Tom Krcha's FlashRealtime

Hey amigo! These are my notes. I'm Platform Evangelist with Adobe.

List of Flash Gaming Engines

January 11th, 2010

Recently there has been a lot of buzz about creating Flash games, especially social ones. Flash makes you cash as proved by Zynga, Playfish, Playdom, WonderHill and others. Check their websites and portfolios to get a picture about Flash social gaming.
banner-libraries

I’ve put together this list of libraries and engines to help you start building Flash games or to explore new possibilities.

We’ve also launched the Flash Platform Game Technology Center, which is definitely a great resource for every developer.

These are the libraries I personally consider highly useful for game development. Some of them are just for games - others are great complements. I am not going to write a lot about each of as they are mostly doing the same kinds of things, such as collision detection, physics, tilemaps, optimized rendering, levels, sounds/volume, game states, scores, and more. Some of them even offer multiplayer support. It’s better (and more fun) to try some demo games and see them in action.

2D engines

Flixel
Full featured game engine for 2D bitmap platform game development. Check out the feature list here.
flixel
You probably know the legendary game Canabalt built with this engine.
Canabalt built with Flixel

FlashPunk
Another great and pretty fast engine for 2D bitmap games.
FlashPunk engine

PushButton Engine
Another great engine with Box2D physics and multiplayer networking support. Try YouTopia on facebook.
Push Button Engine - Youtopia Game

ISO engines

AS3 ISO LIB
As3isolib includes utilities, primitives and views. As3isolib was developed with simplicity, speed and performance in mind so that developers can focus on actual implementations rather than having to learn a complex API.
as3-iso-lib

TheoWorlds
“TheoSDK is a kit based on our original Theo Isometric Engine™ and it lets you create your own map-based games fast.”
theoworlds

Source: Isometric Game Engines

OpenSpace - ISO engine

Physics engines

Flave - verlet physics engine 2D
JigLib - 3D physics engine
Box2D - 2D physics
APE (ActionScript Physics Engine) - 2D physics
WOW Engine - 3D physics
Box2D simulation

*Particle Engine - Stardust

3D engines (related)

Alternativa3D, Away3D, Papervision3D, Five3D, Sandy 3D
tankionline - popular Flash 3D game in Alternativa3D
TankiOnline - popular Flash 3D game in Alternativa3D

Publish Your Game: Social Gaming Platforms

Platogo
Build your games and publish to Platogo and earn money - social platform for games with ActionScript 3 API (Score, Levels, Ranking, Multiplayer, etc.)
platogo

Geewa.com
Develop games for this social site with multiplayer support. Get the SDK
geewa

Facebook
Surely facebook is great platform for your games. Get the Facebook ActionScript API. See how to develop Facebook apps in Flash at Devnet. http://www.adobe.com/devnet/facebook

Other Useful ActionScript Libraries

AS3 Data Structures For Game Developers (AS3DS) - lot of useful structures for general game development

BaseUI
Layouting like in Flex, but for Flash (pure AS3, no Flex).

vancura-AS3-libs
Set of pure ActionScript components with skinning and styling support. Scale9Bitmap support

BrowserCanvas
Easiest way to dynamically resize Flash

FreeSpin3D
Plug-in for Flash CS4 and CS3 enabling realtime interactivity, animation and coding right on stage of Flash Professional.

Now go ahead. Looking forward to your games!

Btw: try SmallWorlds
SmallWorlds

Note: If you know some other cool libs, just leave a comment and it will be added.

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Posted in Flash Player, Programming Techniques |

Facebook comments:

46 Comments »

  1. what about WOW engine? is it dead?

    Comment by jchmielewski — January 12, 2010 @ 1:15 am

  2. well - no idea, but added - might be useful

    Comment by tom — January 12, 2010 @ 12:31 pm

  3. What about FFilmation:

    http://www.ffilmation.org/website

    ;)

    Comment by Joey — January 12, 2010 @ 12:37 pm

  4. platago is a copycat of bonuslevel.org !

    Comment by JP — January 12, 2010 @ 6:23 pm

  5. Hi,
    Flixel & FlashPunk, both use bitmap rendering, but what about Vector 2D engine? Can you suggest anyone?

    tnx

    Comment by Pedram — January 12, 2010 @ 8:38 pm

  6. I think PushButton Engine should do this. Check features, saying: Sprite-based and SWF-based 2D rendering http://pushbuttonengine.com/features/

    Comment by tom — January 12, 2010 @ 8:50 pm

  7. OpenSpace 2D Iso engine is missing: http://www.openspace-engine.com/index.php

    Comment by Philippe — January 13, 2010 @ 4:35 am

  8. @JP: Hi JP, my name is Christoph Atteneder and I’m one of the founders of Platogo.
    Your portal bonuslevel.org was indeed one of the first who offered an API for saving levels.
    Besides level creation, which is nowadays available at multiple portals (e.g. kongreate.com, newgrounds.com,…) there is no similarity between bonuslevel.org and platogo. So I think that the term copycat is not applicable.

