Flash Game Development by Example

Table of Contents

• Preface

• Chapter 1: Concentration
• Defining game design
• Setting stage size, frame rate, and background color
• Welcome to Concentration ("Hello World")
• Creating the tiles
• Adding randomness: shuffling the tiles
• Placing the tiles on stage
• Picking tiles
• Checking for matching tiles
• Making the player see what happened
• Preventing the player from cheating
• Fine-tuning the game: adding educational content
• Summary
• Where to go now

• Chapter 2: Minesweeper
• Defining game design
• Creating the empty field
• Placing the mines
• Adding the digits
• Optimization needed
• Placing tiles on stage
• Showing tile contents
• Auto showing adjacent empty tiles
• Flagging tiles
• Timer and game over
• No sudden death
• Summary
• Where to go now

• Chapter 3: Connect Four
• Defining game design
• The game field
• Showing smooth animations
• Splitting the code
• Adding the board
• Placing the board to stage
• Creating more classes
• Placing the disc
• Moving the disc
• Applying game rules
• Checking for possible columns
• It's raining discs
• Determining a cell value (if any)
• Making your move
• Waiting for the disc to be added to stage
• Checking for victory
• Animating discs
• The animation itself
• Making computer play
• Unleashing CPU power
• Playing with AI: defensive play
• Summary
• Where to go now

• Chapter 4: Snake
• Defining game design
• Array-based games versus Movie Clip-based games
• Preparing the field
• Drawing the graphics
• Placing the snake
• The snake itself
• Simplifying the code
• Letting the snake move
• Controlling the snake
• Placing fruits
• Eating fruits
• Making the snake grow
• Placing walls
• Making the snake die
• Summary
• Where to go now

• Chapter 5: Tetris
• Defining game design
• Importing classes and declaring first variables
• Drawing game field background
• Drawing a better game field background
• Creating the tetrominoes
• Placing your first tetromino
• Moving tetrominoes horizontally
• Moving tetrominoes down
• Managing tetrominoes landing
• Managing tetrominoes collisions
• Rotating tetrominoes
• Removing completed lines
• Managing remaining lines
• Making tetrominoes fall
• Checking for game over
• Showing NEXT tetromino
• Summary
• Where to go now

• Chapter 6: Astro-PANIC!
• Defining game design
• Creating the game and drawing the graphics
• Adding and controlling the spaceship
• Adding a glow filter
• Making spaceship fire
• Making the bullet fly
• Adding enemies
• Moving enemies
• Being killed by an enemy
• Killing an enemy
• Killing an enemy—for good
• Killing an enemy—with style
• Advancing levels
• Managing current score and high score
• Saving data on your local computer
• Summary
• Where to go now

• Chapter 7: Bejeweled
• Creating documents and objects
• Placing the gems
• Placing the gems for real
• Selecting a gem
• Preparing to swap gems
• Swapping gems
• Swapping gems for real
• Selecting which gems to remove
• Removing gems
• Making gems fall
• Adding new gems
• Dealing with combos
• Giving hints
• Summary
• Where to go now

• Chapter 8: Puzzle Bobble
• Creating documents and assets
• Placing and moving the cannon
• Drawing the game field
• Drawing the game field with alternate rows
• Drawing the game field according to Pythagoras
• Loading the cannon with a bubble
• Firing the bubble
• Letting bubble bounce and stop
• Adjusting bubble position and reloading
• Allowing bubbles to stack
• Detecting bubble chains
• Removing the chain
• Removing unlinked bubbles
• Summary
• Where to go now

• Chapter 9: BallBalance
• Creating files and assets
• Adding the balance
• Choosing where to drop spheres
• Dropping the spheres
• Stacking spheres
• Removing spheres
• Adjusting floating spheres
• Moving the balance
• Summary
• Where to go now

• Appendix: Where to Go Now

• Index