24 responses to “Looking for feedback”

1. 

   Keith Peters October 10th, 2009 at 12:11

   Picked up the book last week and have been enjoying it. There’s quite a bit I was able to skim through, lots of basics I think I have down already, but definitely some good material in other chapters. Always good looking at someone else’s way of doing things. I’ve picked up quite a few good ideas. I would highly recommend it for someone just starting in Flash who wants to make games.

2. 

   Chris October 10th, 2009 at 13:35

   Wow, Keith – I’m really honored that you picked it up. I wouldn’t think there would be anything new in there for you. I appreciate the kind words.

   Honestly, I struggled the most with the earlier chapters because I didn’t know just how back-to-basics to take the material. I figured that the AS3 primer stuff would be really helpful to someone who was maybe proficient in earlier versions of Flash but wasn’t up on the language yet. Love your ActionScript Animation book – it’s one of a handful I keep by my desk at work!

3. 

   Vic October 19th, 2009 at 02:07

   read some interesting chapters, the baseline of your book says it all… “How to follow Best Practices”. Not 10 options to do something, but just the best way from an experienced game developer. Also great to get some things confirmed through your book. Nice job!

4. 

   Paul October 22nd, 2009 at 01:50

   Looks like a book I’m looking for. Just placed an order on Amazon. Hopefully I’ll be able to post a review in a week or two.

5. 

   Mark October 26th, 2009 at 19:16

   This book is a must buy, Lots of great examples and perfect explanations of the “confusing” parts of Flash game development. Looking forward to an encore!

6. 

   Michael October 28th, 2009 at 08:11

   I just picked up the book and started skimming through it. I will read it this weekend and let you know what I think. On the surface it looks like you cover lots of good concepts. I am an advanced Actionscript programmer with 12 years experience in Flash, but I buy almost every book on Actionscript programming anyway just to see how others do things. Good luck to you and I hope you sell lots of books.

7. 

   Matt November 2nd, 2009 at 14:57

   Got the book today and have just read the first three chapters. It looks like the book was written with me in mind. I am an intermediate Actionscript developer desperate to finish off the 4 games I started but got so bogged down with, ended up doing something else instead.

8. 

   Ozzy November 3rd, 2009 at 13:06

   Hi Chris,

   I haven’t finished it yet, but so far, it has been the best book on the topic.

   That said, the multiplayer part was too short in pages as well as in “real world” solutions. Stratus is still in beta and the new FMS isn’t here yet by far.

   Sure the book is flash/as3 specific, but you mention PHP/AMFPHP quite early in the book as Tech. Hint.. It would have been nice if you would have pointed out some pros and cons of available solutions like FMS, SmartFoxServer, ElectroServer, BlazeDS … and asynchronus vs. socketserver solutions in general.

9. 

   Chris November 3rd, 2009 at 13:32

   Hi Ozzy,
   Thanks for the feedback! Admittedly, the multiplayer stuff could have encompassed a whole book (and has), so any single chapter on it is probably going to be insufficient coverage. I chose the topics of RTMFP and Stratus because they were new and barely covered by any other material out there. Upon seeing the upcoming additions in Flash Player 10.1, it looks like Adobe will be moving in this direction to do real-time gaming in Flash (and on the iPhone). It’s just more efficient for server load because of the UDP protocol and direct peer connections. These tools also have a huge advantage for the casual developer wanting to explore MP games because there’s next to no setup. Grab a Stratus developer ID and you’re good to start working on some game logic and testing across the Internet. All of the server solutions like FMS (which I use regularly at work) and ElectroServer (which is used through the book referenced above) require downloading and setting up software, fiddling with ports, etc. Those seemed too hefty to cover in a single chapter (as an author I have publisher-prescribed page limits and I was already over mine) for the setup alone. I didn’t want to have any parts of the book that were like “Step 1) Setup Flash Media Server. Step 2) Come back to this text when you’re finished.”, so I made the choice to select an approach that could be covered within a single chapter (and build on a class framework that existed from earlier chapters). One other thing to note about FMS in particular is that you have to write a decent amount of server-side logic in order to do much of anything useful like match-making or chat. Perhaps at some point (like when FMS 4 is released with AS3 server-side) another book would be in order that encompassed that weighty material.

   All that said, I can appreciate you wanting a comparison of the different choices available out there. I think that is a great topic for a post on this site, and I will put some time into that over the next week or so.
   -Chris

10. 

