Starling Framework

[Terrantor!!!]

Hey, everyone. I've been interested in making the jump up to starling for a while and was wondering how I would be able to get started. I'm currently running flash cs6 and can't seem to find any instructions in regards to this version. Is this because cs6 is already designed to run flash player 11 and I should have no trouble importing and running starling APIs? Also, there's this business with flex framework and adobe AIR that I can't quite process. Any help would be terrific as I'm mainly an animator and want to take advantage of DragonBones.

[inkhryptedQuery]

This could just be my ignorance of animation, tools, or art in general, but how is DragonBones different from just using the native bone tool?

[Terrantor!!!]

The bone tool is cool, but has limitations. For one you can't scale or skew individual clips. Also dragonbones is less processor intensive. So you can store the visual and tween data in a small image file that flash pre-compiles. So you can literally create instance upon instance of an object without hurting your framerate and it has a more user friendly animation control API.

[inkhryptedQuery]

Nice!

I've tried using the bone tool myself and ran into some difficulty .. I thought it was just a lack of experience with the design side of CS6

[Terrantor!!!]

Nice!

I've tried using the bone tool myself and ran into some difficulty .. I thought it was just a lack of experience with the design side of CS6

The bone tool can be a real pain, sometimes. Don't get me wrong, since bone tool works with movie clips it has the ability to scale without any loss of quality, so if you don't plan on having a bunch of an instance on screen at one time, it's still a really nice tool, but if you're gonna build a tower defense or something, I'd go with dragon bones. Not to mention if you know how to make keyframes, it's easy as shit.

[AnotherArrow]

Its been awhile since I last had a chance to work on my projects with Starling, but if memory serves me... I wouldn't recommend using CS6 to make the game itself, but rather just make the assets ( using dragonbones). While I think it may be possible, it was more of a headache to work with.

I recommend using Flash Builder (or try Flash Develop, its free!) to compile and make your game. Unfortunately Flash Builder (and Flash Develop) are more programing oriented vs the timeline manipulation used Flash Professional.

how is DragonBones different from just using the native bone tool?

If you're using Flash Pro CC (Creative Cloud Version), bone tool no longer exists. Ironically, Dragonbones doesn't not replace or even provide the same functionality that the bone tool did. DragonBones is meant to help the programers (not the artists) in the manipulations of the characters in real time.

Best of Luck!

[BlueLight]

Eclipse is also a possibility but i've yet to set it up. From my understanding that is basically what flash builder is but since i'm not a actionscript programmer i can't say for sure.

[Terrantor!!!]

Its been awhile since I last had a chance to work on my projects with Starling, but if memory serves me... I wouldn't recommend using CS6 to make the game itself, but rather just make the assets ( using dragonbones). While I think it may be possible, it was more of a headache to work with.

I recommend using Flash Builder (or try Flash Develop, its free!) to compile and make your game. Unfortunately Flash Builder (and Flash Develop) are more programing oriented vs the timeline manipulation used Flash Professional.

how is DragonBones different from just using the native bone tool?

If you're using Flash Pro CC (Creative Cloud Version), bone tool no longer exists. Ironically, Dragonbones doesn't not replace or even provide the same functionality that the bone tool did. DragonBones is meant to help the programers (not the artists) in the manipulations of the characters in real time.

Best of Luck!

I'll definitely give the free one a go, lol. But I'm so comfortable with flash professional, and I'm actually getting in the habit of avoiding frame scripts altogether. It seems the only hurdle I have is installing the flex sdk so I can embed .png files. It's the only thing I'm having trouble with. Is there some kind of plugin I need or what?

[AnotherArrow]

I'll definitely give the free one a go, lol. But I'm so comfortable with flash professional, and I'm actually getting in the habit of avoiding frame scripts altogether. It seems the only hurdle I have is installing the flex sdk so I can embed .png files. It's the only thing I'm having trouble with. Is there some kind of plugin I need or what?

Again, its been awhile since I've had free time to play with Starling, but you shouldn't need any plugin.

I do remember there being a problem when I embedded .png files using Flash Builder because it was also create a .js file that was need in the same directory as the .swf file. This was a problem because the .swf files that I uploaded wouldn't properly use the embedded .png files because that .js file was missing (or not uploaded to the same directory). I instead started using the .dbswf file format that DragonBones can make for my projects and had no issues.

I don't remember installing Flex SDK... so I'm not sure what to say.

If you haven't, check this video out. Its an old link I faved for reference.

[BlueLight]

Flex SDK is a just a zip file containing files for creating SWF such as a compiler.

[Terrantor!!!]

Sorry I didn't post it, but I figured everything out. I got starling up and running. I just need to learn how to load up textures and apply them to sprites, now. The way sharman does it is a little weird, I really don't wanna get into dictionaries and stuff. I'd ultimately like to just build a class, extend starling's sprite class and put all the texture info on that. Would that be legit/ efficient?