Reading the MochiAds Forum I have found an interesting post containing a bunch of useful Flash API's and Tools. I elaborated it a lil bit and here it is, the bible for every Flash Developer!



Mutiplayer APIs

• SmartFoxServer
• ElectroServer
• Nonoba
• BlossomServer
• Red5
  

SmartFoxServer is probably the most used, it is the core of many Multiplayer Games, probably the biggest one is Club Penguin. ElectroServer powers Webkinz. Either one and the other give you the possibility to create your game from zero, lobby included. They cost probably too much for an independent developer. I personally have used a lot the Nonoba, winning many contest on their site and the 2ND place of the final contest. It is easy to use and it is free but sometimes I found it a lil bit slow and it didn't let me customize the lobby. I didn't like very much to have a white and green lobby for all my games. BlossomServer is new and it has been created by Jiggmin, the author of Platform Racing. It is free and it gives you the possibility to download the source code and change if you want. The only problem is that it is based on a PHP socket server... which is not stable as Java or C.Red5 is a free java server, but probably it crashes too much.

3D APIs

• Papervision3D
• Away3D
• Sandy3D

I have used all of them and honestly my favourite is Away3D.It is quite simple to use and it has a lot of functions for game designer.I wrote an article about it few months ago, you can read it here .

3D physics APIs

• WOW physics engine

This is the only 3D physics engine that I'm aware of for Flash. From looking at a few of the tutorials, it looks like you would have use this physics API in conjunction with a 3D API so you can render what's actually going on. I haven't had a chance to actually use the API, so I can't give much of an opinion.
2D physics APIs

• Box2D
• APE

I have used Box2D in my last game Dynamic Systems http://www.lorenzgames.com/game/dynamic-systems .
They have a nice community and it is easy to find tutorials on Internet.

IDEs

• FlashDevelop
• FDT

From what i have heard FlashDevelop is great. It has great syntax highlighting, auto completion, and it's just overall a whole lot better to use compared to the built in Actionscript editor in the Flash authoring tool, plus it's free! FDT should be good too, but it's not free.

Tweeners

• TweenLite
  
• TweenFilterLite
• TweenMax
• Caurina Tweener
  

A Tweener is basically a tool that creates transactions in an object.
For example if you need to move an object from point A to point B with an animation.
The Caurina one is one of my favourite, probably because i have used it for so long.
They have surely saved me a lot of work.

Debuggers

• De MonsterDebugger
  
• BareTail
• Flash Player Debugger
  

For now this is all, if you have any other interesting Tool please contact me.

Rob Bateman has just written an article about the new update of Away3D for Flash 10. As you can see in this demo they have boosted the rendering speed increasing the quality of it. It's unbelievable how the normal mapping and the HDR technique are used in a normal SWF file. I really think that soon we will see some high quality 3D game made entirely with Flash. The problem right now is the compatibility (not everybody has installed Flash Player 10 on their browser) and that using too many polygons would slow down very much everything. Personally I have made some games using Away3D last year and I had some trouble with the speed, infact one of them, Fartunes Jumper, was so slow that I had to set up the quality to low, and the result was not the best. I guess I could rewrite it with Flash 10 and probably add some more details.

In this article I asked to Fabrice Closier what are the potential of Away3D. The article is very interesting, i hope you will enjoy it then later dont forget to go visit the Away3D Website !

How old is Away3D and what exactly does it in few words?

Away3D is an advanced real time 3D engine for Flash. Not bad for a one year old baby!

How many people work on it?

There are nine of us on the team right now.

Beside the donations, does your team earn money from some other source?

The donations are not a source of revenue for us. The idea is to finance some activities for the site with what we receive. Each and every one of us work for a company full-time or as a freelancer.

Do you think Away3D is better than Papervision3D or Sandy?

Yes, but I'm not very neutral.. am I ? The best way to find out is to try it for yourself and see if it fits your requirements. Sandy and Papervision are both fantastic libraries.

I have done some games with your 3D Engine, but it is still little bit slow when I use lots of polygons, do you think that Flash 10 will boost it?

This is directly linked to the way you work. The limitations force you to be creative. You have to spend time planning your projects. Eliminate what is not needed, and focus on the best way to create what is really required. Use optimized texturing, modeling or a good dose of tricks. This is not just a 3D issue, it has always been this way in Flash. Flash 10 will cut some corners, but as we will want to do more and more, we should hit a wall within the next few months again. The rules that apply now, will apply then, as well.