    Chris Ivens November 9th, 2009 at 03:58

    Just got to the MATH chapter. So far I have picked up more confidence in the fact that the code I’m writing already is on the right lines. I’m particularly looking forward to the engine chapter.

    I’m hoping to get a game written for the end of the year ready for beta testing. While I have been programming flash and flex for quite a few years, this will be my first game. I think armed with this book and ‘ActionScript for Multiplayer Games and Virtual Worlds’ by Jobe Makar, I have enough knowledge to see this project through.

    Given that I am a keen user of design patterns and best practise solutions, I bought this book to get up to speed with how I should be approaching the overall project.

    It strikes me as odd that the knowledge about writing games hasn’t spawned a huge number of books relating to flash. After all, it has been something that people have been doing since before Macromedia owned it.

    On a side note, I would be perfectly happy to pay for access to part of this or another site to learn more and share knowledge about game writing. An extension of the book as it were.

11. 

    Chris November 9th, 2009 at 04:04

    Thanks for the feedback, Chris. I wish you the best of luck with your project. Your idea of a discussion area for game development is great – I’ll see what I can do!

12. 

    Chris Ivens November 9th, 2009 at 04:43

    A discussion area would be great and perhaps break things down by genre for part of it. The challenges met trying to work on an isometric tile based game may share some similarity to other genres but it would be good to dive in at the right section etc.

13. 

    Tim November 11th, 2009 at 19:04

    Hi Chris, great job on the book. I have written two books myself and I know how difficult and demanding the process can be. I am fairly new to AS 3, coming from Java SE, so I have found your book to be worth its weight in gold. I really think you head the nail on the head with the “real-world” approach.

    I do however have one question that I unfortunately think I know the answer to. I am a Mac user and don’t even own a PC. I completely agree about your comments on pages 15 and 16 about the Flash CS4 editor. I would love to be able to use FlashDevelop if it were available for the Mac, but it’s not. I don’t want to go down the path of Flex Builder for the obvious reasons you mentioned. So, what are my options for a decent AS code editor for the Mac? Help!

    Thanks and keep up the good work. I would really like to see you follow this up with another title and in particular on CS5 focusing on iPhone development.

    Thanks,

    Tim

14. 

    Chris November 11th, 2009 at 20:37

    Hi Tim,
    Thanks so much for your kind words – I’m glad the book was so helpful to you! As far as a good code editor on the Mac goes, I’m really eager for the guys at Codeweavers to get FlashDevelop working in their CrossOver product. It currently will install, but won’t ever run properly. I currently use Parallels with it, but it’s still a humongous pain. Luckily, having seen some of the next versions of both Flash and Flash Builder (formerly Flex Builder), I think Mac users will soon have a decent alternative. One of the features of CS5 that has been made public is the improvement of the built-in code editor to support introspection of custom classes. In other words, it will behave largely like FlashDevelop does when typing custom code. This is long overdue and will be a huge boon for the tool. Additionally, there should be tight integration for those who want to set up a CS5 project but use Flash Builder as the code editor. I’m hopeful Adobe will really come through on this.
    As far as a follow-up, I’m considering it. Stay tuned…

15. 

    John C. Ardussi November 28th, 2009 at 14:05

    I am a real game developer with a large number of titles I have worked on. I have never coded in Flash. I did make some movies using it, but no code. With your book I was up and running in less than an hour. Your example code is clear and concise. Your focus on OOP is perfect. The only downside I have run into has nothing to do with you or your book. Flash generates extremely cryptic error messages. Being new to it, they might as well have been in Latin. Maybe it is just that I tried to take a shortcut. We’ll see. But in the mean time I am productive thanks to you. Unfortunately I got your book at Barnes & Noble so I can’t leave a comment on Amazon. Bastards!!

    Thanks,
    John

16. 

    Natasha O. December 26th, 2009 at 09:33

    I create educational games for kids in Flash and have been doing so for 3 years in Actionscript 2. I am slowly making the transition to AS3. I received this book for Christmas yesterday and have proceeded to read through about a third of it so far! I am loving it! I pretty much taught myself to code, so some of your “best practices” had been left out of my system. I think this will help me make the most out of my work and take my educational games to a new level. I own almost every book on coding and Flash games there is, and this one is the first that really seems to speak to me where I am. Thanks! It is awesome!

