The Essential Guide to Flash Games: Building Interactive Entertainment with ActionScript Cover Image
  • The Essential Guide to Flash Games: Building Interactive Entertainment with ActionScript
  • http://www.friendsofed.com/book.html?isbn=9781430226147
  • Published: 12th March 2010
  • ISBN-10: 1-4302-2614-5
  • ISBN-13: 978-1-4302-2614-7
  • RRP: $49.99 (USD)
  • 400 Pages
  • Buy as eBook
  • Downloads Available
  • Corrections
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The Essential Guide to Flash Games:
Building Interactive Entertainment with ActionScript

By Jeff Fulton, Steve Fulton


The Essential Guide to Flash Games is a unique tool for Flash game developers. Rather than focusing on a bunch of low-level how-to material, this book dives straight into building games. The book is divided into specific game genre projects, covering everything from old classics such as a Missile Command-style game, to hot new genres such as tower defense. The chapters build in complexity through the book, and new tools are introduced along the way that can be reused for other games.

  • The game projects covered start simple and increase in complexity as more and more tools are added to your tool chest.
  • Ten full game projects are discussed in detail. Each solves a very different game development problem and builds on the knowledge gained from the previous project.
  • Many advanced game development techniques are covered, including particle systems, advanced controls, AI, blitting, scrolling, and more.

What you’ll learn

  • Flash/Flex ActionScript 3 game development
  • How to apply object-oriented game development techniques
  • How to solve a wide variety specific Flash game programming problems
  • How to develop a game engine and set of tools that can be reused
  • How to implement ten different games (in styles ranging from retro to modern Flash games)
  • How to optimize various games
  • Who is this book for?

    This book is for intermediate Flash developers, Flash game developers, game developers looking to move to the Flash platform, and experienced web developers who want to learn how to make games.


    This book is part of friends of ED's 'Essential Guide' series

    The Essential Guide series takes a pragmatic approach to learning. We understand that you might not have the time or the inclination to read through a long book before you can get up and running, and we designed this series to give you the knowledge you want when you want it. The learning is always by example, with lots of code snippets that you can take with you and use in your own applications. The focus is on targeted learning for web professionals—providing the essential tools that the modern web developer needs. A book in this series won't focus as much on the basics as a Foundation book, but it will take you further, introducing some advanced topics that are essential for using a particular technology in the real world.