    Anyway - more options and competition in this area only results in better products for every game developer out there. :-)

    Comment by Christoph Atteneder — January 13, 2010 @ 12:32 pm

  9. HEy thanks a lot for this list! Flash Punk is new for me thx!

    I also created a Flash Game Framework list with some other nice tools. Maybe you like it?!

    http://blog.derhess.de/2009/09/04/flash-game-frameworks-classes-and-libraries/

    Comment by derhess.de - Florian — January 13, 2010 @ 2:52 pm

  10. you might want to add
    AS3DS (AS3 Data Structures For Game Developers)
    => http://lab.polygonal.de/ds/

    Comment by Ben — January 13, 2010 @ 6:04 pm

  11. @Florian nice one :) great job.
    …….. + AS3DS and OpenSpace added

    Comment by tom — January 15, 2010 @ 12:10 pm

  12. List of Flash Gaming Engines — FlashRealtime.com…

    Realtime Rich Internet Applications using Adobe technologies…

    Trackback by yentit.com — January 15, 2010 @ 10:23 pm

  13. List of Flash Gaming Engines — FlashRealtime.com…

    Realtime Rich Internet Applications using Adobe technologies…

    Trackback by listmint.com — January 16, 2010 @ 12:31 am

  14. @Tom I added OpenSpace and FlashPunk to my list :-)

    http://blog.derhess.de/2009/09/04/flash-game-frameworks-classes-and-libraries/

    Comment by derhess.de - Florian — January 19, 2010 @ 11:19 am

  15. Thanks for the great list!
    You forgot to mention FreeSpin3D in the 3D section.

    Cheers!
    Pat L

    Comment by Patrick Lewisohn — January 19, 2010 @ 3:48 pm

  16. @Patrick It’s been actually mentioned in Other Useful ActionScript Libraries as it’s more plugin for Flash Pro, than gaming library

    Comment by tom — January 19, 2010 @ 4:22 pm

  17. [...] Link: Flash Game Library Engine List [...]

    Pingback by Eine Liste mit Flash Spielentwicklungs-Engines — January 22, 2010 @ 11:44 am

  18. [...] el excelente flashrealtime.com han publicado recientemente una lista de librerías y motores que pueden ayudar a los programadores [...]

    Pingback by Ayuda para programar juegos en Flash — January 24, 2010 @ 5:06 am

  19. [...] el excelente flashrealtime.com han publicado recientemente una lista de librerías y motores que pueden ayudar a los programadores [...]

    Pingback by Ayuda para programar juegos en Flash « sobre tecnologia — January 24, 2010 @ 5:33 am

  20. [...] el excelente flashrealtime.com han publicado recientemente una lista de librerías y motores que pueden ayudar a los programadores [...]

    Pingback by Ayuda para programar juegos en Flash | Recolector.de Blogs — January 24, 2010 @ 6:01 am

  21. Thanks for the list!
    I will start trying some of this engines!

    Comment by David Xicota — January 24, 2010 @ 12:23 pm

  22. @David - let us know your experience after trying.

    Comment by tom — January 24, 2010 @ 1:25 pm

  23. [...] un trabajo detrás muy grande por muy sencilla que sea la aplicación que vallamos a realizar, Flash Realtime es una página web que acaba de publicar una lista que seguro que ayudará a todos los trabajadores [...]

    Pingback by Librerias para programar juegos en Flash — January 24, 2010 @ 7:20 pm

  24. [...] List of Flash Gaming EnginesLista de motores y APIs para crear juegos en Flash. [...]

    Pingback by Bookmarks del 17 de Enero al 25 de Enero « MonkyMotion — January 25, 2010 @ 5:05 pm

  25. Nice post…Very Helpful…Thanks…

    Comment by Daljit Kumar — January 27, 2010 @ 1:11 pm

  26. [...] en cualquiera de tus proyectos o videojuegos. Como mencionan en wwhat’s new en la página FLASH REALTIME hallarás ayuda para motores 2D y 3D, hasta simuladores de leyes [...]

    Pingback by Sitios que te ayudarán a programar tus juegos en Flash | Geekets — January 27, 2010 @ 10:28 pm

  27. Hey,

    Thank you for the list, now it’s time to work!

