Load “symbols” (art assets) from fla (Adobe Flash Professional 5.5) with FlashDevelop?

Question

keep in mind I normally use pure as3 and FlashDevelop :) I am really new to this "working with Adobe Flash Professional" thing and I am working with an artist that basically put all the art in a .fla file. I am a veteran pure as3 programmer and I never tried to work with a Fla file(or Flash Pro).

I want to work the right easy way and use my classes with the fla to load assets directly. I've tried to find a comprehensive tutorial but had no such luck.

Basically I have a bunch of working pure AS3 code in FlashDevelop and a bunch of art assets saved into one .fla file. And my goal is to rasterize (turn into bitmapData) the art assets so I can blit (copyPixel) them whenever I need quickly for good gaming performance.

Thank you all, any help is greatly appreciated. This is a project I am doing to help a friend and I don't have much time to research this by myself so simply pointing me in the right direction to an easy to follow tutorial would be a great start.

I tried to read and understand the in-house wiki for FlashDevelop and the instructions there were not clear as far as using Flash Pro 5.5 in conjunction with FlashDevelop.

I really want to use FlashDevelop so I can easily maintain class structure. Thanks a bunch to anyone who can help.

Answer 1

I usually ask the artist to export SWC - it is easy to move from there by either the already created symbols to your classes.

I also usually try to compile a list of class names to give to the artist to name things he/she compiles. For example, the artist creates a button with 2 states, each state is a separate symbol. Then I tell artist that they have to export states for ActionScript by giving them names: assets.button.UpState, assets.button.DownState and so on.

After I get the SWC, I'd create classes named assets.button.* and add the code I need for the states to function.

It's better, however, to let artists see how the whole thing develops, because they won't be seeing in their own environment how things are bundled together - will let you escape things not immediately noticeable.

Sometimes the above may not be possible b/c the FLA already exists, has a bunch of code in it, that you can't remove immediately / you have no contact with the artist, in which case, probably, you could just create a "Flash CS project" in FD an point it to the FLA file you have. In Flash CS you would then declare some class you create as document class and FD has some JSFL scripts to cause Flash compilation to commence :) Note that compiling graphics takes long time and Flash (not the last time I tried) doesn't do iterative compiles. So, SWC option is better - will save you a lot of compilation time.