How capable is flash?

Question

Greetings.
Me and a friend are developing a videogame using Macromedia
Flash MX 2004. The videogame is featuring plenty of 3D art imports
in the form of JPGs. Since the videogame aims at being similar to
an RPG (Role Playing Game), it features several heroes. Each heroe
(done in 3D but exported to .GIF files) can walk in at least four
directions, top, right, bottom, left. Each direction features 7
frames of the character moving. That means there are 28 frames in
total per character. There are 7 characters, so the total frames
will go up to 7 * 28 , totalizing 196 frames total.
I have discovered I have two options and both seem to be
valid:
1. I can import the jpgs/gifs and trace them and locate each
image in the proper frame.
OR
2. I can import transparent .GIFs and locate them in the
proper frame.
In principle, both ways seem to work nicely, and the quality
seem similar. However, in terms of memory and Flash stability,
which method would you recommend? Will flash prefer one method over
the other?
Though it runs fine for now, I ask this question because I
don't want the videogame to experience sudden hangs later on.
Thanks in advance for any answer / reply.

Answer 1

Use method #3 - png files with transparency. If that is not
an option open up your gifs in photoshop and convert them to png
files in there.
Jpeg and gif files are lossy files, where png files are
lossless compressed files. You can change the settings of every
image by adjusting the quality slider on Flash's publish screen.
This means you can make multiple versions of your game with the
click of the button (low res to high res) which isn't really an
option with jpgs or gifs. (Someone let me know if this is
incorrect.)
Flash is deeper then you could ever imagine, your main
stumbling block will be the power of the end users computer.
Good luck with your game. Making a game in Flash is harder
then you can imagine...