One of the things that I’ve been trying to work on is my Not Invented Here Syndrome. There’s some pluses for having it, but I’ve found that when coding Sheets Game that some things became such a chore and kept me from focusing on the game itself. Maybe it was because of my lack of AS3 experience at the time or my desire to “Keep It Simple, Stupid.” Whatever the case, I’ve decided to throw some caution to the wind and start learning Flixel.

I was imtimidated at first. “Oh man, what the hell does that function do?” “How do I do [stuff]?” Thanks to a few tips from some friends I got my bearings. (Having said friends work with you on another secret project in Flixel also helps) I was able to see just how easy it was to do simple things that would require many lines in straight-up AS3, such as collision detection and displaying text. Granted, collision detection is nothing to sneeze at (I had some issues with it as I’ll detail in an upcoming post) but I liked how my coding was more “focused.” More lines of code that had to do with my game and less lines of code that did mundane things, now hidden behind various Flixel functions. Quite the difference.

Flixel isn’t perfect, but I can definitely see the benefit in using it for getting a prototype up and running like that.