Real World Flash Game Development

RWFGD selected by BoingBoing and Safari books for game contest

I was greeted with a pleasant surprise a couple of days ago when a friend sent me this link to BoingBoing.

My book is one of 5 game-related texts being offered for free for 30 days.  It is part of a game development contest being sponsored by BoingBoing and Safari Books.  If you haven’t picked up the book yet (and why not?!), this is a great offer to check it out.

Flash, iPhones, Androids, and my next book

Everyone and their dog has weighed in on the recent decision from Apple in their latest iPhone SDK to allow only apps made with their toolset to be approved in the App Store.  I’ve held commenting to see what Adobe would ultimately say.  Today, they said it.  No more Flash-to-iPhone.  I’m personally very disappointed by this, but the writing was on the wall.  Apple has no incentive to change their position and Adobe doesn’t really have any recourse, other than to go another direction.

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At the end of last week I was asked by Adobe (as someone who submitted a Flash CS5 iPhone app to the iTunes store) to port my game to the new AIR for Android platform that has recently been announced.  After getting resized art, it took me about 2 hours start to finish to port the game and get it running on a Google Nexus One.  You can see a video of it below.  If it weren’t for a known bug in the prerelease version of AIR for Android, it would have taken me even less time, but I had to swap out my use of TweenMax for GTween.  Tedious prerelease hurdles aside, this workflow is INFINITELY easier than Apple’s developer “initiation” process.  Once I had my SWF published, it took me less than a minute to package it with AIR and push it to the phone.  I’m sure this will get even easier as Adobe refines the publishing process in subsequent releases.  Performance-wise, the Nexus One seems on par or slightly faster than my iPhone 3Gs.  I’m looking forward to see how more intensive apps perform on this platform.

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You may have heard (since I announced it on this site) that I’ve been working on a follow-up book covering iPhone game creation in Flash Cs5.  Obviously Apple’s recent dick move has made this pretty much a dead topic.  I’ll post again when I have any further announcements regarding that book.  In the mean time, check out Three Card Monte on the iPhone, courtesy of YouTube.

Real-World Flash Game Development Wins Newberry Medal for Children’s Fiction!

April Fool’s!  While such an award would be an honor like no other, my book has yet to be recognized by the American Library Association.  You can, however, order a copy here.  In fact, you’d be a fool not to.

Three Card Monte available on the App Store

It’s been out for about a month now, but I’ve only just now gotten around to posting about it.

In January I built a version of Blockdot’s Three Card Monte Flash game for the iPhone.  It’s free on the App Store, so check it out when you have a few minutes to kill.

A sequel in the works…

I’ve been debating whether or not to mention it yet, as the project has had kind of a rocky start, but with the launch of Flash CS5 fast approaching and with the number of visitors to this site increasing every week, I thought it was time.

I am working on a follow-up of sorts to my first book.  The name isn’t finalized yet, but it will cover more advanced game development in Flash for the iPhone.  I am super-excited to be working on it and to be at the forefront of this budding technology.  For those who have expressed a desire to see more advanced topics, this book will skip all of the basics and jump right into examples with collision detection, simulated 3D effects, and remoting services, not to mention the new iPhone features like accelerometer and multi-touch support.  I will post more details when I complete the manuscript and the book goes to the presses.

Real-World Flash Game Development is on SafariBooks

A number of people have asked me about a digital version of the book.  While my publisher has assured me that such an electronic version is on the way from them, Jason Fincanon pointed me to Safari Books today, where a digital edition is already available!  Hopefully this will prove helpful to people who either didn’t want a paper copy (save the trees!) or who were unable to purchase one because of their location.

Everybody makes mistakes…

As much as I culled over the code for this book before it went to print, a number of people have found typos and small functional errors.  Some have asked where they should post errata.  I created a specific page on this site for each chapter in the book, so I would prefer all corrections be posted to the relevant chapter.  That way people coming to the site that don’t want to participate in discussions don’t have to sign up for the forum to see any fixes they should make to the code.

On the other hand, if you want to start a conversation regarding alternate techniques to the code in a chapter (in other words, not errors), the discussions board is the best place for that.

Discussion Forum Update: Notifications!

I’ve added a plugin to the discussion board that allows you to subscribe to the whole forum or a particular discussion.  If you’ve been using the discussion board (and you should be…) you should define your settings.  The global subscribe link is on the left-hand sidebar.

A Review is a Great Way to Start the Year!

I was sent a review of my book today that I am beaming about.  It’s from FlashGamesClassroom.com and is very nice.  I am glad the book is being well-received and I hope it is helpful to developers everywhere.

Read the Review

New Features: Other Books Page and Discussion Forum

Today I’ve added two new features to this site:

1) A top-level page featuring other Flash/game development books I recommend.  This list will grow as I get a chance to update it.

2) A dedicated discussions forum for more in-depth topics developers would like to add.  You can begin posting today!  I’ve set up some initial categories; if there is a particular category you’d like to see added, or have any other suggestions, feel free to comment here or email me at chris [at] flashgamebook.com.

Thank you to everyone who has shared feedback with me.  If you have a few minutes to give it, please consider reviewing the book on Amazon as well.  The ratings and positive feedback will help its sales.

UPDATE:

When you enter the discussion area (which is maintained by software other than WordPress), you’ll need to sign up in order to be able to post.  The link to do so is somewhat subtle in the upper right corner of the page.  You can also jump directly to the membership application page.