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Newgrounds Wiki: Game Dev Resources

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Official Flash IDE (Integrated Development Environment)

Flash - $699, Free 30 Day Trial

The original software to produce Flash content, created by Macromedia and later bought by Adobe. Recent versions of Flash have become increasingly bloated but it remains a godly piece of software. This is recommended if you want to program with AS2, work in a visual environment, animate or work with vector graphics in general.

Also see our Flash Game Tutorials!

A number of free alternatives are listed below. They are geared towards raster/bitmap graphics.

Alternative Development Frameworks

Instead of the Flash IDE, the following frameworks work in tandem with the free Flash Develop IDE. They all have tutorials that will walk you through it.

Flixel - Free

Developed by AdamAtomic, the Flixel framework allows you to make amazing 2D games in less time than with Flash. Check out these examples and this fun tutorial by Schulles!

FlashPunk - Free

Developed by ChevyRay, FlashPunk is an alternative to Flixel. It all comes down to personal preference. Check out these examples.

Axel - Free

Inspired by Flixel and FlashPunk but hardware accelerated with Stage3D. Really new at the time of this update but check out From the Black for one example game.

Visual (No Programming Required) Development Tools

Stencyl - Free

Stencyl is a 2D game development tool built on top of Flixel, so you can make amazing 2D games without any prior programming knowledge! Programmers can still access code mode, so everyone wins. Check out these examples.

Construct 2 - Free

Construct2 is a 2D game development tool that develops games in HTML5 format, so they can work on platforms that don't support SWF! Like Stencyl it has a visual environment so non-programmers can get in the game. Check out these examples.

The Games Factory 2 - Free

Developed by Clickteam, this free Newgrounds edition of The Games Factory 2 lets you develop games with no prior programming experience and post them to NG! Click here to download or check out some examples.

3D Game Development Tools

Flare3D - Pre-Release Available

Flare3D allows you to develop 3D games and take advantage of the new hardware acceleration abilities of Flash 11. Check out this demo game for an example!

Unity 3D - Free with Paid Upgrades

Unity3D is a great tool for developing 3D games but has traditionally required its own plugin and has not yet been adopted on Newgrounds. Future versions are expected to have an SWF export option, though! We've also long planned to add Unity support but it's been bottlenecked by the 2009-2011 redesign project.

Alternative Development Environments / Compilers

FlashDevelop - Free

FlashDevelop provides you with an excellent .swf authoring environment for traditional programmers. Development is done with code and sprite sheets, vs the vector art and visual environment of Flash. Used heavily by Flixel and Flashpunk developers.

Helpful Tools

The Miner - $24.42

The Miner is a multi-purpose profiler designed to help improve productivity and stability during development by exposing "under the hood" representation of any Flash scene. The main goal is to help expose and diagnose problems before they get too big. Squize made use of this while developing Outpost:Haven and raved about it.

DAME Editor - Free

DAME Editor is a general-purpose 2D visual level editor, making it easier to construct tile-based levels and spit out XML output for your games. Recommended by Flixel devs. Used in the development of Cat Astro Phi, for example.

Ogmo Editor - Free (Donations welcome)

Like DAME, Ogmo is a level editor. It's now open source and gaining momentum! Could be the new favorite.