Product Description

This book will be the only game-specific book for Macromedia Flash and ActionScript. Each chapter will study and deconstruct a new type of game or gadget, such as hunt and click games, catch and avoid games, or action and adventure games.

The book will waste no time on illustration or animation directions but will focus solely on building games in Flash, including coding, the primary skill that most aspiring Flash game designers lack.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #811489 in Books
• Published on: 2001-04-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Macromedia Flash 5 Actionscript for Fun & Games. The title says it all really. Gary Rosenzweig's book is entirely devoted to showing you how to program games in ActionScript.

It kicks off with a few chapters devoted to Actionscript features that are of general interest to games programmers. For those with limited ActionScript experience, this is a good place to start, although some prior experience of Flash is recommended as Rosenzweig sets a hot pace and by page 37 you're writing your first ActionScript program.

Having dealt with the tools required for interactive games programming, the rest of the book is almost entirely given over to hands-on example-based lessons. Starting with toys and gadgets like a music jukebox and analogue clock, Rosenzweig shows you how to program virtually every kind of game conceivable. Chapters are devoted to construction toys, hunt and click games, catch and avoid games, aim and shoot games, ball and paddle games, quizzes and word puzzles, picture puzzles, brain puzzles, casino and card games and arcade games.

All of the program examples are available online, so you can not only use the techniques in the book to write new code, but are actively encouraged to adapt the examples to your own needs.

Even if games are not your ultimate goal, you'll learn a lot about interactive ActionScript from these pages. Gary Rosenzweig wrote five books on Macromedia Director, runs four games Web sites and knows his stuff when it comes to Actionscript. You can see examples of his games at www.clevermedia.com --Ken McMahon

From the Back Cover

This book will be the only game-specific book for Macromedia Flash and ActionScript. Each chapter will study and deconstruct a new type of game or gadget, such as hunt and click games, catch and avoid games, or action and adventure games.

The book will waste no time on illustration or animation directions but will focus solely on building games in Flash, including coding, the primary skill that most aspiring Flash game designers lack.

About the Author

Gary Rosenzweig is a game designer, programmer, entrepreneur, and the author of six books on Macromedia Director and Flash. He owns and operates CleverMedia, a Shockwave game development company that runs four game sites on the Internet: http://www.clevermedia.com/, http://www.gamescene.com/, http://www.gamespark.com/, and http://www.flasharcade.com/.

Since founding CleverMedia in 1996, the company has produced more than 150 games. The games on the four sites that make up the "CleverMedia Network" are all free for Web surfers to play. Many of the games have also been licensed to other Web sites.

Rosenzweig started in the multimedia business by obtaining a bachelor's degree in computer science from Drexel University in Philadelphia. His interest in newspapers took him to the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill where he earned a master's degree in journalism and mass communication.

Rosenzweig wrote his first book in 1995 on Macromedia Director Lingo and distributed it free on the Internet. In 1996, The Comprehensive Guide to Lingo was published by Ventana, followed the next year by The Director 6 Book. In 1999, Special Edition Using Director 7 was published by Macmillan Computer Publishing and Special Edition Using Director 8 followed in 2000. Gary has also spoken at many Macromedia User Conferences and the Game Developers Conference. Gary reads a lot of classic science fiction books, likes to go to the movies, and enjoys travel. He lives in Denver, Colorado, with his wife, Debby; cat, Lucy; and dog, Natasha.

Customer Reviews

the resource for creating cool games and more with flash 5 !
Internet software technology is moving FAST and Macromedia Flash has become the industry standard for producing compelling web content.

With the release of flash 5 ,dynamic,exciting,and 'sticky' web sites are now easy to create, with little experience from the designer/programmer.

"ActionScript For Fun And Games" provides an excellent source of inspiration to create interesting features for your site, and the techniques that you will learn will not only be usefull for creating games, but also for intigrating into your core website design!

the book is probably best suited to users familier with at least a basic knowlege of flash, although the first chapter brings the reader upto speed with all the basic requirements needed before plunging the reader into cool actionscrit routine's. The book provides helpfull tips throughout and all of the examples are available to download from the authors site, full permission is given to use any of the code as it stands in your own projects, although you are encouraged to expand your creativity and add your own idea's.

In essence the book provdes a usefull reference tool for the challenging world of flash actionscript programming, while remembering why we all like to do this stuff in the first place..FUN!

Started me off with action script!
This book is the reason why I today do action scripts, and give Flash classes!
I think you're better off with some experience in programming f. i. java script, or at least some programming experience, before you use this book. I would not recommend it to complete beginners. That said: this book is created by a programmer, as one might see. The way of coding is intelligent, and I think it's a must-have for those who want to get good habits when programming action script.

Hoorah - an interesting text book!
This is the first actionscript book I've bought after getting to grips with the basics of Flash and I'm really impressed. Gary's explanation of Actionscript is clear and easy to understand and with all of the games it's actually fun to learn - you're straight in there which is brilliant if you're at all impatient like me. Of course it isn't a complete Actionscript guide but it's a good way to get your feet wet and you'll definitely want to keep it for referal because the games in here can be used again and again as bases to build from.