[HELP] Some advice needed (tilebased)

[endah]

Hi all

I'm a (complete) noob trying to learn some flash, with a view to being able to eventually put together some simple games, just for my own personal satisfaction - nothing commercial or anything like that.

I have a few questions

1 - Would anyone recommend a good IDE/dev tool? I have been using the trial version of CSS, which is OK (I am getting used to it) but that'll run out in a day or two and I need something to continue working with.

2 - I've been working on a (VERY) simple tile based thingy whereby the user can select an entity (a tile) from a list at the side, and plonk it down on the map. This is fine, but I cannot for the life of me figure out how to extend that to objects which occupy more than one tile - for example, a block which is 2x1 or larger. The code I've been largely working from is based on tonypa's tile tutorials.

3 - Layers question (probably) - I'd like to implement a "house" building thingy, whereby a user would select the roof texture from a list, choose the corner points of the house, and the engine (if I can use so lofty a term) would fill in the roof part, but at a higher level than the ground, so that if I also had a moveable sprite on the map, the house could be walked into, with the roof fading from view to allow an inside view. Anyone got any pointers with this? I have not ventured too far into this, so it might be a very very simple thing when I try it, but it's daunting at the moment, considering my (very low) expertise level.

4 - Is it ok for me to rip graphics from old games (commercial games) to use in my projects? I don't plan to publish or make money from anything, but I'd like to eventually be able to post it here to show off and I don't want a pissed off developer raging at me for using copyrighted stuff. If it helps, the graphics I am considering using come from a game called "Fallout".

Thanks for any replies!

Endah.

[tonypa]

1. Its usually Flash IDE (gives access to drawing, animation and coding tools but costs a fortune) or FlashDevelop (code only but its free).

4. I don't see a problem using ripped graphics while developing and learning. As long you do not publish it. Then again, I also do not see much point in using detailed graphics for development process, some simple rectangles work as well.

[endah]

Thanks tonypa, that's what I thought about the IDE. Hmm...guess I will try FlashDevelop for a bit. Regarding the graphics....that's a bit of a personal fussiness thing. I just like to have something "nice" in place Also, I'm just figuring out animating multi frame sprites, so it's useful.

Having done a bit of reading, the multi-tile thing seems to be a huge problem... I think I might leave this for a bit and if I do want to have some sort of larger object, I'll split it. The "building a house" question I had, I am going to try as a totally different project. Having done a bit of pen and paper work on it, I think it's actually fairly straighforward.

Thanks for your help

Endah.