Can you tell me some new features we will see soon on the new versions of Away3D?

It's very difficult to say. The Away team is very active and we try to focus on our users demands. We do spend also a lot of time in R&D. All I can say, is that even if Away is pretty extended today, there is still a lot that needs to be done. But funny enough, most wanted features are not even related to the engine itself. According to polls we place on regular base on our site, the most wanted features are tutorials and demos.

What do you think is the best Game/Website ever made with Away3D?

Yours of course Sure, we've seen pretty amazing productions. Personally I don't think there is a best site, because there is no best clients. The best site is the one you deliver the best you can that makes you and your client happy.

Tell me something that your users request you often and will be impossible to do with Away3D.

Even if Away is restricted to the Flash player capabilities, strangly enough we do not get that much impossible questions. Most our users are seasonned Flash developers and designers, so they know they can't get the moon... add to this that 3D is for the Flash world pretty young, most have already tough time to deal with what is already available.

How can we help you and your team to do always better and never stop with this project?

Keep using the engine and continue to surprise us with your projects. To be able to see all those websites, games, experiments done with our baby is the best motivation we can get. Thank you Fabrice for your time, and long life to Away3D!

These 2 games have been taken from the Papervision3D list. Bowling Buddies (Facebook integrated game) AirShip demos The Bowling Buddies game is made by the very creative Playfish.com company (more on the release at their blog). They have some great facebook/social network games combined with flash. With bowling buddies they created a game similar to Wii bowling (even with customize characters) and the best part is how they have scaled down versions. You can play in 2D, 3D and at different levels of quality to make it accessible to everyone. I think that will probably be needed with 3d flash games (Shockwave Director has LOD (Level of Detail) that helps with scaling down to slower machines but you have to do that yourself with the state of 3d engines in flash so far). Bowling buddies and most playfish games are Facebook/Social Network based. You might say, why? (especially if you aren’t in the US where facebook is the biggest social network). But even Activision’s CEO calls facebook a threat to online gaming as we know it, this is because of the community aspect and the ability to play with friends and multiplayer games easily. Rather than setting up your own player find mechanism, facebook has it built in and all the viral aspects you need to garner more fans. So those into facebook and gaming are possibly ahead, but also it will be extremely competitive.

Airship is a really creative game that has been impressive to watch grow over the last weeks. It is now textured and performs pretty well. The best part is the Airship model and the fans. Very neat and I hope this one is seen through to a launched game. It is a bit like a RTS/Strategy overhead game that would be very cool to play multiplayer with Red5 server as well (just need the TIME!).

The best part is you can see after a year+ of release papervision and the other 3d engines are really changing the way gaming is done online. What was once a Java or Shockwave only capability, flash now has with evolving 3d engines, and there are playable fun games to prove it that are commercial ready.

I have been using Flash for long time, I guess the first time I started to use it, it was still in Beta Version 1; that time I used it just to make simple animation for a cartoon studio. With the years I have seen it growing so much, but, what I really wanted from it was the possibility to use 3D stuff inside my applications; for many years this has been impossible if you didn't want to use Shockwave. Last year something changed with Sandy, for the first time it was possible to see real 3D objects in a simple Flash Application. From that day other 2 major engines were developed: Papervision3D and Away3D. Sandy was pretty good for those who still were using ActionScript 2.0, but, what really changed the cards on the table was Away3D, created by the mind of Alexander Zadorozhny.

Away3D is, in my humble opinion, one of the most powerful engine to create 3D contents with Flash. Easy documentation, lots of tutorials, the possibility to import OBJ 3DS and MD2 files, a very active developers forum where any kind of doubt is solved in less than one day. At beginning I started to use Away3D to create superlative Website at The Adory, when one day I thought: I should try to make a game with this stuff! I made Ultimate Battleship 3D and, well the result was not the best game ever but to be the first game made with Away3D was pretty good, actually I sold a NON-Exclusive License for it of $250 .

After it I made: Pistoleros Cannon Alone Carnival Hammers Fartunes Jumper Miss Primp The last one had lots of success on MySpace.com with the girls audience, because they could create their own avatar to put on their profile.

With the Version 10 of Flash the things will change even more, because the new player will be able to use the GPU of our computer to enhance 3D acceleration, and the men at the Away3D Team told me to stay tuned because big news is coming! I want to thanks Peter Kapelyan, Fabrice Closier and Rob Bateman for all the support they gave to me during the development of my games. Soon I will add some tutorials on this Blog to explain all the things that it is possible to do with this amazing engine.