Terry Paton described himself as a passionate Flash developer. He is a prolific game developer with more than 10 years experience and more than 100 games developed in the last seven years. Many of them are available on games portals like mochimedia and others in mobile stores like Apple’s App Store and Android Market.

Some time ago we invited him to try Flare3D 2.0 and he has been working with Flare3D in “Robot arena” that will be released when Flash Player 11 is available. In the following interview we asked him about his experience using Flare3D.

1.      What is robot arena

Robot Arena is a game where you battle endless waves of robots, until you get destroyed. The game mechanics are simple, you guide the players character around the screen, avoiding touching the enemies and their bullets, while trying to pickup coins and powerups that they drop when you destroy them. The main method fo destroying enemies is by jumping on them. The players power increases over time and when you click the player will jump, then land, creating a shockwave relative to the size of the power built up. Powerups also allow you extra abilities for a limited time.

2. Why did you choose Flare when there are free or open source technologies?

I was invited to join the beta program for the Stage3D version of Flare3D. I’ve been looking into various frameworks that utilise Stage3D rendering, and the opportunity was perfect timing for me.

3. How would you describe your experience with this product?

It’s been quite a learning process for me to switch to using an external rendering engine, rather than using my own which I normally build. I found the documentation good, help for questions readily available, and the Flare3D itself very easy once I adapted to it.

4. Which one was the feature that you liked the most?

I find it a little difficult to choose just one feature, but the engines flexibility, allowing me to tie it into my existing framework (where I handle game logic) to work really well. The speed and power of the engine are also fantastic. I’ve barely touched the surface of the Flare3D engine with this game and am looking forward to using it with further projects where I’ll use more of its features.

5. Why was Flare3D important for Robot Arena?

With Stage3D now becoming a viable solution for better rendering speeds and effects it was important that I start using it as soon as I could. Personally I don’t understand (nor do I want to) the low level api’s, so using a framework that is both fast and flexible is paramount. Using Flare3D allowed me to streamline my game engine and focus more on creating the game, rather than getting stuck on technical aspects.

Robot Arena Beta 8 from Terry Paton on Vimeo.

If you want to know more about Terry Paton and his work you can visit his Blog in pixelpaton.com or his website at terrypaton.com