Is there anything remotely like Flash CS3 for android development?

January 26, 2021 4:49 AM

I was a confident making games in Flash, but I've never been able to get into phone app development. The things I liked most about CS3 were dragging things around a visual 'screen' to see what they would look like, and the 'just works' aspect - I could just write code, output it to swf, and have a thing that worked on a web page exactly liked it worked on my computer - there wasn't any fuss with virtualenvs or anything like that. (I'm a hobbyist, not a professional developer). Is there anything out there with these features?
posted by wattle to Technology (5 answers total)

Android developer here. Yeah, so with the recent Jetpack Compose stuff they're trying to get closer to this WYSIWYG ideal but it's still a ways off.

React Native tho maybe you would like? No dragging things around, but you can whip up layouts really fast.
posted by johngoren at 4:56 AM on January 26, 2021 [1 favorite]

Best answer: p.s. After thinking more about your question, what about Unity?
posted by johngoren at 5:29 AM on January 26, 2021

Response by poster: That's a good point! I've never learned Unity because I think of it as a thing for 3d, but you're right, it's pretty much exactly what I should learn.
posted by wattle at 5:47 AM on January 26, 2021

Best answer: There's also Godot which is pretty good too and worth considering.
posted by roue at 7:11 AM on January 26, 2021

Best answer: I came here to say "Unity" too. It has a whole toolset for 2d games, in parallel to the 3d stuff. There's a lot there, and there's probably more-than-average bad advice out there, but it's very powerful assuming you can stomach the licensing (and if not, there's always Godot).
posted by Alterscape at 7:35 AM on January 26, 2021