Flash networked web game

I do Flash game programming professionally and I'm not really aware that Farmville uses CSS for its in game menus (but I'm not sure). However I think Actionscript and Flash are actually great tools for rapidly prototyping a game and is currently the de facto standard for games on the web. Whether that remains in the near future is a bit uncertain with the push towards HTML 5 however I still believe it is a valuable tool to use for fast prototyping and maybe even for a portfolio.

You should make use of the Creative Suite demo before deciding whether to purchase as the investment is fairly heavy. I know you can do open source Actionscript development but I think you'd be limiting your potential to create great things without the Flash IDE.

thanks ss, I'm working off the trial version for now!

i suggest haXe instead of AS directly http://haxe.org/doc/intro

You should make use of the Creative Suite demo before deciding whether to purchase as the investment is fairly heavy. I know you can do open source Actionscript development but I think you'd be limiting your potential to create great things without the Flash IDE.

I'll take a different approach to this and say you should go with a regular IDE like FlashDevelop instead of Flash CS. In my experience actually coding the game instead of using endless timelines makes for a much better end product. If you come from a C/Java background having a real project workspace is going to seem much more logical. Now using CS to create your GUI and embed the resulting swf in your game is probably a much easier solution then trying to use something like ASwing to create a GUI progmatically.

If you would rather go the haXe route then FlashDevelop can do those projects as well.

I'll take a different approach to this and say you should go with a regular IDE like FlashDevelop instead of Flash CS.

FlashDevelop is a part of the Creative Suite. I don't really know anyone who codes in the Flash IDE.

Hmmmm... I advise you flajector or f-in-box - tools for converting flash to exe. it's help you make application that [color=#000000]will work excellent even if no flash player is installed. I use it.