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, and blow up stuff onscreen.

Table of Contents

Introduction. Part I: Basic Flash. Chapter 1: Why You Want to Write Games in Flash. Chapter 2: Cruising and Using the Flash Environment. Part II: The Next Steps. Chapter 3: Altered States. Chapter 4: Getting with the Program. Chapter 5: Making an Interactive Game. Part III: Sprites, or Movie Clips. Chapter 6: Introducing Sprites and Movie Clips. Chapter 7: Won't Be Long 'Til You Write Pong. Part IV: Getting Control of the Situation. Chapter 8: Keyboard Input and Audio Output. Chapter 9: It's Alive! Animating Your Sprites. Chapter 10: Building the Monster Traffic Game. Part V: Phun with Phuzzy Physics. Chapter 11: Vectors and Gravity. Chapter 12: Vehicle Motion. Chapter 13: The Life and Death of Sprites. Part VI: The Part of Tens. Chapter 14: Ten Math Concepts for Game Programmers. Chapter 15: Ten Game Starters. Index.

About the Author

Andy Harris earned a degree in Special Education from Indiana University/Purdue University-Indianapolis (IUPUI). He taught young adults with severe disabilities for several years. He also taught himself enough computer programming to support his teaching habit with freelance programming. Those were the exciting days when computers started to have hard drives, and some computers connected to each other with arcane protocols. He taught programming in those days because it was fun. Eventually, Andy decided to teach computer science full time, and he still teaches at IUPUI. He lectures in the applied computing program and runs the streaming media lab. He also teaches classes in whatever programming language is in demand at the time. He has developed a large number of online video-based courses and international distance education projects. Andy has written several books on various computing topics and languages including Java, C#, mobile computing, JavaScript, and PHP/MySQL. Andy welcomes comments and suggestions about his books. He can be reached at aharris@cs.iupui.edu.