Foundation Game Design with Flash

By Rex van der Spuy

If you've ever wondered how to make a video game and where to start, this is the place. Foundation Game Design with Flash is a friendly, step-by-step guide though all the technical and creative issues involved in game design with Adobe Flash CS3 and CS4 and ActionScript 3.0. This book treats the art of programming as a creative artistic tool and can help anyone who might be afraid of programming to conquer that fear and start to enjoy the creative possibilities that open up.

Foundation Game Design with Flash takes you on a journey from building simple point-and-click games to creating professional-quality, action-adventure games in a variety of genres. It is filled with detailed and practical examples and case studies to follow, and displays hundreds of illustrations and diagrams. Along the way, it covers essential game design techniques, such as player character control, enemy artificial intelligence, animation, and collision detection strategies, as well as how to use physics and trigonometry to create dynamic game worlds. All the programming code you need to know is explained in detail, so even if you've never done any programming before, have no fear—it's all here. The techniques in the book are comprehensive enough to form the basis of a career as a game designer and to form a solid foundation for continued study of programming and ActionScript.

This book will guide and inspire any curious and creative person to turn a good game idea into reality. It's your passport to the magical world of game design.

In this book, you'll find:

• A focused, friendly, and comprehensive introduction to designing games featuring collision detection, AI systems, player control, basic physics, and trigonometry.
• Four detailed case studies of Flash games covering platform, adventure, logic and space-shooter games.
• Essential techniques for building games, with each chapter gently building on the skills of preceding chapters.
• A thorough grounding in ActionScript 3.0 and good programming practices, with no prior programming experience required.
• Strategies for making games fun to play and easy to build using object-oriented programming techniques.

Summary of Contents

1. Programming Foundations: How to Make a Video Game
2. Making Objects
3. Programming Objects
4. Controlling Movie Clip Objects
5. Decision Making
6. Controlling a Player Character
7. Bumping into Things
8. Object-Oriented Game Design
9. Platform Game: Physics and Data Management
10. Advanced Object and Character Control

This book is part of friends of ED's 'Foundation' series

The Foundation series is perfect for beginners to a technology, because it doesn't assume any previous knowledge. Each book in the series takes you step by step through your chosen technology, starting with the absolute fundamentals and working through all aspects of the technology, ultimately providing you with a firm grasp of the basics that will enable you to create your own applications or web sites. You will learn by following complete examples at every stage of your journey, often by extended case studies that you will build upon throughout the book. The Foundation series will give you the broad and solid base you need in order to progress to a higher level of expertise.