languages, so what i am saying is what i feel!

This board, and all boards like this depend on "beginners" (not noobs), who come here to learn to create something new! When these beginners move onto the intermediate stage, new wave of beginners come in, and the cycle goes on! In the days of as2, people mainly got a easy to use environment where they could quite easily create some basic games/apps! But with the coming of as3 the progress has been too fast... Flash cs3 came out with as3, and those who knew programming moved on to it, leaving a void...and before the "beginning designers" could adapt themselves to this new programmer-targeted environment( huh? did i really suggest cs3 is programmer targeted? well, no, its a nightmare to code in cs3), bam, CS4 comes in packed with more designer oriented features and adding more power to as3( fp10 content), and hence confusing the new beginners even more! Now, the beginners can't begin creating simple stuff with the ease they could in as2, so they are trying to learn as3, while sticking to as2, and hence forming the new variety of noobs! It's a collision of concepts!


Another important thing is the lack of as3 tutorials! Though i feel as3 quite easy now and consider it much better than as2, but when I began learning as3, I almost got suffocated at the sudden transition, mainly in the workflow concepts! During the age of as2, there were thousands of tutorials, and almost all "noobish" questions you could think of were already answered somewhere, so people posted atleast "beginner" level questions in these forums, which you guys were happy to answer! But now, the as3 tutorials which you normally find, are mostly either tottaly conceptual explanations( boring ), or example files which beginners can hardly understand..... hence the "noobish" questions are being dumped in the forums!


Another problem is the golden bait of monetization of games! those who are trying to make games are mostly trying to earn some quick cash, so they don't have the patience to learn something with a tiny bit of curve like as3..... "why learn when i can just rip off some old tutorial or example file and sell it for some cash?"..... and hence you get a bunch of guys posting fla's and long codes without having a single shred of concept or understanding a single line of code!


And lastly is the thing which made squize this mad (well he was already geekily mad to begin with), the misconception that knowing how to make a hp bar means you have learnt game development entirely! Well, these guys cannot be blamed much, cause they got this idea from the massive amount of crap content floating around the web..... how many decent or unique games have you played, lets say, in the past 3-4 years? For every single "attempt" towards a decent game, there is a million clones of breakout and pong... and more than a gazillion tutorial rip-offs which are made even worse than the tutorial's author's worst nightmare! Beginners learn what they see, and if they just see crap, how can we expect them to come up with gems?

I very much realize what's possible in as2.0, and it's similarities to as1. The thing is though is that as2.0 actually has the possibility of making different Class files, and finally work with BitmapData's. And what I mean by making different class files is that as2.0 was starting to be meant to be used with different Classes, rather than simply having the ability to make classes if you chose to.

Maybe saying that people using as1/2 "can't do too much" isn't phrased correctly...what I meant was that they can't do as much as as3. True, you can do many things with as1/2, but there's also a difference between what you can literally do, and what you can realistically do. For example, using away3d is a waste of time (my opinion) because you can almost never get those damn cool effects to run at an acceptable framerate.

@ Tomsamson : I don't consider that the majority of users using as1 still is an excuse, reason, or proof of as3 not working. I see it as a problem. Both a problem of designer patience (I'm guessing), and a problem of not enough information on the web, like bluemagica said, tutorials are lacking.
I think that by trying to hurry in as3.0, Adobe created a big gap and damaged the developing nature, rather than have everyone switch to as3, which obviously didn't happen.

It also pisses me off when someone starts saying how pro they are, saying that they can make hp bars, make a player move, and, check this, even make a load/save system on the computer! It even checks to see if there's already something saved! What a pro! He's so pro that the only questions he asks is how to do the impossible...

And Tom, I hardly think that Squize was trying to sell himself as a psychic of the future. But what you're saying is that we're not in the future, so we can't tell that computing will be a major part of it, or that just because there are clouds in the sky, we don't know if it will rain or not tomorrow.
There are lots of things indicating where something will go, and just the sheer power of as3 points to a lot. The fact that a lot of employers are looking for as3 developers also points to as3 being the future. And anyways, why not just get used to as3? Even if someone doesn't like it at first, it's an acquired taste.


P.

I firmly believe AS3 was wrong way to go. It may be gods bless if you are coder and interesting in inner life of oop languages but that has very little to do with games. Integration with graphics, animations, ease of publishing and ability to put in simple code for interactive elements, thats pretty much all you need to make games quickly and enjoy the process. Pretty much all this was thrown out with AS3 and instead we get another oop language, very similar to every other, which only has one good thing - it can produce swf files. The reason you want to produce swf files - because its of its worldwide success using "bad, old, non-standard" AS1 language.

Java was same ugly beast when Flash was just starting to add language elements. Nobody used it. Nobody cared. Instead Flash was hugely successful with its non-coders-friendly approach. And instead of pushing Flash further in same direction, making it even easier to use, integrating it even more with designer tools, Adobe decides to dump the very thing that made Flash good and borrow everything bad from Java.

