First of all: welcome to the Starling community! Since its first release in 2011, developers from all over the world have created amazing games and apps with the help of the little red bird. It’s great you want to join us!

You have come to the right place: this manual will teach all you need to know. We’ll cover everything from 'A' like Asset Management to 'Z' like, ehm, Zen-like coding.

I will start from scratch, beginning with a small game that will give you a feeling for the framework. Then we’ll look at all the concepts in detail, including the display list architecture and Starling’s animation system. Later chapters contain information for advanced Starling users, like how to write custom rendering code. Before you know it, you’ll be a master of Starling!

However, there is one small precondition: you should have a basic understanding of the Haxe programming language. Fear not: if you have used any other object oriented language, you will get the hang of it quickly. There are numerous books and tutorials available that will get you started.

However, you don’t need to have prior experience with OpenFL before getting started with Starling. There is some basic foundational OpenFL code to bootstrap a Starling project, but it is minimal and will include appropriate explanation.