The Essential Guide to Flash Games
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
The Essential Guide to Flash Games is a unique tool for Flash game developers. Rather than focusing on a bunch of low-level how-to material, this book dives straight into building games. The book is divided into specific game genre projects, covering everything from old classics such as a Missile Command-style game, to hot new genres such as retro evolved. The chapters build in complexity through the book, and new tools are introduced along the way that can be reused for other games.
- The game projects covered start simple and increase in complexity as more and more tools are added to your tool chest.
- Ten full game projects are discussed in detail. Each solves a very different game development problem and builds on the knowledge gained from the previous project.
- Many advanced game development techniques are covered, including particle systems, advanced controls, artificial intelligence, blitting, scrolling, and more.
What you’ll learn
- Flash/Flex ActionScript 3 game development
- How to apply object-oriented game development techniques
- How to solve a wide variety specific Flash game programming problems
- How to develop a game engine and set of tools that can be reused
- How to implement ten different games (in styles ranging from retro to modern Flash games)
- How to optimize various games
Who this book is for
This book is for intermediate Flash developers, Flash game developers, game developers looking to move to the Flash platform, and experienced web developers who want to learn how to make games.
Table of Contents
- The Second Game Theory
- Creating an AS3 Game Framework
- Creating Super Click
- Laying the Groundwork for Flak Cannon
- Building the Flak Cannon Game Loop
- Laying the Groundwork for No Tanks!
- Creating the Full No Tanks! Game
- Creating the Color Drop Casual Puzzle Game
- Creating the Dice Battle Puzzle Game
- Blit Scrolling in a Tile-Based World
- Creating an Optimized Post-Retro Game
- Creating a Viral Game: Tunnel Panic
About the Author
Steve Fulton and Jeff Fulton are twin brothers who have worked in the web game industry for the past 10 years. Together they have designed, programmed and developed over 200 Flash games of every imaginable genre for the corporate, indie and viral Flash game markets. The brothers run the popular and influential Flash/Retro game development site 8bitrocket.com. They update the site daily with news, tutorials, games, and musing about Flash and the viral Flash game world.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I finished reading the whole book a couple of weekends ago, and I finally feel ready to code something on my own. I wanted to wait until I'd read it all to give a review of the whole book, and not just the general feeling I got from the beginning.
Essential Flash Games is a really well structured book! The authors show you how to iterate and build your game up in stages, and write re-usable frameworks and code, but also how to keep things simple and meet deadlines -- which is quite a hard balance. It's a good example of using object oriented code without labouring the point, and even better -- not doing things in an overly oop approach for the sake of it (all the code is object oriented, but there's no mention of design patterns or anything too academic). Their code doesn't try to be too clever or show off, it's clear and simple.
It's quite a practical book, I feel like I've been given some tools and been shown how to use them to build something of my own, and not just what they showed in the book. They never preach, and instead will guide you through different phases of learning, showing you different approaches as you learn that achieve the same things in alternative and often better ways, and encouraging you to experiment and go back to re-implement things the way you prefer them.
It's about 600 pages long, but I managed to get through it in a couple of months reading it in spare time in evenings and on the weekend -- typing out all the code and fixing mistakes I made myself as a learning exercise. It's not for absolute beginners though, it's not going to hold your hand and tell you what a for loop is, or explain what a class is -- everything is taught by example, which I found works really well. With some initiative you can patch up any gaps in your knowledge from other sources.
The pace of the book ramps up quickly in a way that didn't leave me feeling left behind. There's a lot of ground they cover, like mouse and keyboard controlled games, Vector art created in Flash, tile based bitmap and non tile based vector art drawn in code and rendered as bitmaps for performance. A couple of games also cover enemy AI, which I found a tantalising introduction that has encouraged me to look further in those areas. I found that the chapters got better and stronger as the book went on. The absolute best game was the Neo-Retro Asteroid/Geometry Wars style game they have which has particle effects, and a mini map -- which was surprisingly easy to add!
