Chapter 15

The first of two mobile chapters, Chapter 15 walks through building a game for iOS in Flash and the design considerations for that platform. I highly recommend downloading Bonus Chapter 3 and reading it first, as it introduces mobile development from scratch.

Chapter 14

In Chapter 14, we pull together the concepts learned for math, physics, external data, and good code design and put them into practice.  We create a simple platformer game which is highly modular and can be used as the basis for larger -scale games.

Chapter 13

Chapter 13 is the first section which deals with creating an entire game from scratch.  I walk step-by-step through the complete process for making a simple puzzle game using an engine and flexible interfaces to provide re-usability.  We create two variations of the game; one with a static image and one which uses the player’s camera.

Chapter 12

Chapter 12 covers different methods of collision detection in Flash, which is widely used in many popular games.  I also discuss when to use which method – sometimes you don’t need pixel-perfect accuracy to achieve a relatively simple effect.

Chapter 11

Covering trig and physics, Chapter 10 will guide you through several examples of these important game dev components in practice.  We use trig and geometry to create the foundation for a 3D-style tunnel shooter, and we apply 2D physics to simulate simple driving mechanics.

Chapter 10

Chapter 10 deals with using external data, specifically XML, as a source for your game’s content.  We’ll dissect a crossword puzzle game to see how XML provides a flexible, re-usable container for text-based elements.

Chapter 9

Video is the topic of Chapter 9, including both how to prepare and compress it, as well as using it as cutscenes or a replacement for image sequences.  We’ll create a CutsceneManager class that will be used to simplify the process of loading video in Flash.

Chapter 8

Chapter 8 covers the use of audio in Flash.  In addition to discussing formats and compression, we walk through the creation of a sound managing class that can be re-used in future projects.  In this 2nd edition, I correct some of the issues that readers found with the engine, and add a companion class for “animating” sound.

Chapter 7

Chapter 7 is about animation, both tweened and programmatic.  First we cover how to do simple motion to control enemy ships in a shooter game.  The second half of the chapter involves usage of the GreenSock Tweening Platform for doing animations that are not directly game mechanic-driven.

Unpaid plug: If you go on to use TweenLite/TweenMax, please contribute some amount of money to the project.  Jack Doyle maintains and updates it well, mainly because others have given him incentive to do so through their donations.  Let’s continue to support it as the standard tweening platform for AS3.

Chapter 6

Managing assets and graphics is the subject of Chapter 6.  I cover some tips for image optimization, library organization, and general guidelines to keep your FLA in good working order, as well as some nifty new features available in CS5.5.