readme.txt

WARNING: AIRToy should be considered alpha software AT BEST.
WARNING: AIRToy is currently only compatible with MAC OS X.



VIDEO WALKTHROUGH ONLINE - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIhYlM9TQww



DESCRIPTION

AIRToy is a very lightweight "project generator" command-line script
for creating ActionScript and Adobe AIR SDK projects. It is primarily
designed to make it much easier to generate new ActionScript projects
without an IDE. Sample usage:

> AIRToy/inflate MyNewGame

This creates a new empty AS3 template project, similar to the ones
generated by Flash Builder or Flash Develop, and launches it in ADL,
the Adobe AIR debug launcher, providing a handy trace console.

AIRToy also has support for template projects and files, making it
easy to create more complex projects. For example:

> AIRToy/inflate MyNewFlixelGame -flixel

Generates a simple "hello world" Flixel game, complete with state file.
Currently AIRToy only supports two templates out of the box:

-tweenlite
-flixel

AIRToy is NOT meant to be a full IDE replacement, just a way to streamline
rapid prototyping and command-line development in ActionScript 3 and AIR.



INSTALLATION and CONFIGURATION

AIRToy is very easy to set up and install. First, download and install the
Adobe AIR SDK ( http://www.adobe.com/devnet/air/air-sdk-download.html ) wherever
you want. (NOTE: AIRToy also works fine with the Flex 4.6 SDK)

Then download and install the latest AIRToy release wherever you want.
I like to keep it in my ActionScript project folder, with the rest
of my games and stuff, but it should work from anywhere.

Finally, in the AIRToy folder, duplicate "config.cfg" and call the new file
"custom.cfg". Edit "custom.cfg" and update the various critical file paths
(like filling in the AIR SDK install path, the path of your ActionScript
project folder, default app width/height, etc).

That's it! You should be able to create a command-line ActionScript project now,
using AIRToy's "inflate" script from the OS X Terminal, like so:

> AIRToy/inflate MyNewGame

After creating your new app, you can recompile it and launch it in the debugger
again with a simple call like:

> MyNewGame/debug

or just "debug" if you're already in your game's directory. You can also just
double-click the "debug" program in Finder.



A NOTE ABOUT DEBUGGING AND TRACE STATEMENTS

In some versions of Flex or AIR, debugging is actually disabled in
the $SDK/frameworks/air-config.xml or flex-config.xml file. If you
want access to trace statements in the Terminal, you may need to
enable that setting there.



MXMLC IS TOO SLOW, HELP, WHY IS EVERYTHING AWFUL

There is a bit of a catch-22 in ActionScript 3 development right now.
If you want the latest compiler AND the latest AIR SDK support, you
frequently have to install a few different overlapping SDKs if you
want access to a new version of ADL and a new version of MXMLC/FCSH.
AIRToy is totally ok with that, and even plays nice with third party
utilities like fcshctl:

http://hasseg.org/blog/post/194/fcshctl-the-flex-compiler-shell-controller/

Drop AIRToy into your frankenstein SDK's /bin/ folder and update the
COMPILER= part of custom.cfg to say COMPILER="bin/fcshctl mxmlc".
Voila! Super fast modern AIR compilation.



PLANS

AIRToy is very, very early in development, but these are the features I
am most excited about adding in the future:
- a nape (physics engine) template
- ADT packaging for desktop
- Windows support (switch to python?)
- ADT packaging for Android



LICENSE: AIRToy is free under the MIT License, so do whatever you want with it.