his seems like a very simple topic, and it should be...for anyone who has programmed in language like C or C++; In those languages, numbers have never been handled with a primitive data type named Number. There have always been several types to use for storing number such as int, long int , float etc. However, in Flash AS1, all variables were treated as "variants". You could store text, numbers, fractions, etc in any variable It was up to the Flash compiler to figure out what you meant any calcuation and do it's best comply. This led to bizarre situations where, for instance, numbers would be concatenated instead of added together, which then led to confusion and unecessary debugging sessions.

n Flash AS1 and AS2 there was no support for constants. A constant (usually designed with const) is a variable that represents a value that never changes. At first, this sounds fairly useless. Why would you want a variable that never changes? Isn't a variable, by it's very definition supposed to change? However, constants come in very handy...

(Note: I'm converting my Flash game "Spin City" from AS2 to AS3 so it can be reskinned for another project. I've decided to document this activity in a series of tutorials so they might benefit anyone else who is going through the same development process)

I've never been a huge fan of packages for my code. I'm not sure why, because I have pretty much grasped onto every other piece of Object Oriented methodology. For Some reason though, the use of packages has eluded me. Of course, I have referenced them to include other people's code and our own common libraries, but I've never felt the need to use them myself.

To work in Flash AS3 wth classes, packages are required. So let't take a quick look at packages in Flash AS2 and see how they relate to Flash AS3.

Finally, my newest game for Hotwheels.com has gone live!  "Hot Wheels Spin City Drive-Thru Dilemma" is my casual game "sequel" to "Hot Wheels Accelracers Track Mod", released in 2005.   It is not really a "sequel" though, as it's game-play is based on the "Diner Dash" model, not on the "Pipe Dream/Rocket Mania" model of Track Mod.  However, the two share a lot of the same code-base, and they are both "puzzle" style games, and the both are outside the normal style of games that we put on hotwheels.com.