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Add to SafariHaxeFlixel vs BYOND
When comparing HaxeFlixel vs BYOND, the Slant community recommends HaxeFlixel for most people. In the question“What are the best 2D game engines?” HaxeFlixel is ranked 24th while BYOND is ranked 29th. The most important reason people chose HaxeFlixel is:
[Haxe](http://www.haxe.org) is a powerful, cross-platform and open source language.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Powerful language
Haxe is a powerful, cross-platform and open source language.
Pro 75+ demos
All demos have included GitHub link, so you can learn from the examples
Pro Getting started guide
Has a starting guide for people who are completely new to HaxeFlixel; from installing Haxe to a beginner-friendly HaxeFlixel tutorial.
Pro Uses Haxe
(excerpt from source): To help you do this, the (Haxe) toolkit contains three main components:
the Haxe Language - a modern high-level, strictly typed programming language
the Haxe Standard Library - a complete cross-platform standard library
the Haxe Compiler - an incredibly fast cross-compiler
Pro Fully free
HaxeFlixel is fully free and open source.
Pro Hardware accelerated rendering on native platforms
Pro Active development community
(excerpt from source):
There is a multitude of channels to interact with the community:
Our google groups forums
#haxeflixel on IRC (freenode.net)
@HaxeFlixel on Twitter
The HaxeFlixel organization on GitHub
The HaxeFlixel page on IndieDB
Join our development chat on Slack[1]
HaxeFlixel group on Steam
Pro Powerful debugger overlay
You can watch variables, log (trace) messages, and check for memory/frame rate performance.
Pro Modelled after Flixel
But with considerable improvements -- the HaxeFlixel team are constantly working improving and fixing the HaxeFlixel API, as compared to the original Flixel which is no longer updated.
Pro Easy 2D game development
(Haxe)Flixel does a lot of things for you like tilemaps and collision detection, which makes it super easy to create 2D games.
Pro Outstanding community
The HaxeFlixel team and contributors are very active on Github and other community places (like Slack), and are usually able to respond to your questions within a day or two.
Pro Similar syntax to Actionscript 3
Haxe's syntax is similar to AS3, so Flash developers can transition to HaxeFlixel if they are familiar with AS3/Flixel.
Pro Excellent, robust API
The API has all of the features that you'd expect from a powerful engine without sacrificing organization and flexibility
Pro Cross Platform
The open source Flash API is powered by OpenFL, which allows you to compile to Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android, and even major consoles (coming soon).
Pro Cross-platform IDE environment
On Windows, the IDE of choice is FlashDevelop, but if you're looking for cross-platform IDE (Windows/Mac/Linux), there's Sublime Text which includes a package for Haxe syntax highlighting, as well as auto-completion.
Pro In active development
BYOND is in active development and updates are released constantly.
Pro Easy to use
The software itself is very easy to learn and use for beginners.
Pro Helpful community
BYOND's community is relatively large and extremely helpful. Any question a beginner or an experienced user may have is quickly answered.
Pro Large Community
Fairly large player base and multiple games to play.
Cons
Con Small community
HaxeFlixel devs are not as large as (example) Unity devs, so the amount of support and exposure is limited.
Con Highly supports multiplayer, but can make solo games ready for download.
Con Exclusive programming language
The language is known as DM, and is modified using Dream Maker. It is an object oriented, interpreted language, which closely resembles C++, Java and PHP. More information available in the DM Guide.