I for example only use AS3 for its better perfomance. I would dump it in a second if AVM1 could run with same speed. There are very few (very-very-very few) Flash games that absolutely should be done using AS3. Lets be clear, being faster or having more features in AS3 is not BECAUSE its oh-so-oop-like, its a wonder AS3 manages to be so fast despite of its oop obsession. Adobe could of designed AS3 as better perfoming language based on AS1 too, probably even faster, but they didnt because if you are evry day making applications like PhotoShop or FlashCS3 or other big stuff, you surely want to use oop so all the hundreds of people involved can be managed nice and well. But AS is not meant to create huge bloated 1GB programs, it is meant for completely different customers who do small lightweight work. And for them AS3 is nightmare.

bluemagica is correct, there are no AS3 beginner tutorials. There cant be because the language is not designed for beginners. Its designed for pros. Its no point asking questions like "how to make things move in AS3", you have to know oop principles first, degree from university on programming techniques, couple years of experience to understand how to write good code and how to read code written by someone else. Then that question could be answered so it makes sense. But by that time you do not need to ask it anymore.

to Pazil:

Man, regarding comparing AS1/2/3 better just stop, you´re just making it worse the more you try to elaborate.
Just so you know one can also use BitmapData Api in AS1, just as example.

To the rest of what you said: "The sheer power of AS3"


Erm, right..Flash when coding in AS3 performs worse than other technologies when coding in Lua/JS syntax. How often does one have to repeat that?
Again, why its like that with Flash is Adobe´s fault, not some kind of magical power of AS3. They just developed themselves into a corner by first neglecting making propper use of the hardware and then went for even weirder decissions (not making use of 5 year old gpu standards but instead making use of multi core cpus not that many people already have for example).
And well,nothing you said made it like a more believable prediction to me what Squize said. A fact we have is that the majority of flash content is still made in AS1/2 after all these years and regarding performance intensive content more and more of that is done in other technologies than flash.



to what Tonypa said:
Yeah, that´s what i hear from many people.
And yeah, i´m actually interested to see if, should Adobe ever wake up and release a flash player that has propper hardware acceleration for all display side things (so then performance would be way way better no matter if one uses AS1 or 3), how many of those who switched to AS3 but don´t enjoy it would use AS1 or 2 again in a heartbeat.
Sure, there´s a good amount of people liking AS3, but again, those arguing here should not just see it from their stance, there´s also a good amount of people who want to get something done without learning about oop and reading up on design patterns.

Tonypa, you certainly don't need to get university degrees to understand as3.0! I moved directly from as2 to as3 just this year, and it was a pretty smooth change. I actually felt that as2 was quite similar to as3.
You don't even need to read up on OOP patterns. I don't know why people make oop seem like such a big deal. I never learned as3.0 as learning oop, oop was more like just something that came with dealing with the problems of as3.0...

and Tom...you said it, but still didn't understand...comparing as1/2/3 is exactly what I was doing when I said "the sheer power of as3", so I have no idea where you pulled Lua or JS from!?

As I have mentioned before, I'm not totally against as2.0! I specifically mentioned is someone needs a couple buttons somewhere, maybe a simple tween using code, by all means go as2! I know what it can do. Afterall, as2 was all I did before switching to as3 this year, and I'm happy with it. Maybe as1/2 is really the holy grail for you, but seriously...I'd rather read new concept posts and ideas regarding new features of as3.0, and cool stuff that runs faster than 10 fps.
AS3.0 is tons faster than as2, which is why I'm advocating for it so much from a game devs point of view!

And hardware acceleration...well, at least there's something we can all agree on.

P.

Yeah, we agree on flash needing propper hardware acceleration :)
Regarding the AS1/2/3 comparison things i won´t discuss them anymore with you, not meant as insult but you´ve shown with several statements that you don´t know very well what´s doable in AS1/2, so yeah, you shouldn´t take part in a comparison of all 3.
You can say "i like AS3" and that´s fine (You can take part in the discussion of course, i just won´t reply to things you say in a AS1/2/3 comparison anymore, cause its just not well informed).
As i said i understand people who like working in that workflow just as i also understand people working in AS1/2 workflow.
I think its just way off to want to predict which one people will use more in the future or whether they will maybe use something entirely different, so let´s just stop that, ok?
Because a company releases something it doesn´t automatically become the future; if the majority of those who should buy it don´t like it, it can very quickly become a mistake in the past.

The discussion here clearly shows to me that there are just way different workflows and expectations for what should be doable with flash and in which way.
You can´t just tell everyone to work in the way you prefer "cause its the future (in your opinion)" or "its just better (in your opinion)".
Adobe has to do something in their tools/ language to bring the groups closer together and make things interesting for all again, that easy.

ermm... aren't you guys getting a bit offtopic from the original point of this thread? as1/2/3 comparisons will happen and will always be a good debate issue, and like everything else they all have positives and negatives..... but the point of this discussion was why the forum quality and content has gone downhill!

Yeah, you´re totally right. The problem is the AS version discussion shows one of the major problems of this flash forum just like any other flash forum. How to bring more people together and make them work together in similar work manner?
Tell em all to use the work manner you use? The last few years have shown that doesn´t work out.