AIRToy

WARNING: AIRToy should be considered alpha software AT BEST. WARNING: AIRToy is currently only compatible with MAC OS X.

VIDEO WALKTHROUGH ONLINE - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIhYlM9TQww

DESCRIPTION

AIRToy is a very lightweight "project generator" command-line script for creating ActionScript and Adobe AIR SDK projects. It is primarily designed to make it much easier to generate new ActionScript projects without an IDE. Sample usage:

AIRToy/inflate MyNewGame

This creates a new empty AS3 template project, similar to the ones generated by Flash Builder or Flash Develop, and launches it in ADL, the Adobe AIR debug launcher, providing a handy trace console.

AIRToy also has support for template projects and files, making it easy to create more complex projects. For example:

AIRToy/inflate MyNewFlixelGame -flixel

Generates a simple "hello world" Flixel game, complete with state file. Currently AIRToy only supports two templates out of the box:

-tweenlite -flixel

AIRToy is NOT meant to be a full IDE replacement, just a way to streamline rapid prototyping and command-line development in ActionScript 3 and AIR.

INSTALLATION and CONFIGURATION

AIRToy is very easy to set up and install. First, download and install the Adobe AIR SDK ( http://www.adobe.com/devnet/air/air-sdk-download.html ) wherever you want. (NOTE: AIRToy also works fine with the Flex 4.6 SDK)

Then download and install the latest AIRToy release wherever you want. I like to keep it in my ActionScript project folder, with the rest of my games and stuff, but it should work from anywhere.

Finally, in the AIRToy folder, duplicate "config.cfg" and call the new file "custom.cfg". Edit "custom.cfg" and update the various critical file paths (like filling in the AIR SDK install path, the path of your ActionScript project folder, default app width/height, etc).

That's it! You should be able to create a command-line ActionScript project now, using AIRToy's "inflate" script from the OS X Terminal, like so:

AIRToy/inflate MyNewGame

After creating your new app, you can recompile it and launch it in the debugger again with a simple call like:

MyNewGame/debug

or just "debug" if you're already in your game's directory. You can also just double-click the "debug" program in Finder.

A NOTE ABOUT DEBUGGING AND TRACE STATEMENTS

In some versions of Flex or AIR, debugging is actually disabled in the $SDK/frameworks/air-config.xml or flex-config.xml file. If you want access to trace statements in the Terminal, you may need to enable that setting there.

MXMLC IS TOO SLOW, HELP, WHY IS EVERYTHING AWFUL

There is a bit of a catch-22 in ActionScript 3 development right now. If you want the latest compiler AND the latest AIR SDK support, you frequently have to install a few different overlapping SDKs if you want access to a new version of ADL and a new version of MXMLC/FCSH. AIRToy is totally ok with that, and even plays nice with third party utilities like fcshctl:

http://hasseg.org/blog/post/194/fcshctl-the-flex-compiler-shell-controller/

Drop AIRToy into your frankenstein SDK's /bin/ folder and update the COMPILER= part of custom.cfg to say COMPILER="bin/fcshctl mxmlc". Voila! Super fast modern AIR compilation.

PLANS

AIRToy is very, very early in development, but these are the features I am most excited about adding in the future:

• a nape (physics engine) template
• ADT packaging for desktop
• Windows support (switch to python?)
• ADT packaging for Android

LICENSE: AIRToy is free under the MIT License, so do whatever you want with it.