LudoScience

Game Design (development)

Author(s) : Jobe Makar, Ben Winiarczyk
Editor : Macromedia Press
Publication date : 03-17-2004
Language : english

This book is written by Jobe Makar, a veteran Flash game developer working for the ElectroTank studio, and aims to teach you how to create videogames with Macromedia Flash MX 2004. Unlike most other books on this topic, this one doesn't limit itself to explaining the source code of the examples games featured on the companion CD. While one half of the book is indeed dedicated to these examples games, the 250 remaining pages explain with great details, but easy to understand text, the working principles of most of the 2D videogames: trigonometry 101, physics handling, collision detection, creation of a tile-based engine, creation of an isometric-view game, pathfinding algorithms... Although the code examples are written in ActionScript, Flash proprietary language, the game algorithms explained in this book are transferable to any programming language, especially as they are rarely presented in such a clear way. A book recommended to anyone making its first steps in videogame programming.