17. 

    Chris December 26th, 2009 at 09:46

    Thank you Natasha – what nice feedback to receive for Christmas! I’m so glad the book has been helpful to you so far – I hope it continues to be so in your work.
    I hope you have a great holiday!

18. 

    Billy Deakin January 4th, 2010 at 23:54

    Fantastic book Chris! I’ve been developing Flash games commercially for 8 years now, yet there was still enough in this book for me to warrant the cover price!

    I also blog about Flash game dev and I ordered the book mostly to see what ideas I could pick up for future blog posts and articles, and I was pleasantly surprised with the amount of solid material in the book. I’m still working through it, but what I’ve read so far in the early chapters, and by dipping into some of the later chapters has really impressed me… highly recommended!

19. 

    James January 5th, 2010 at 04:21

    I’ve used Flash to make e-learning apps and have used it for presentations and porting online courses to CD-ROM. I’ve been tinkering with an adventure game idea and building a prototype for a few months in AS2 but when I saw your book at Borders I snapped it up. I admit my skill in AS3 is not quite up to speed yet but I think your opening chapters were more informative and really nail it better than some other how-to books that just dole out techniques separately without pulling them together in a re-usable way. I’m slowly making progress with the FrameScript example to port my AS2 classes for an adventure/action game I’m hoping to release later on as a home brew demo. If I could make a suggestion for the next edition I would like more focus on building level editors for tile based worlds and using the file system to save out XML levels to work with artists.

20. 

    Luke January 12th, 2010 at 08:52

    Hey Chris,
    I’m relatively new to Flash/Actionscript 3.0, but I’ve been working through your book and a couple others over the last 2 months. I must say so far yours has been the most helpful and clear by far. Anyway, I’m working on developing my first game for a site we’re hoping to launch around March, and it’s moving along (albiet a little slowly). Thanks for the great work and the discussion boards. I may have a couple questions in the future if I can’t debug this thing… Just wanted to say great work and thanks!

    Also, as I’m developing content for a website, we’ve got a bunch of ideas for multi-player games that we’d like to publish. I’d have to agree with Ozzy (above) that Stratus/FMS doesn’t seem like a real good method of dealing with multi-player content. I don’t have any idea how to set up a multi-player game through our server, but if there are any books/forums/etc that you would recommend, I’m very interested in learning how to publish a multi-player game that doesn’t require players to download anything other than Flash Player.

    Thanks again!
    Luke

21. 

    Chris January 12th, 2010 at 09:04

    Hi Luke,
    I’m so glad to hear that! Fire any questions you have my way – I’d be happy to help.
    The multiplayer question is always tricky – I’ve not had the time to fully document the pros and cons of different solutions like I’d wanted to, but most of the ones out there (including Stratus) don’t involve downloading any additional components (except for hosting). If you’re willing to fork over a little dough, there are a number of hosted services that offer any number of the Multiplayer solutions out there – those remove the headaches that can come from having to manage a server yourself. If you want to do FMS stuff (which will eventually have RTMFP rolled into it), Influxis offers some decently priced packages. Another hosting service is ShockwaveServer which uses SmartFox Server.

    The main reason I chose Stratus was not because I’m an advocate of that service, but because the RTMFP protocol is much faster than traditional RTMP that FMS offers. The example I created with two streams of video would suffer much more lag using other solutions out there. Thanks for the feedback – I hope you’ll write me an Amazon review!

22. 

    Brent January 20th, 2010 at 08:38

    Really enjoyed the book. I do have one request if you keep writing or release another version – try to get your publishers to include syntax highlighting! Some of the heftier code blocks could’ve definitely benefited from it during long reading sessions.

    Keep up the great work.

23. 

    Chris January 20th, 2010 at 09:27

    Thanks for the suggestion Brent! I definitely will recommend it to my publisher. Glad you enjoyed the book!

24. 

    Bill May 4th, 2010 at 14:52

    Hey Chris,

    I just recently bought your book and it has helped me tons! It is really easy to follow and you explain everything really well. The instructions were easy to follow and I got it to compile the first time. Your sound engine is what I appreciate the most. I have seen flash sound codes but none as helpfual as yours was. Perhaps in your next release you can go further with sounds and incorporate them into a game. Like how to add background music when on the menu screen, then stop and play a different background when the game starts. Thanks again and best of luck with your new book, I am looking forward to reading it.