Flash Games Studio [ILLUSTRATED] (Paperback)

~ Glen Rhodes (Author), Justin Everett-Church (Author), David Doull (Author), Igor Choromanski (Author), Kevin Sutherland (Author), Thomas Poeser (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

If you've always fancied trying your hand at games design, this is a fine place to start -- MacFormat Magazine February, 2002

Product Description

These days people are looking to the Internet for its gaming possibilities. Whether it's real-time role-playing you're after with 30,000 of your closest friends, or just a solitary round of crazy golf, the most versatile piece of web animation software just made itself more approachable for designing games!

This book takes us deep, deep down into the realms of game design, and hunts out the features that are really going to evolve your Flash skills into full-on game wizardry. We are going to discuss what makes a good game - and what makes a great game. We grapple with the concepts of 3D and how to get Flash to produce cutting-edge game environments, while keeping our sensible shoes on by reducing those file sizes and download times. We conduct a battle of wits with artificial intelligence, and have a good crash around with some collision detection in platform games. All in all we are pushing Flash to its breaking point to see what lies beyond.

Assuming you have a reasonable knowledge of Flash 5, this book will increase your skill-set and fire your imagination by offering a collection of new approaches and advanced techniques. The only thing more entertaining than playing games is creating them. Now, the only limit is your imagination. Enter the Studio and start taking fun seriously.

Friends of ED would like to apologise for the fact that the index, as printed in this book, is erroneous. The correct index can be downloaded as a pdf file from the friends of ED website (friendsofed.com).

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Product Details

• Paperback: 800 pages
• Publisher: Friends of Ed; illustrated edition edition (August 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1903450675
• ISBN-13: 978-1903450673
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.6 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,469,030 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Well Done Advanced Game Book, October 30, 2001

By A Customer

I like this book alot. I have worked through a slew of books on
flash since Flash 4, and this one makes the most sense to me from the mechanics of game programming POV. Organized, and to the point. Don't make this the first book you read on Flash,
cause you will be in over your head. It focuses just on the advanced engineering of game relating to Flash.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars mediocre at best, April 11, 2002

By	C. Bijalba "rouge on azgalor" (chicago, il United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Of course there's nothing new or amazing here as flash5 is "old" by this era's definition and this book was made in August 2001, but that doesn't mean having a book on this topic isn't useful in and of itself.

The problem with this type of book is that it skims the "core essentials" of gamemaking, and provides completed games for you to teach yourself... I could go to a dozen sites and teach myself games.

What I need is a book that holds your hand through building the essential widgets in game making. multiple hit tests, function completion, forking the same function with multiple instances, etc. Not something that says "see? here's a game that does all this stuff now look through it."

This book will only be frustrating to someone who loves the friends of ed series. . . but it acts as a great tool to sell the other books for sure, as I learned more about game making in Flash 5 Actionscript Studio & Flash 5 Dynamic Content studio than in this book.

Bottomline: this should have been entitled Flash Games Exhibition

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great way to start producing ideas for gaming in Flash, September 6, 2001

By	Michael Railing - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book will give the reader many ideas for making and presenting Flash games. You will need some prior Flash experience before jumping into this book, but it will provide you with some additional ideas that you may never have thought of, as we as giving you tips on creating that 3-D look in your Flash Games. I would highly recommend as well for additional ways to present information in a highly interactive way.

I have always found `Friends of Ed' books easy to read and follow, and have purchased almost the whole series. Many people went into the making of these books, and the ideas that are presented are easy to read and follow.