Yay, I got excited. The next game-programming-framework for Flash/Actionscript3 is out/updated: FlashPunk. It should serve an alternative to Flixel.

Its goal is to provide you with a fast, clean framework for prototyping and developing games; this means most of the dirty work — reliable framerate, sprite rendering/animation, player input, and collision detection (to name a few) — has been covered with a set of base classes and functions for your ease of use. This gives you more time and energy to concentrate on the design and testing of your game.

Well, this totally sounds like Flixel, so why use FlashPunk? The developer say, that FlashPunk is especially targeted at the use of bitmaps – also hundreds and thousands of bitmaps should be possible, without having any performanceissues. Hm…. I want to doubt that, but why not give it a try? There is a threat at the TIGSource-Forum, explaining the details in depth.

Another good reason to use FlashPunk might be, that some like it more in pink.. ;)

Edit: Just taken a look at the technical details. Really well designed. Thumbs up! Good work! Seems, that FlashPunk is able to fix one of the most criticized issues of Flash: drawing many objects at a reasonable speed.

Update: I interviewed Chevy Ray about FlashPunk.

And here is a demo video: