Real-World Flash Game Development: How to Follow Best Practices AND Keep Your Sanity [Paperback]

Christopher Griffith (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 024081178X | ISBN-13: 978-0240811789 | Publication Date: September 22, 2009 | Edition: 1

This book covers Flash for the everyday developer. The average Flash developer doesn't have luxurious timelines, employers who understand the value of reusability, or the help of an information architect to design a usable experience. This book helps bridge the gap for these coders who may be used to C++, Java, or C# and want to move over to Flash. Griffith covers real-world scenarios pulled from his own experiences developing games for over 8 years in the industry.

Gifts from Griffith's REAL-WORLD experiences include: Game design templates and pre-written scripts to automate tasks within Flash; Classes for handling common math computations used in gaming, so that game developers can see how to set up a simple game flow; Powerful debugging tools for your games(debuggers for Flash games are hard to come by, and this book provides them for you).

The associated web site offers: Code from the game examples in the book with fully build-able source files. Additional code snippets, classes, and utilities. Scripts for automating tedious and repetitive tasks within Flash. Template game-design documents for planning game proposals in the same manner outlined in the book. Links to other helpful online resources for both Flash and game development.

*Teaches Flash users the most effective ways to leverage Flash as a game development tool. Concrete, relatable approaches to Flash game development. 

* Provides sound strategies, and realistic goals for success - with REAL-WORLD examples and code included so that programmers become quickly empowered to make their own Flash games.

*Covers ALL the aspects that come into play when developing a game in Flash, including art, animation, scripting, and optimization.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Written for programmers familiar with C++, Java or C#, the second edition of this guide to Flash game development is fully updated to cover improvements in Flash technology with timely new sections on developing for mobile platforms. The work covers a variety of game types and provides practical instruction for applying development knowledge to the Flash environment. Numerous code examples and color screen shots are provided and access to additional online content, including additional chapters and sample files, is included with purchase."--References and Research Book News

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Focal Press; 1 edition (September 22, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 024081178X
• ISBN-13: 978-0240811789
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #496,885 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not a beginner's book., November 30, 2009

By 

Spud (Bynum, NC USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Real-World Flash Game Development: How to Follow Best Practices AND Keep Your Sanity (Paperback)

You should have some Actionscript 3.0 experience before you dig into this book. The user level on the back of the book says intermediate to advanced and they mean it! You will also need CS4 to be able to open the downloadable files. I could not open them on my CS3 machine.

This book covers a lot of topics I have not found in other AS books. Some examples are event propagation, dispatching events, E4X, getter/setter methods and protected variables. The chapters are very intense and delve more deeply into the workings of AS 3.0. If you want to know how and why Actionscript does what it does this is the book for you.

Real World also directs you to adopt best practices. This should keep you from developing bad habits and allow you to author modular code that could be easily modified.

The final game in the book is a platform game. You can learn how to load external SWFs containing the game's assets at runtime. This concept is very different from other game tutorials I have worked with.

I would recommend Actionscipt 3.0 Game Programming University if you haven't done any game programming. It has a much gentler approach to game programming.

Real World Flash Game Development should be an important addition to every game developer's bookshelf.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An excellent, practical guide to Flash Game development, March 16, 2010

By 

Richard Staats (McLean, VA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Real-World Flash Game Development: How to Follow Best Practices AND Keep Your Sanity (Paperback)

(What's this?)

This book is part of the Focal Press series on game design.

The book is well organized. Author Christopher Griffith begins by talking about computer game design in general and then hones in on Flash game development. The sections build on each other. He starts with simple concepts and program segments that you will probably use in every game you design and then works to more complex topics.

Christopher Griffith includes code snippets through the book and there is a generous collection of examples and a faux tutorial on the associated WWW site.

One note of caution! This is not a book for an absolute beginner in either Flash programming or game design.

The author adds some caveats. I found myself re-reading sections of the book several times for understanding.

Also, to get the most out of the book, you need the most recent version of Macromedia Flash.

If you have been working with Flash and Action Script and you are looking to expand and try your hand at game design then this book would be an excellent first step in that direction.

In service,

Rich
[...].

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very solid Flash Game Development Book, December 5, 2009

By 

B. Schneider - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Real-World Flash Game Development: How to Follow Best Practices AND Keep Your Sanity (Paperback)

I've been working with flash since 1998, and have read several flash game development (fgd) books over the last 6 or so years. This is not to say that I know everything there is to know about Flash -- how could that be possible? Flash is horribly documented and has changed significantly with AS3. I'm looking for a well reasoned, scalable, and (somewhat) reusable approach to fgd. I'd like to know where the logical boundaries are, but enough about me and what I want. This is exactly what this book presents. It's an excellent cross section. The author presents areas where Flash excels at gd and areas you have to watch out for. He presents, and steps through, working code examples to tackle logical issues/scenarios, ie best practices for: hit testing, sound, in game graphics use, xml/dynamic content loading, player control, and at the end of the book, an over all game engine. So a programmer could easily take away any of these items and use them. On many occasions after he's presented a few different scenarios on a topic, he'll talk about the short comings or gotchas of using that particular technique.