The Shining Source

The new version of Flash (version 9, brought out by adobe) has actionscript 3.
I poked around in it this morning while thinking of porting a clients old flash site to the new version. 

This isn't just another markup of a cruddy language to make it slightly less cruddy.

First of all, and most interestingly, it includes classes in all the places it should have before but never did.
It has packages, and many other such wonderful things that allow true organisation of code libraries.

Does this mean it's finally viable to create a game engine in flash without having to write custom code every time you do something? I think so!
I don't have time to learn it right now, but down the track I intend to dig in good and proper.  Has anyone used this, can they confirm or deny my impressions?

Take a look if it's all news to you, this version seems worth buying a new copy for.


Considering the stats say 97% of web browsing computers now have flash installed, it could a worthwhile platform to develop on.

ActionScript 3 is a move towards a more JAVA like language, which started with ActionScript 2. There are some game-friendly additions such as the introduction of sprites. It's definitely more organized. I haven't been able to play much with it yet but i've heard good things. It does encourage better programming practices and open source projects (which flash was lacking greatly, even with the introduction of components a while back).

I've now made a couple of whipdeedoo websites with Actionscript 3, along with playing around with the(as Job says) very Java like structure of the codebase itself.

Definitely a strong option for 2D shining game developers.