I am Thinking about buying flash

[JC1playa]

I am really thinking about buying flash for my computer but i am worried that it will be to hard for me to learn. I am pretty good with computers and can draw decently but i am going to make games anyways so art isn't THAT important. I have scripted and created maps for games like Command & Conquer, Call of Duty, and some other small EA games. Do you guys know if their is any similarity between that at all or how long do you think it would take me before i could get the hang of making games on flash?

[wasb]

it depends on how determind to learn a scripting langauge, it could take 3 month but then again it could take 2 years lots of factors are involved.

[ChilliDog]

First off, art is THAT important. People won't even look at a game if it looks like garbage, no matter how decent the scripting is.

As for flash, it's a great program but very expensive, try messing around with some of the free trials before you go making a major investment. If you're into it and have the money then I say go for it. I'm not sure what kind of games you're planning on making but there's a chance that there could be a much better program for what you want to do. Look around the site here and see some of the things that have been submitted, but keep in mind that decent games n movies take a great deal of time and work.

I don't know about your coding question. All scripts have some similarities, the basics are usual fairly similar. But using those in-game map making programs is A LOT different than actual scripting and it will take you a while to learn AS. If you're serious about it then you better have a good deal of time and patience, otherwise you're throwing your money away.

[Jammer-Lammy]

There are some obsolete but free (as in freedom) versions of Flash available for Linux distributions. I'm hearing rumors that Flex is better than any version of Flash, but I'm not familiar with it. Still, Flash may be going byebye soon, like every web-based trend before it. You could try getting into an actual programming language like VB or C#. There are a ton of open source projects for people in that field. I'm thinking about getting into C# or going back to Python. Python is becoming very popular, and it's easy to get into. Oh and if you need to start small, get your hands on RPG Maker 2000. It's obsolete (RPG Maker VX is coming out) but I think it's a great starting point for the wannabe game designer.