Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Game Dev Start - walking the walk

How to get into Flash Games Development is something I tried to answer several times on this blog. Same question has got Algorithmist thinking and his thoughts are formed into this article. Nice read, don’t miss it.

He also mentioned gotoAndPlay website, place I was aware of before, but haven’t wrote about it. Here is the list of useful articles there about Flash Games Development:

- Tile layout in AS3 (beginners)
- Isometric Engine (beginners)
- Game creation tutorial (beginners)

- Efficient A* path finder (intermediate)
- Fisix Trucks prototype (intermediate)
- Skeletal Animations (intermediate)
- Building MMO Virtual Worlds (intermediate)
- Data Structures: Linked List (intermediate)
- Case study: building a puzzle game using AS3 and OOP (intermediate)

- AStar 3D prototype (advanced)

Enjoy reading.

related articles:
o coding shadows in as2.0
o flash racing game custom tracks
o 30 seconds time waster

Posted by flanture at 12:08:40 | Permalink | No Comments »

Monday, May 19, 2008

Second Chance - ASTRO

For a very long time, there was opinion between game developers that Flash Platform is not so good game development platform. Right now, with release of Flash Player 10, this might change just a little bit in another direction.

 Flash Player 10, code name Astro is still in beta, but already brings some very interesting new features. Native 3D effects, available to anyone, is the first reason why we should pay attention. Enhanced drawing API for easy runtime drawing and visual performance improvements with extended hardware acceleration with GPU Compositing and GPU Blitting take advantage of new ActionScript3.0 Virtual Machine (AVM2) introduced back in Flash Player 9.

Don’t forget Dynamic Streaming that automatically adjust to changing network conditions, Dynamic Sound Generation and File Reference Runtime Access that let’s you load/save files from/to server without knowing server language or have access to server. This is not all! Check all new features at Adobe Labs, but from this summary you get my point when I say it is time for reconsideration.

Posted by flanture at 01:12:07 | Permalink | No Comments »

Sunday, March 9, 2008

Team vs Solo Project


Newcomers in games development have first major dilemma about whether to work with someone else or to try to do everything alone.

Solo project is suitable for smaller projects, for simple game play games and for not so demanding graphic games. It is all about what you want to achieve. Perfect solo project games in ActionScript are logic / puzzle games. They usually include small number of graphic symbols with repetitive usage and few interesting sound effects. Game play and controls are easy to implement in all ActionScript versions. This is also great test for future development and self assessment.

Teams are great for gaining experience, one of most important skill in game development. Splitting all work needed among designers (sounds and graphics), programmers and marketing dudes is dream come true for right people and road to success, but this is often very hard to do.

Good starting point in looking to join some team or to create one with right people are game dev forums like:

IDevGames
GameDev
GameDevForum
DevMaster

Good luck!

Posted by flanture at 20:35:09 | Permalink | No Comments »

Monday, March 3, 2008

Where to start with development


There are many things to consider when starting with flash games development. Basic one is to be sure that programming skills are good enough for the job whether it is AS3, AS2 or even AS1. Experience is very important which means that fresh start can tolerate lack of knowledge to some extent. Creating strategy for first project is another big milestone. Simple jumping into coding won’t give expected success. Careful planning is essential.

What kind of project will it be? What kind of game genre? Some games cover more genres at once, some don’t. Popular genre is first person shooter where main character moves around and shoots stuff and where the world is seen through character’s eyes. Role playing game is similar, but in this case character is exploring some environment collecting power ups in interaction with enemies and other characters.

Other popular genres are strategy, sports, action and adventure. Maybe one of the best genres for newbie in flash games development are puzzle / logic games where graphic is not most important but game play is. Another important and popular genre is casino games like roulette, poker and black jack. Industry of casino games is very strong and need for new games is daily rising. Just check online job boards and you will find how making good casino games brings cash. A lot of cash.

After carefully chosen game genre some other questions have to be answered. If project is small with simple graphic and sound effects and just few levels, this can be one man show, but if project is bigger, consider making a team. Splitting responsibility between graphics, sound, programming and marketing is more productive and results are much better, but gathering a good team is skill for itself. And that is great subject for next article.

Posted by flanture at 10:48:50 | Permalink | No Comments »