29th Oct 2011

To cut to the chase: I’m looking for some AS3/OpenGL game developers (of all skills) and code ninjas to join me in building a brand new open source Flash game framework.

I know what you’re thinking: “Why on earth do we need yet another framework?” – and it’s a perfectly valid question, but let me explain…

I’ve been working with Flixel for several years now. Releasing update after update for my Flixel Power Tools. And prior to that I spent ages contributing towards the PixelBlitz project, an earlier “blitting” driven framework. But times have changed. Flash Player 11 introduced a number of significant new technologies for us, Stage3D being just one. The changes to AIR3 now make it a perfectly viable platform for GPU accelerated desktop game development, without all the AIR run-time dependency issues of before. And the recent advances in Stage3D for mobile finally make Flash worth considering for iOS and Android games too.

But none of the current frameworks take these things into account, and I feel it’s time to change this.

Now I adore Flixel and what Adam has done with it. As a framework it’s pretty close to my heart. It has allowed me to make some great games, and I love the community there. It’s why I’ve invested so many hours of my time creating tools for them. But when I started planning out version 2.0 of my Flixel Power Tools I realised that making it work with Stage3D was not going to be easy at all. In fact it was going to be downright impossible without significant changes under the hood. And if you’re going to mess around with a framework to that degree it made me question if it wasn’t the right time to start from scratch. A new fresh slate. Taking the best elements of modern game development techniques, while still keeping true to the Make it Easy model I so strongly believe in. And using the strengths of Flash, not bypassing them.

I don’t especially want to take this journey on my own though. While I could, I know it will aid in decision-making and development speed if there is more than one person working on this. So I’m putting up this post in the hope that you might be inspired enough to join the project. It’s early days and I don’t know where this is headed yet, but I feel the time is absolutely right.

Updated 30th October: Wow! In the original post I asked people to email me if they would like to be involved. And my inbox exploded, which is awesome But rather than email you can now join the forum I have set-up for this project directly. Drop a message into “Introductions” to introduce yourself, and then join in the conversations that are already happening!

We need devs of all abilities, from proper blit blasting code ninjas to the much less experienced – because your input on the decisions we make (does it “make sense”, how easy is it to use, etc) will be just as useful as someone capable of creating a batched sprite shader. Don’t be shy about volunteering.