    Comment by Alex — January 31, 2010 @ 11:59 pm

  28. Hey I was wondering if anyone knew of a working game building app similar to Social Game Studio on facebook?..apparently the developers of that builder have decided to ignore the requests of facebook to make a few basic changes based on the new privacy policy and now thousands and thousands of players have been stripped of their ability to access said apps till the platform developers decide to change it. the creator of the only app I played on there was looking to move the game to a new platform but i’m not sure if one exists any help would be greatly appreciated as there are about 6000 users just from that one app alone that are pulling their hair out right now

    Comment by AzraelBane — February 4, 2010 @ 11:15 am

  29. [...] Link-List for Game-Engines: http://www.flashrealtime.com/flash-game-library-engine-list/ [...]

    Pingback by Flash Game Engines | FlashApplications — February 14, 2010 @ 5:14 pm

  30. [...] why don’t you just take a ride with one these Flash Gaming Engines and push the limits of web gaming [...]

    Pingback by Flash Gaming on NVIDIA Tablets — FlashRealtime.com — February 17, 2010 @ 3:07 am

  31. hi, great resources here :D

    I had bookmarked these 2 engines (which I didn’t try)
    http://www.photonstorm.com/pixelblitz-engine
    http://blog.vortixgames.com/contact-us/bold-pixel-engine

    Comment by gludion — February 17, 2010 @ 5:16 pm

  32. Wind has this class that allows animated collada exported from Blender: http://konsolscript.org/~mjmendoza/wind/

    Comment by Franz Biil — February 19, 2010 @ 9:12 am

  33. @Franz - ah, so cool!

    Comment by tom — February 25, 2010 @ 2:44 pm

  34. [...] researched several Flash game libraries and Flixel was my second choice, and I was able to accomplish as much with it in a few hours as I [...]

    Pingback by Getting Started With Flixel — March 19, 2010 @ 12:15 pm

  35. thank! for all great engine

    Comment by seanghong — March 31, 2010 @ 9:24 am

  36. Is a newb question.
    Can all of the engine make multiplayer game and publish on facebook?? Like most of the facebook game?
    I am interest to try out some of it.

    Comment by Newb — April 30, 2010 @ 9:34 pm

  37. [...] game framework and rest assured there is quite the plethora to choose from. Heres a list of nice libraries for AS3. I haven’t tried flashpunk yet but it looks very promising. One you have your [...]

    Pingback by Portable Games using Actionscript 3 | [DARKSPIRE] — May 15, 2010 @ 8:00 pm

  38. Interested in adding particle engines to the list?

    http://code.google.com/p/stardust-particle-engine/

    Comment by Allen Chou — June 23, 2010 @ 3:59 am

  39. Stardust added. Thx!

    Comment by tom — June 25, 2010 @ 7:57 pm

  40. Maybe you could also add ND3D to the 3D engines list
    http://www.nulldesign.de/projects/nd3d-as3-3d-engine/

    Comment by Abraham — June 25, 2010 @ 8:12 pm

  41. Great Information Indeed. Thank you

    Comment by vikram — June 26, 2010 @ 11:51 am

  42. [...] Flash游戏引擎列表 七月 19, 2010 ( No Comments ) Flash游戏引擎列表 [...]

    Pingback by leon49 | ForeverYone — July 19, 2010 @ 8:45 am

  43. [...] 19/03/10: Tom Krcha has posted a list of Flash Gaming Engines, plus a few others that were new to [...]

    Pingback by Adrian Parr’s Blog » Blog Archive » AS3 Code Libraries (APIs) — July 21, 2010 @ 11:24 am

  44. [...] encounter some pitfalls to share. In case you are wondering what else is out there here is a nice list. Stay tuned for more. This entry was posted in Development, Featured and tagged Actionscript, [...]

    Pingback by Flash game engines — July 21, 2010 @ 10:44 pm

  45. I would like to introduce you IsoEngine which is an opensource isometric engine i m currently working on. It is designed to handle multilevel map and multiplayer interaction with a simple multi socket java server. the main features are the collision management, zoomIn/Out, some special moves are already coded such as running, jumping, pulling, climbing etc… The beta released is available on google code and source forge and have already been downloaded more than 2.000 times.
    http://code.google.com/p/2d-isometric-engine/

    Online Demo here :
    http://angelstreetv2.free.fr/as3/IsoEngine/
    http://angelstreetv2.free.fr/as3/IsoEditor/

    Comment by AngelStreet — August 10, 2010 @ 7:16 pm

  46. Don’t forget TweenLite! A very fast tweeing engine.
    http://www.greensock.com/tweenlite/

    Comment by Jens — August 14, 2010 @ 1:19 pm

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