Flixel Power Tools v1.9 Released

I’m pleased to announce that version 1.9 of the Flixel Power Tools is now live. This release was never about adding big sweeping new features. Instead I focused on maintenance and making it as solid as possible. Lots of the classes have been expanded and piles of bugs and edge-case oddities stomped.

Updates include: Pixel perfect collision now works 100% even when both sprites are rotating.The new FlxKongregate provides a solid hook into the Kongregate API with all of their advanced features. FlxWeapon gained the ability for pre-fire and post-fire events, sound support, random factors, parent direction firing support, bullet elasticity, bullet counters and bullet lifespans. The control handler had some gravity issues squashed and new isPressedUp/Down/Left/Right methods added. FlxBar had a complete overhaul and is even more flexible now, with 2 new RPG style examples included: A Zelda-like life counter and an RPG Experience bar. Plus there are new tests in the Test Suite including a destructible terrain example.

Read on to find out what Version 2.0 will bring to the table.

Release 2.0 will change everything

1.9 is the final release before I start on 2.0. Version 2 will be a significant overhaul to both the structure and classes available. I’m afraid that any code using Flixel Power Tools v1.x will not be forward compatible with 2.0 and will require extensive re-factoring. So if you are mid-game now and using FPT then please remain at version 1.9 until you start a new project.

Why the change? Basically the Power Tools have got too big! It was fine having them all in one place when I started this journey, but as more and more features have been added the structure no longer works. So I intend to split them up into categories such as: input, display, effects, sound, fonts, gui, etc. I won’t be removing any classes, but I may split some up into more manageable chunks – especially the more heavy-weight ones such as FlxControl and FlxWeapon.

Development on 2.0 has started and will live under a new ‘2.0’ branch in github. Do not randomly import this release into a current game! But feel free to check it out, suggest ideas and report bugs. I’m aiming to release 2.0 in the New Year, after which I’ll then make a call if I want to port all of this to html5 or carry on my work on a Stage3D renderer for Flixel.

Posted on October 11th 2011 at 12:56 pm by Rich.
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