Foundation Game Design with Flash

We've all sneaked the odd five minutes here or there playing the latest Flash game that someone sent round the office, but creating those games is trickier than it looks. The aim of Foundation Game Design with Flash is to take you, even if you've minimal multimedia or programming experience, through a series of step-by-step examples and detailed case studies to the point where you'll have the skills to independently design any conceivable 2D game using Flash and ActionScript. The book is a non-technical one-stop-shop for all the most important skills and techniques a beginner game designer needs to build games with Flash from scratch. Whether you're creating quick blasts of viral amusement, or more in-depth action or adventure titles, this book is for you.
Focused and friendly introduction to designing games with Flash and ActionScript
5 detailed case studies of Flash games
Essential techniques for building games, with each chapter gently building on the skills of preceding chapters
What you'll learn
Learn how to build interactive movies and objects with Flash
Get a thorough grounding in ActionScript 3.0 and good programming practices, with minimal prior programming experience required
Discover how to build Interactive Storybooks, Space-Shooter, Adventure and Drag and Drop games.
Master collision detection, Enemy AI systems, player control, managing game data, basic physics and trigonometry.
Make use of Design Patterns and Object Oriented Programming techniques to build robust games.
Understand the strategies for making games fun to play and easy to build.
Who is this book for?

This book is for a non-technical creative person who wants to learn the art of videogame design, but has no idea where to start or where to look for help. It is a lucid, friendly and step-by-step guide though all the technical and creative issues involved in game design with Flash and ActionScript. The book treats the art of programming as a creative artistic tool, and will help anyone who may be afraid of programming to love the subject as much as the author does. The techniques in the book are comprehensive enough to form the basis of career as a game designer, and form a solid foundation for continued study of programming and ActionScript. This book is the missing link that will guide and inspire any curious and creative person turn a good game idea into a reality.

Summary: High Praise for Rex van der Spuy!
Rating: 5

I've struggled through a number of AS books, but even the highest-rated best sellers left me feeling discouraged,frustrated and well, stupid. Not necessarily because of the books themselves-I have a learning disability, and have always struggled with this type of learning. I think the difference is that this author remains empathetic with the reader all the way through. ("Like he was reading my mind" as another reviewer said.) He doesn't "speed ahead" after covering the basics. I would definitely recommend this book for anyone who has given up on Action Script programming.


Summary: Foundation of Game Design - Great book
Rating: 5

This is a great book! It is easy to follow and provides step-by-step instructions with good comments. It explains the FLASH environment as well as the actionscript commands necessary for the games.
It gives you explanation in such detail that it is easy to extrapolate the book ideas to your own ideas.
I believe this book is a MUST for beginners on FLASH games. It provides an excellent ground level.
Congratulations to the Author! Great Book!


Summary: Rex explains things very well
Rating: 5

I have worked my way through several other books on ActionScript and game design and I wish I had found this one first. Rex van der Spuy clearly explains things about ActionScript that have puzzled me greatly for a long time – things other authors glossed over. This is a Flash centered, game centered book. Instead of trying to be half Flash, half Flex like other books, this one glories in Flash as a game design tool and teaches by using all of Flash's many capabilities.

This book is very daring in scope. It starts out from "no programming experience" and takes you all the way up to the edge of design patterns, showing you how to make cool games at every level along the way.

I am a kind of medium/intermediate ActionScript programmer myself, and I found the early chapters delightfully relaxing (and learned a lot of new stuff too), the middle chapters absorbing and the final chapters challenging. Whatever level you're at this book has something for you.

Rex, how about writing another book taking us a little further along the path. I'd like to know more about how to put together a structure for a bigger, more complex game, more about composition and game design, more about event dispatching and game design. How about it?

Barbara Parkman


Summary: What a wonderful book!
Rating: 5

I wish all computer books were written this well! This is not only the best book (by far) on this subject, but it is also the most clear, comprehensive, and engaging programming book I've read on any subject! The author is expert at building concepts at just the right pace to make the subject easy to digest, but he never skips over explaining the why, as well as the how of each concept. Chap 6 on controlling the player and overhead multi-axis scrolling (think Gauntlet, or Zelda) is well worth the book's price alone. Chap 7 "Bumping into things" gives three different methods for collision detection explaining the benefits and drawbacks of each. This is typical of the author's approach of showing you different ways to accomplish what you wish, and suggesting which method to use in different circumstances, but leaving the use of each tool up to you. He even goes so far as to first demonstrate an inferior, but common way of controlling a player's movement, so the correct method (which immediately follows) will make more sense, leading you to understand why the better method works so well. Chap 9 on platform game physics (think Mario) is superb, and like Chap 6 is worth the book's price alone. Side scrolling platform games are at best glossed over in other books. The whole time I read this book I felt like the author was reading my mind, anticipating my questions, and giving me a little more depth where it was needed. When you finish this book, there will be little (if anything) you can't do in 2D game programming in Flash. Lively, engaging, and actually fun to read, highly recommended!


Summary: Great Book on Undersrtanding Flash Game Design
Rating: 5

Adobe Flash has been around for over 10 years now (wow, has it been that long?) and until recently has been mainly focused on creating online games. Now that in recent versions of Flash have evolved abit, it is being used not only for game design, but also for online video, and RIA applications.

Though for the most part Flash is best suited to create online animated games because it is very efficient for download size, is fast, has a very robust programming language (AS 3.0) and has many tools for quick and easy animation using the timeline.

This book is one of the few books focusing primarily on game design with Flash as opposed to other books focusing on specific topics such as animation or coding or component creation, etc. The author assumes no previous knowledge with Flash or programming but it would be helpful in speeding up your learning curve if you had a little experience in either programming or Flash.

The author starts at the very begginning of the book in explaining the basics of Flash and the components involved as well as the interface with the timeline. The author goes into how to program with ActionScript and how it differs from other languages. Then more basic topics are discussed such as how to create symbols (buttons and movieclips) and a basic template for the first game is discussed.

More ActionScript basic topics are discussed such as variables, using objects and methods, and how to code events. Then the next chapter (chapter 4) one of the more important topics are dicussed which focus on movie clips. Movie clips are the foundation of creating Flash games (let alone almost everything else). Anything in a movie clip (image, video, sound, animation, object) can be controlled via ActionScript which is why its so powerful.

The author gives a great explanation to these important topics and helps the reader understand what will be involved in creating Flash games.

The author then discusses other fun and important topics in game design such as how to use AS to control the player characters in the different keyboard and mouse events. Understanding how to control your characters movement in your game is very important.

I really enjoy the way the author explains the topics discussed because he describes everthing in a relaxed, easy to read format without too much technical jargon (unless needed, of course). It doesnt sound like a technical book, but sounds like a book that someone really enjoys what they are doing and that comes across from the book.

A really fun chapter (chapter 7) is the discussion of how to program collisions with your game character and teh environment you create for it. The author talks about the AS objects hitTestPoint, Collision, etc.

The rest of the book focuses on more somewhat advanced techniques such as object oriented game design, game physics, and advanced charcter control.

Its a very in-depth book and will take you awhile to go through it all but it is done very well and a highly recommeded if you want to really understand flash game design and development.

A great buy!