Essential Flash Games: The Book #1

One reason that there have been fewer tutorials, mash-ups, reviews, etc on the last few weeks is that Steve and I are deep into our first book on Flash game programming. Friends Of Ed is the publisher and we have a deadline to finish by November. The name of the book is Essential Flash Games, a title bestowed on it by the publisher.

I am currently finishing up chapter 7. It deals with creating a top-down, tile-based AS3 engine for maze/chase style game. It could be used for any maze/chase game (Pacman, etc), but the game I am creating is closer to the classic arcade and Vectrex title, Armor Attack.  I am creating the enemy tanks to have enough AI to be a challenge…now I have to piece back together my spaghetti AI into good enough code that I won’t be embarrassed for others to see. The funny thing about writing code you know others will look at and even use is that (given enough time) you always want to go back and refine it. I have been writing the games for the chapters and then when complete, writing about the games and explaining all the code. The best possible code bullsh*t detector is having to re-read code and explain it in detail. When I get to some lame-ass code that shouldn’t be there, or needs to be better, I am forced to re-write it as to not be embarrassed. How’s that for an incentive? =)

The book will contain an expansion of some of the tutorials found on this site, and much more new content. All of the games use a simple OOP-lite framework that we have created that should not get in the way of game programming or design, but adds a little helper functionality for screen updates (optimized timer), and game organization (a simple state pattern), and more.

It isn’t designed to be an all encompassing game engine, but rather a framework for helping to create games without having to start over each time.

The code is being written in both Flash Develop and CS3, so it will be easy to pickup for those who want to start making games for free as well as anyone with CS3 or CS4.

Ok, that’s my update, not back to the chapter…