Acknowledgments in Font

Generation Code 128 Code Set A in Font Acknowledgments

A great debt of gratitude to the phenomenally hard-working, dedicated, and talented team at friends of ED who made this book possible. You re the best bunch of people to work with, ever. Josh, Fran, Kelly, Marilyn, and Ben, we did it! A particular note of gratitude to the lead editor, Ben Renow-Clarke. It was his vision for Foundation Game Design and AdvancED Game Design to be two books, and they exist thanks to his consistent vision and encouragement over the two years that it took to write them.

Game design is unquestionably one of the most interesting and complex challenges that a programmer can take on. If you ve ever tackled the design of even a simple game, you ll know that the questions you have and the problems you encounter while building it can often boggle the mind with their seemingly labyrinthine complexities. But like any labyrinth, it s not hard to navigate if you know the way.

Enter the labyrinth!

Most of the problems that arise in building a game can disappear with a just bit of understanding of some of the basic principles behind them. This book takes a detailed look at the classic problems of video-game design, and offers a clear path to understanding and solving them: Keeping your game data and logic separated from your visuals Managing big games with hundreds of objects and variables Using vectors for pinpoint accurate collision detection and physics simulation Handling collisions between circles ( billiard-ball physics ) and collisions between circles and corners Handling multiple object collisions and collisions between irregularly shaped objects Creating game environments that can be interactively destroyed and modified Saving, loading, and sharing game data Streamlining your game design management and performance by using a tile-based model Pathfinding so that game objects can navigate their way around complex environments This is a classic education in making video games and a compendium of all the important techniques you ll need to know to flourish as a professional game designer. Labyrinthine complexities Not anymore! Theseus had a giant ball of string to help him escape from the labyrinth of the Minotaur. You have this book.

AdvancED Game Design with Flash is a direct follow-up of my book Foundation Game Design with Flash (friends of ED, 2009). If you ve read that book, and have had a bit of practical experience making some of your own games, you have all the skills and knowledge you need to enjoy the fun we re going to have in this book. If you haven t read Foundation Game Design with Flash, but have a solid practical experience programming with ActionScript 3.0 (AS3.0), this book is all you need to jump right in and start building games.

However, make sure you have a comfortable understanding of these topics: Creating, controlling, and modifying Sprite and MovieClip objects Making and programming buttons Generating random numbers Controlling objects with the mouse and keyboard Moving objects with acceleration and friction Implementing collision detection: hitTestObject, hitTestPoint, and distance-based systems Using ADDED_TO_STAGE and REMOVED_FROM_STAGE events to reliably initialize and remove display objects Changing the display object-stacking order Filtering display objects to add bevel and drop-shadow effects Using the Point class and converting local coordinates to global coordinates Object-oriented programming (OOP): Inheritance (making new classes by extending other classes) Composition (using instances of classes inside other classes) Private properties Getters and setters Different classes for game construction Dependency (building classes so that they can work without depending on other classes) Using static properties and methods Calculating distance and angles using the Math class Making drag-and-drop objects Using a Timer object Dispatching events and event bubbling If you think you might be a bit hazy in any of areas, have a quick flip through Foundation Game Design with Flash and see if you can find the level at which you re comfortable working. If you need to do a little more reconnaissance work, don t worry this book will still be here waiting for you when you re ready! I ve also assumed that you have some familiarity with the drawing API: AS3.0 s classes that allow you to draw lines and shapes on the stage. If you haven t used the drawing API before, take a quick look at the chapter Using the drawing API in Adobe s AS3.0 documentation (http://help.adobe.com/en_US/ ActionScript/3.0_ProgrammingAS3/). At the end of 1 in this book, there s also a quickreference guide to common drawing API commands. That should be all you need to know to get started.