The other chapter I really liked a lot was the overhead driving maze game they wrote -- the stuff I learned here to scroll the tile based world will really come in handy when I try my hand at other games by myself -- like a 2D scrolling platformer. I feel I have learned enough to go out and discover what I need on my own now to make a genre they didn't cover in the book.
They also show you how to profile your games for performance, and adjust your game's special effects accordingly to help keep gameplay smooth on computers of varying performance.
There's a lot of good advice on other aspects of game creation along side the ActionScript, such as considerations on copyright, and ways to create and distribute viral games with Mochi Ads in. Also, they suggest ways of making/sourcing art for your games if you're not good at graphics yourself.
I've got about 30 book on Flash/ActionScript, and this is probably the first book I'd go out and buy again.
Essential Flash Games is a really well structured book! The authors show you how to iterate and build your game up in stages, and write re-usable frameworks and code, but also how to keep things simple and meet deadlines -- which is quite a hard balance. It's a good example of using object oriented code without labouring the point, and even better -- not doing things in an overly oop approach for the sake of it (all the code is object oriented, but there's no mention of design patterns or anything too academic). Their code doesn't try to be too clever or show off, it's clear and simple.
It's quite a practical book, I feel like I've been given some tools and been shown how to use them to build something of my own, and not just what they showed in the book. They never preach, and instead will guide you through different phases of learning, showing you different approaches as you learn that achieve the same things in alternative and often better ways, and encouraging you to experiment and go back to re-implement things the way you prefer them.
It's about 600 pages long, but I managed to get through it in a couple of months reading it in spare time in evenings and on the weekend -- typing out all the code and fixing mistakes I made myself as a learning exercise. It's not for absolute beginners though, it's not going to hold your hand and tell you what a for loop is, or explain what a class is -- everything is taught by example, which I found works really well. With some initiative you can patch up any gaps in your knowledge from other sources.
The pace of the book ramps up quickly in a way that didn't leave me feeling left behind. There's a lot of ground they cover, like mouse and keyboard controlled games, Vector art created in Flash, tile based bitmap and non tile based vector art drawn in code and rendered as bitmaps for performance. A couple of games also cover enemy AI, which I found a tantalising introduction that has encouraged me to look further in those areas. I found that the chapters got better and stronger as the book went on. The absolute best game was the Neo-Retro Asteroid/Geometry Wars style game they have which has particle effects, and a mini map -- which was surprisingly easy to add!
The other chapter I really liked a lot was the overhead driving maze game they wrote -- the stuff I learned here to scroll the tile based world will really come in handy when I try my hand at other games by myself -- like a 2D scrolling platformer. I feel I have learned enough to go out and discover what I need on my own now to make a genre they didn't cover in the book.
They also show you how to profile your games for performance, and adjust your game's special effects accordingly to help keep gameplay smooth on computers of varying performance.
There's a lot of good advice on other aspects of game creation along side the ActionScript, such as considerations on copyright, and ways to create and distribute viral games with Mochi Ads in. Also, they suggest ways of making/sourcing art for your games if you're not good at graphics yourself.
I've got about 30 book on Flash/ActionScript, and this is probably the first book I'd go out and buy again.
3 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is my first title within Flash games; I am, however, not new to Flash or programming (Java + AS3). This book is so completely riddled with errors, omissions and extremely bad practices to the point of being completely useless!
The very first project resulted in 15 compiler errors! Including faulty syntax and references to several classes that don't even exist!
This is not at all intended at the beginner or result oriented developer who wants to have fun with it. This title is intended for hardcore bug hunters - if that audience exists.
I can not in any way possible recommend this title to anyone, whatever their background. This title is simply very, very, VERY bad.
A total and complete wasted amount of money for a very expensive book; someone should be ashamed of releasing this title.
Simply the lowest quality title I have ever seen.
The very first project resulted in 15 compiler errors! Including faulty syntax and references to several classes that don't even exist!
This is not at all intended at the beginner or result oriented developer who wants to have fun with it. This title is intended for hardcore bug hunters - if that audience exists.
