List Price: $24.99You Pay Only: $16.49 You Save: $8.50 (34%)Prices subject to change.
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 794.816787
EAN: 9780764589621
ISBN: 0764589628
Label: For Dummies
Manufacturer: For Dummies
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 408
Publication Date: November 21, 2005
Publisher: For Dummies
Sales Rank: 171868
Studio: For Dummies
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Editorial Review:
Product Description: You can start game programming in a flash Here's how to create five different cool games - no experience necessary! Ever think you could come up with a better computer game? Then this book is for you! No boring programming theory here, just the stuff you need to know to actually make something happen, and all in plain English. Build a brain-teasing math game, go classic with Pong, create monsters and mayhem, and much more. Discover how to * Build and control basic movie clips * Make text appear and change * Generate random numbers * Add sound effects * Create cars and space vehicles that move realistically * Blow up stuff onscreen
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating: - Try a different book!
Although I have looked to this book for answers many times, it rarely if ever comes through with the info I need. This book fails to give the reader/ game designer the conceptual info to fill in the blanks of their own personal issues with their own game ideas.
I found the info in here to be scattered and poorly organized, and utterly useless in terms of "back-bone" game programming basics. I have taken game prototyping classes using Flash and this book was useless. Unless you plan to build the most basic games, exactly as they are presented in this book, you will find very little info in here to help you on your more creative and ambitious game projects.
Rating: - Really good
I got a lot out of this book but wish there would have been more time spent of multi-players. Overall, a strong recommendation.
Rating: - Horribly Outdated
This book teaches you how to program games using Flash MX 2004. Unfortunately, that product is no longer available and hasn't been for quite some time. Newer flash programming environments are very different, so many of the samples and techniques in this book will be useless unless you already have Flash MX 2004.
Rating: - Must make accommodations to use this book with current Flash CS3
IMPORTANT NOTE TO READERS: This book is not written for the current Flash CS3, so you need to make a few accommodations. When the book tells you to create a new Flash program, be sure to choose the option to create an ActionScript 2.0 Flash File, NOT the current ActionScript 3.0. In the very first line of game programming code described in this book (on p.38), it uses the "onRelease" property of a button, which is no longer available in ActionScript 3.0. The program won't compile or run, and right out of the blocks, the reader is stuck. However, if you create an ActionScript 2.0 program, it works fine, and then you can continue.
NOTE: I just noticed that Adobe is releasing their CS4 suite about a week from now, which will probably also update Flash again to CS4. Hopefully, Flash CS4 will still provide the ability to create ActionScript 2.0 files, so that Flash CS4 can still be used with this book.
This is as far as we have gotten in the book so far. I will update this review if we discover more things to watch out for when using this book with Flash CS3.
This updated version of the book is copyrighted in 2006 but was released in November 2005, and was written for Macromedia Flash MX 2004. Since then, Adobe has acquired Macromedia, and Flash has gone through two more releases. Flash 8 was released in September 2005 (two months before the book was released), and Flash CS3 was released in April 2007. Flash CS3 added support for ActionScript 3.0, but fortunately ... Read More
Rating: - What you don't know can hurt you...
I have no complaints about the book itself; I didn't get far enough into it to comment either way, but it does appear to be very well written and complete.
A friend ordered this book about the same time I did, and we were both shocked to find out that we needed Flash MX 2004. I suppose we should have assumed that, but nowhere was it mentioned in any of the descriptions or reviews on this or any other site. I ended up returning the book because I can't afford the program right now.
So if you don't already have Flash MX 2004, check the price before deciding to buy this book.
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