graphics and multimedia

Let me begin by saying that I consider myself an intermediate Actionscript Programmer and have created several games with Flash, anticipating this book would assist me in my ventures.

At first glance this book seems terrific. You get a large collection of games that vary in genres. Even more appealing is the multiplayer game support.

But when you read more into you discover in the first chapters, most of it is understandable (even the physics and trigonometry) but even with your first game, you can run into troubles. I purchased this book interested in the multiplayer games. I had never done anything with this genre and wasn't sure how players could connect with one another. I discovered how its done, but the games are written with the author's program, Electroserver. This didn't bother me except that the demo included on the disk can only support five members at any one time. A little investigation on the site and I became more disappointed. To have the minimum on the license is 50 people for a whopping $299. Also the Tic-Tac-Toe example is a free download off this page. This made me wonder if the author was filling blank pages.

The book has its high points, especially the pinball and platform game. It also has its low points, such as the rapid bombardment of Actionscript (as someone else put it, little fluff), as well as the electroserver problem.

This is a very interesting book from quite a number of angles. The book is strong on discussing Flash centred technique, good on algortihmic tradeoffs but possible a little limited in in its key example. It will definitely help Falsh developers do better. The author is honest about the limitations of Flash as a game developmnet tool. The bottom line is that Flash is good a tightly defined games where some tradeoff with real-time interaction is allowable, but don't expect tthe full functionality (or speed) of a conventional games engine. There is a wealth of useful information in the book. If you have any handle on programming and Actionscript you will gain a lot more by taking timeover this book. The coding is good, and the algorithms are actually meaningful and useful. The author is clear about strengths and limitations of his approach A very rare characteristic of games books.

I'm a graphic designer with a little bit of scripting knowledge from director. I've made quite a few simple games in director and was looking to jump into actionscripting because of its web friendliness.

I understood everything for the first couple of chapters but from then on I got more and more confused. This book jumps in the deep end and unless you've got a good head for mathematics/programming I'm guessing that most people will find themselves lost.

If you're looking for books to help you learn actionscripting from the start. I would recommend buying 'Macromedia Flash MX ActionScripting: Advanced Training from the Source' and 'actionscript for flash mx' together, both of which I found to be excellent.