Review
From the reviews:
"A cracking read. ... All the chapters are informative and there is no throwaway filler." - flashmagazine.com
"Put together by Flash gaming’s equivalent of the Wu-Tan Clan, this awesome full-colour guide draws upon the knowledge of some of the world’s greatest games developers … You won’t find a better guidebook if you want to have fun with Flash games." - Practical Web Projects
"If you want to get started on creating games but you don’t know where to begin ... this is the book for you!" - Flash Developer dot nl
"The perfect starting point for someone who wants to enter the world of online games with a good, thorough grounding. … Well done, friends of ED!!!" gotoAndPlay()
"Macromedia Flash MX 2004 Games Most Wanted is a book especially written for people who want to develop games in Macromedia Flash … . This is one of those books I really like full colour, easy-to-read and it has a nice page design. … This book covers all the aspects of game development within Macromedia Flash … . a good choice for the starting game developer." (Weyert de Boer, Flash Week, July, 2004)
"This awesome full-colour guide draws upon the knowledge of some of the world’s greatest games developers, including two of this issue’s contributors. The book is aimed at both professional or aspiring games designers, and provides a great mix of the theory of games development and practical steps … . The guides are written in a non-patronising manner, which makes them a pleasure to follow … . You won’t find a better guidebook if you want to have fun with Flash games." (Practical Web Projects, May, 2004)
"You never heard of Flash as an environment for game development, or you don’t know where to begin from? Then ‘FLASH MX 2004 GAMES MOST WANTED’ is probably the best book on this matter you could stumble upon. … this a very complete book, the perfect starting point for someone who wants to enter the world of online games with a good, thorough grounding. … ‘FALSH MX 2004 GAMES MOST WANTED’ is highly recommended! Well done, friends of ED!!!" (Bax, gotoAndPlay, June, 2004)
"If you want to get started on creating games but you don’t know where to begin .. this is the book for you! … Every single step is shown and explained very well … . this book is also very useful if you want to make non-Flash games. Every portion of code is explained and written in a way you really understand the concept … . It’s a very complete book covering every aspect." (Flash Developer dot nl, June, 2004)
"This is a book for Flash developers who want to write games … . It’s a solid primer in all the skills required to design and build your own games in Flash MX2004. ... You get a broad range of artistic and technical material … . All the chapters are informative and there is no throwaway filler. … You’ll discover ways of turning your limitations into design features." (John Daiziel, www.falshmagazine.com, March, 2004)
About the Author
Kristian Besley--Kristian Besley has worked with Multimedia for three years, but has been creative with computers for much longer. He currently develops Flash-based material within an educational environment. This material includes interactive presentations to illustrate how scientific things work, as well as GUIs/tools allowing web-based content creation with basic computer skills. He was a contributing author on the seminal Flash Math Creativity, and many other friends of ED books. In 2002, he launched the world’s first bi-annual HTML markup-based TableArt competition. The competition was an unbelievable success.
Sham Bhangal--Sham Bhangal has worked on books in new media for 3 years, in which time he has authored and co-authored numerous friends of ED books, including critically acclaimed, award winning, and best selling titles like Foundation Flash, New Masters of Flash, Flash MX Upgrade Essentials, Flash MX Most Wanted, and the Flash MX Designer’s ActionScript Reference. He has considerable working experience with Macromedia and Adobe products, as well as other general web design technologies (such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc). In addition to speaking appearances at FlashForward, the biggest Macromedia Flash developer conference, Sham has also been a Beta tester for Macromedia and Discreet products for a number of years.
Anthony Eden--From an early age Anthony developed a love of interaction with mathematics and computational languages, along the way gaining an appreciation of any given natural environment and the ability to transform his environment into a digital construct. The last decade has included commercial roles with Microsoft, Disney, Toyota, and Adobe providing a sound framework in which to explore and diversify his project development lifecycle skills. Spare time? If he’s not thinking about it, he’s doing it!
Brad Ferguson--After wanting to be an actor for many years, Brad decided to take a more "realistic" career route when he was deciding upon which college to attend. He had always loved to draw, so he decided to try animation—animation is acting with a pencil. Brad knew that he’d be happy and have the best of both worlds. A graduate of Sheridan College’s Classical Animation Program in Oakville, Ontario, Canada, he is involved with freelance game development and Flash animation work.
Brian Monnone--Brian Monnone is the Senior Multimedia Producer/Developer for Tocquigny Advertising in Austin, Texas USA. Brian works on projects with AMD, Dell, HP, USAA, GlobalScape, and a host of other companies creating Flash demos, websites, video, and many other types of multimedia. Brian has won awards for his works and many accolades for his personal site. He enjoys creating interactive content and hopes to become a filmmaker.
Keith Peters-- Keith has been working with Flash since 1999, and has co-authored many books for friends of ED, including Flash MX Studio, Flash MX Most Wanted, and the ground-breaking Flash Math Creativity. In 2001, he started the experimental Flash site, BIT-101 (www.bit-101.com), which strives to have a new, cutting edge, open source experiment each day. The site recently won an award at the Flashforward 2003 Flash Film Festival in the Experimental category.
Glenn Rhodes- Glenn began playing the piano at age 4 and has been playing ever since then. In 1997, he co-wrote a full-length musical called Chrystanthia. Somewhere along the way, he picked up game programming as a hobby, and eventually ended up making games professionally for home console systems. In 1998, when he discovered Flash, Glenn was able to use it as a medium to combine all of his experiences together.
Steve Young--Steve is a designer and Flash developer living in the sunny town of Coatbridge, near Glasgow, Scotland. He originally started out as a Product Designer, having studied at the Glasgow School of Art, but somehow found himself in the New Media industry. Like most of his peers, he just seemed to have fallen into New Media.Until recently, Steve has spent the last 2 years of working (if you can call it that) at Flammable Jam with Hoss Gifford and some of the other top designer/developers in Scotland.
