flash games

Beginning Game Programming with Flash
$29.99
I'm rarely extremely negative about a book, but this one was terrible. It's title is "Beginning Game Programming with Flash", however it does almost nothing to teach you how to program games using flash.

Besides the obvious omission of the 'game' part, the code examples often do not match up with text. There was very little editing or quality control work done to make sure the text was done right. In a case sensitive language like ActionScript you cannot allow automatic text capitalization. 'void' is not the same as 'Void'. For an experienced programmer, you might be able to sort out the places where variables don't match up because of letter case or outright misspelling, but for a beginner guide, even a simple thing like a case sensitive error can cause you to spend hours trying to figure out why the example you copied out of the book doesn't work.

Furthermore the authors didn't pay attention to the units associated with various variables. One example is the 'rotation' property of movie clips. When they demonstrate this, they provide a button to rotate a movie clip, however they seem to think the number should be in the form of a percentage like '0.30' for 30 percent, however the proper units for rotation is degrees. So the button assigned '0.30' rotation rotates the object .3 of 1 degree, ie. it is not visible. Of course the text is inconsistent and the example code doesn't match with the code they tell you to type in using their step by step instructions.

I could go on and on here listing inaccuracies, bad editing practices, and omissions. But, please just don't buy this book. Buy 'Action Script Game Programming University' instead. It might be a bit more advanced book, but at least the examples in it work and the information is accurate.

Real-World Flash Game Development: How to Follow Best Practices AND Keep Your Sanity
$49.95
You should have some Actionscript 3.0 experience before you dig into this book. The user level on the back of the book says intermediate to advanced and they mean it! You will also need CS4 to be able to open the downloadable files. I could not open them on my CS3 machine.

This book covers a lot of topics I have not found in other AS books. Some examples are event propagation, dispatching events, E4X, getter/setter methods and protected variables. The chapters are very intense and delve more deeply into the workings of AS 3.0. If you want to know how and why Actionscript does what it does this is the book for you.

Real World also directs you to adopt best practices. This should keep you from developing bad habits and allow you to author modular code that could be easily modified.

The final game in the book is a platform game. You can learn how to load external SWFs containing the game's assets at runtime. This concept is very different from other game tutorials I have worked with.

I would recommend Actionscipt 3.0 Game Programming University if you haven't done any game programming. It has a much gentler approach to game programming.

Real World Flash Game Development should be an important addition to every game developer's bookshelf.

Foundation Game Design with Flash (Foundations)
$39.99
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.

Beginning Flash Game Programming For Dummies
$24.99
This book teach you all the skills you need, to make a great flash game. It is very easy to understand, even for me who was a totally newbie to programming and beside that, have English as my second language. If you are a totally newbie to flash programming and want to make some great games fast then this book is for you!