A Flash Developer in Unity’s Court Part 2

Good news if you like FlashDevelop

UnityDevelop is a hacked version of FlashDevelop that does all the autocomplete and syntax hinting for Unity JavaScript that FD does for AS3. The only thing that could be better is if there was a plugin for FD instead of a hack of a (now) old version that will never get upgraded, but what do you want for free anyway?

Prefabs !== MovieClips

When I first started using Flash the biggest hurdle I had to overcome was how similar it looked to Director while being based on a subtly different paradigm. Unity presents a similar challenge in how it manages assets. For example, in Unity you can create assemblies of assets similar to MovieClips called “prefabs”. Prefabs are a nested arrangement of 3D objects and scripts that can be placed in a scene (Flash:Stage) in multiple instances. Where things get subtly weird is how Unity recombines the concept of Flash’s Library and MovieClip into the Hierarchy and Project concepts. When I want to use an individual Object that is used in a Prefab I have to be careful to drag it out of the Project Window from outside the prefab folder or unexpected results will occur that effect the prefab definition. I can’t drag it out of the Hierarchy Window.

The good way to drag an object onto scene

And the bad way

Note: check the date on this post – your mileage will vary!