Emanuele Feronato

Talking about Actionscript 3, Flash and Game development.

This is ideally the sequel of reuse your Flash games code (as much as you can!) post.

If the post I wrote about two months ago is almost pure theory, here I am with some numbers which can show you the importance of reusing your code.

I made two games using a set of libraries which I can reuse with no hassle. The first is Stringy, and it will be released this week, at the moment it’s in last call on Flash Game License. The second is Slingy, and it was submitted today for bidding, always on Flash Game License of course.

The first is some kind of mouse avoider with a twist, while the second is a fire and collect physics game. Two completely different gameplays. You can check the video teaser here. So what kind of code can I reuse? Obviously, all menu management, API connections, low level achievement routines, and everything which is not strictly part of the game itself.

But I think it’s time to show you some numbers.

Stringy has been coded with 929 lines, but if we exclude everything which is not strictly related to gameplay, we remain with only 424 lines. This means only 45.6% of the code cannot be reused, unless I plan a sequel. The remaining 54.4% has been used to create Slingy, 1179 lines of pure awesomeness, but only 720 have been written from scratch.

In other words, my second game just needed 61.1% of the effort I needed to put if I decided to code it from scratch. And less effort means less time, which obviously means more games and more money.

Now, while I am waiting for billionaire bids on FGL, I am making my first StencylWorks game, but I am also creating some kind of framework into framework to minimize the effort needed to make a game.