Customer Reviews

Macromedia Flash MX ActionScript for Fun and Games

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a very useful book in my opinion. What's especially helpful is the author literally breaks-down his code, line-by-line, so that the reader clearly understands what is going on. It's a great method for teaching programming - particularly for the beginning programmer, yet also contains some very nifty stuff that even hardcore veterans of the interactive world can find useful.

The games are cute, yet very cool and adpatable. It shows good faith that the author even offers his games up for use by readers of the book. But to just borrow his code and replace his graphics with your own is to miss the real gem of this book, which is to instruct in the power and ease of Flash MX ActionScript. In just two weeks my working-knowledge of ActionScript has grown considerably.

Many computer-how-to books on the market teach by using generic examples, but there is nothing generic about the working prototypes presented in this book. There is some pretty impressive stuff here with some particularly well done graphics and animation. It feels more like the reader is learning on "real-world" examples rather than tired old stock-in-trade tutorials.

Buy (and read) this wonderful book and I guarantee that your Flash movies will improve considerably and in no time you'll be making some pretty impressive Interactive media. I am a professional animator and webmaster, but I always needed programmers who knew Java, C, or C++ to make the really cool stuff in the past. With the help of this book by Gary Rosenweig, those days are past history!

This book is simply a rehash of Rosenzweig's Flash 5 for fun and games book. He teaches NONE of the new MX concepts or tools, he simply developes in MX like he would in 5 (you can do that in MX).

Flash MX, which is the recently released upgrade to Flash 5, gives a game developer scores of new features and functionality and Rosenzweig uses none of it.

If you really want to buy this book, buy the Flash5 version, it's cheaper and exactly the same thing.

Don't let the title fool you... this is a serious action-scripting book, specifically targeted for Flash-based games. You won't find any XML, Cold Fusion Integration, Database integration, etc., but that's not the scope of this book. If you want to learn how to use Flash ActionScript to manipulate movie clips, the Flash timeline, respond to user interaction, and create many different types of cool games that you see a lot on the internet, this book is for you. It is NOT a Flash book... it is an ActionScript book. The author assumes you are already competent with Flash basics. (I should also mention that you WILL learn a lot about Flash organizational skills as you work through the book.)

The STRENGTH of this book is that it uses the entire book to concentrate on one subject, vs. other Flash books that try to be "everything to everyone" without ever going into enough detail on any one subject. This is similar to another excellent Flash book, "Flash Cartooning" by Mark Clarkson, which spends the whole book on simply just learning how to animate in Flash.

It really ticks me off when publishers (in this case Que) slap a new label on an old book and call it new. ... This is indeed a Flash 5 book (as another reader mentioned - I wish I would have read their comment before I bought this book). Nothing in this book relates to MX at all.

As far as a Flash 5 book, it's nice to have a games-specific book - altough it really is padded with a lot of non-flash information that can be read anywhere (i.e. video game history). Although decent, nothing special jumps out at me. It taught me nothing new from the other books on Flash I have. If this is the first Flash Book you're buying, the visual "Teach Yourself Visually" books are probably a better bet (ISBN 0764536613); if you already have Flash books, then this will probably teach you nothing new. It's a pass on both accounts.

Que - shame on you. I don't plan on buying any more of your books if these are the games you play.

This book is good, but there are two problems :
- it is for flash 5, the code is very inefficient and not adapted at all to actionscript 2. I knew it earlier, I did not buy this book.
- you won't learn how to create your own games. You will learn how people used to make games with old actionscript. The author does not teach how to organize your code to create a game, it teaches how he did his own old games.
This book will teach you some actionscript code in a pleasant way anyway. But it is not clear, architectured, and up-to-date code.
If you are a programmer and want to learn Actionscript, don't buy this book. Buy Macromedia Press "Actionscript 2".
If you are not a programmer, and want to see how it can work, get some clues, then this book might be for you. But it is an old book.

If you read it he says its the same as the older book(Its the 2nd edition, meaning its an updated version!), but each chapter adds 1 new file to it and he does modify some of the games to MX, such as the drawing stuff. One of the biggest additions to it... is platform gaming! The only reason why this book doesn't get a 5* rating is because some of the code he uses is really in efficent. One great example is the maze chase game. The code really only allows for one enemy and it still if a bit iffy there... so i can make some pretty nifty games.
if you a beginner or an you know flash but you want to get serious get this book. but if your an expert then you might compramise some of you understanding of flash action scripting because some of it is coded inefficently.

The examples in the book are not updated and show an older method of writing action script. While it still works, it's not the best way to learn the current methods.

I found this book really helpful for making simple games for my website which is aimed at children. I'm a graphic and website designer with very little knowledge of programming as I use Dreamweaver and Flash to do all that backend stuff for me. It goes through everything in nice simple steps that even I can understand. I'd recommend it to people who have some knowledge of Flash and programming, definitely not beginners though.

This book is not very well suited for beginner actionscript programmers.The author gives two or three brush off chapters on actionscript.Then bombardes you with math.random()* this that and the other.And starts using object type programming with little explanation of whats going on behind the code.He does comment the lines but the comments faintly explain what he is doing.I would have given this book 2 stars,but because you can take these games change them around graphics,little script or whatever and "make them your own" I am giving it 3 stars.I've owned this book for over a year and after reading other books it's making more sense what he's doing now.But for someone with little experience, be prepared to get lost very quickly.

I liked the book. The beginning chapters are broken down into very short lessons that teach you the fundamentals of game programming. The latter chapters focus on complete games built upon the techniques taught previously. I was able to get started quickly since the book does a fine job of presenting the material.