I can not in any way possible recommend this title to anyone, whatever their background. This title is simply very, very, VERY bad.
A total and complete wasted amount of money for a very expensive book; someone should be ashamed of releasing this title.
Simply the lowest quality title I have ever seen.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
10 reviews
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Excellent Book But VERY Poorly Edited
29 Aug 2010
Format:Paperback
This book has some excellent educational content. If you can get past a staggering amount of typographical errors (some of them in source code!), it is a fantastic resource. If you are familiar with programming and want to learn how to program Flash and Flex games, I highly recommend these authors.
Their editor, however, needs to be shot. There are words missing from sentences every few pages, typos in the source code, and function names that change each time they are referenced. There's even a paragraph (on page 125) explaining a snippet of source code from the previous section... but the previous section of code has been totally rewritten, so the paragraph is worse than meaningless, it's totally confusing. There is an Errata section on the authors' website, but it doesn't even begin to cover the errors in this book. It is painfully apparent that the code in the book was typed in as text and then tested and debugged later, as many examples are inconsistent or have obvious syntax errors.
If you are just starting out with programming I do NOT recommend this book UNLESS you download the accompanying source code. Otherwise you will spend too much time wondering why your program doesn't work when it's an error in the book itself.
I hate to give this a crappy review. I am learning a lot from this book and I *WANT* this book to be as great as its subject matter could be. If the authors release a Second Edition or even a corrected version, I'll be first in line to pick it up.
All that said, I still recommend this book. Their design principles are sound, and the code examples from their website actually work without any fussing or debugging. (There are some mispelled class names, but they are consistent, so the code DOES work.) If you are an experienced programmer who can spot typos in source code, and are patient with a debugger, the book will teach you exactly what you need to know to get your game off the ground.
Their editor, however, needs to be shot. There are words missing from sentences every few pages, typos in the source code, and function names that change each time they are referenced. There's even a paragraph (on page 125) explaining a snippet of source code from the previous section... but the previous section of code has been totally rewritten, so the paragraph is worse than meaningless, it's totally confusing. There is an Errata section on the authors' website, but it doesn't even begin to cover the errors in this book. It is painfully apparent that the code in the book was typed in as text and then tested and debugged later, as many examples are inconsistent or have obvious syntax errors.
If you are just starting out with programming I do NOT recommend this book UNLESS you download the accompanying source code. Otherwise you will spend too much time wondering why your program doesn't work when it's an error in the book itself.
I hate to give this a crappy review. I am learning a lot from this book and I *WANT* this book to be as great as its subject matter could be. If the authors release a Second Edition or even a corrected version, I'll be first in line to pick it up.
All that said, I still recommend this book. Their design principles are sound, and the code examples from their website actually work without any fussing or debugging. (There are some mispelled class names, but they are consistent, so the code DOES work.) If you are an experienced programmer who can spot typos in source code, and are patient with a debugger, the book will teach you exactly what you need to know to get your game off the ground.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
In serious need of better proofing.
15 Oct 2010
Format:Paperback
On the positive: I am learning a lot from this book. The authors have an excellent approach to presenting the material, and at least for me, I feel the broad brush concepts they present, especially in organizing game code are very good. What is absolutely mind boggling is the number of typos in the constantly referenced source code. You are supposed to be building your code on previous exercises (good idea), however there are often changes to function and variable names, forcing you to debug code that is presented to you as an example. Perhaps it wouldn't be as glaring if they hadn't preceded every source sample in the book with the phrase 'we have highlighted the code that is different from that game.', when as it turns out there are often dozens of other subtle changes you'll need to catch yourself.
Inconsistent, or inaccurate information presented in source code presented as educational reference is a complete fail.
Inconsistent, or inaccurate information presented in source code presented as educational reference is a complete fail.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Fast delivery, good book but poor edition
3 Oct 2010
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
The book itself is good and the delivery was fast but. It seems like the book I got is an early edition. there's many mistakes and typos.
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