What's the best available tutorial for making games in Flash?
January 1, 2011 5:12 PM   Subscribe

What's the best tutorial out there for 101 Game Making with Flash?

I have some background in programming languages, although over the last 5 years it's mostly been web: PHP, Perl, Java, jQuery etc. etc. I am at least familiar with the basic concepts that underlie computer programming.

Recently I decided I wanted to start making a game as a little project. I know Unity is on the up and up, but Flash is still king. I thought starting with Flixel would be helpful, but I had a hard time finding a useful tutorial and it occurred to me that locking myself into a particular library might be a bad idea.

So what I'm seeking is a 101, never-used-Actionscript tutorial with a focus of making games. There are a zillion of these things, I was hoping to get a recommendation for one. THanks!
posted by GilloD to Computers & Internet (5 answers total) 14 users marked this as a favorite
 
Best answer: A professor recommended ActionScript 3.0 Game Programming University to me for this purpose, but I haven't gone through it yet.
posted by girih knot at 5:39 PM on January 1, 2011 [2 favorites]


Check out Lynda.com. They have several Flash lessons, including basic games.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 8:46 PM on January 1, 2011 [1 favorite]


Best answer: Kongregate has a set of step-by-step tutorials to make a very simple side-scroller in Flash. I don't have even your programming experience and I found it totally doable. The most beautiful part is that they give you all of the art, so you don't have to worry about that as you're concentrating on the scripting.
posted by restless_nomad at 10:51 PM on January 1, 2011 [2 favorites]


Response by poster: I purchased AS33.0 Game Programming University and kind of wish I hadn't. It's a big book and very useful, but absolutely not suited to my learning style.

First off, the book starts with a huge knowledge dump. There's 100 pages of odds and ends stuff that's absolutely divorced from any context.

In the first game example, he's weirdly explicit about some things (How to create a movie clip, something that's been explained already) and then glosses over more important things (Frames, Multi-frame set ups, how and where to create a class). And then he'll just say something like "Well, do it just like I did in the knowledge dump". I wish he'd skipped the knowledge dump and told me here, where it's important.

Overall, it's kind of frustrating.
posted by GilloD at 1:43 AM on February 15, 2011


Response by poster: I eventually found the FriendsofEd books: Game Design with Actionscript. They're amazing- The first one is more suited for someone who has never programmed, but they're conversational and funny and come with great examples. Way recommended.
posted by GilloD at 3:46 AM on August 3, 2011


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