Game Competitions
There are a couple game competitions that I know of right now, and I wanted to share with everyone.
Jonathan Harbour RTS game contest for beginners
(Due 12/25/2011) Jonathan Harbour has a contest for beginners to develop their own real time strategy(RTS) game, and has some prizes as well.
It would be a good excuse to work on a new game, and you don’t even have to have scrolling– just one screen. Don’t let that fool you though, any game project still requires work and determination 
1st Place Prize: App Game Kit (AGK) — Retail value: $112!
http://www.appgamekit.com/
2nd Place Prize: $30 voucher for the TGC Store!
http://www.thegamecreators.com
http://jharbour.com/forum/index.php?topic=1804.0
Intel Level Up 2011
(Due 3/19/2012) Also, the “Intel Level Up 2011″ game competition is finally up. It’s almost 2012, but the prizes are pretty nice, though the competition is not just beginners, but also includes students and Indie companies.
My RTS WIP
I’m currently working on the RTS one, and you can see my latest demo here(although fill in graphics, and lots of bugs still — but a week to finish ):
http://chrismweb.com/projects/rts_game_12_2011/V4/index.html
Using Box2d to Create a Side Scrolling Game — Part 2: Adding Keyboard Input and An Enemy
This article will show you how to add user input to control the “hero” object created in the previous article.
Additionally, we will add an enemy that will wander back and forth, stop and reverse direction at the ends of the screen, and will bounce up the hero when jumped onto.
Review of Flash Game Development by Example (Author: Emanuele Feronato)
When I found out the author of the largest Flash game development blog had written a book, I was very eager to pick it up and try it out.
(his announcement on his blog HERE)
Emanuele’s blog has been around for many years, and he has great information from starting out in actionscript and beginning game programming, all the way up to developing complete games, using 3d and physics engines.
Creating an Asteroids Flash Game Using the Display List Part 5: Lives, Scores, Restarting, Pausing, Creating Levels, and a Basic GUI
In the last section, we created a way to detect collisions, created particle explosions, and broke the asteroids up into smaller pieces when hit.
In this section, we’ll keep track of the lives, score, make levels, and create a GUI for starting, restarting, and pausing the game.
Begining Flash Game Programming and ActionScript Programming Part 2 ALTERNATIVE (FOR MAC OR LINUX USERS): Downloading and Setting Up Eclipse (with the flash builder plugin) and Compiling Your First Program
Who This is For
This post is primarily for anyone that has to use Eclipse for actionscript programming, which is primarily for Mac, Linux, or even PC users who would rather use the eclipse platform.
FlashDevelop is only supported in windows (programmed using C#), so if using a Mac or Linux, you would have to use Eclipse with the Flash Builder plugin, or the Flash Builder, or for Mac users, code in the Flash IDE (CS3, CS4, CS5, ect).
Continuing
In the previous section, I listed pros and cons of creating games in ActionScript, as well as useful terms you may encounter when programming in ActionScript.
In this section, we will download and install Eclipse (with the Flash Builder Plugin), and create our first program.
(NOTE: I installed using windows, but using a Mac or Linux should be something somewhat similar — I’ll later try to borrow a Mac, and install Ubuntu to have screen shots from them as well)
Creating an Asteroids Flash Game Using the Display List Part 4: Detecting Collisions and Creating Particle Explosions
In the last section, we created an asteroids class to easily create a variety of asteroids, as well as move them around on screen.
In this section, we’ll create a way to detect collisions between the asteroids and the ship or bullets, and create particle explosions when the collisions happen, as well as break apart asteroids upon collision.
Quick Note About Text Not Showing Up or Displaying in Flash
I created a few buttons, and have some default text for them. When I import them into FlashDevelop and try to update the text on the buttons, it just shows blanks.
Flash famously have severe problems when working with/ embedding text. Normally if you do not embed text, Flash will try to find the font on your computer, and fall back on a default font if the one specified in the SWF doesn’t exist on your computer.
Apparently that doesn’t work anymore– So if you have a problem with text not showing in your swf after having the default text show find, test out using some of the characters from the default text, and see if it only shows those characters.
To fix it, in the flash IDE select your textfield, under the properties panel select the button “embed”, and select ‘All’ to be safe, or decide on what characters you’ll need and embed them.
Creating an Asteroids Flash Game Using the Display List Part 3: Creating Asteroids
In the last section, we created bullets, and a method of wrapping the ship and bullets to the other side of the screen when they reach an edge of the screen.
In this section, we’ll create an asteroids class that allows us to make a variety of asteroids quickly and easily. We’ll also move them around, and wrap them on the screen.
(more…)
EMANUELE FERONATO’S New Book: Flash Game Development By Example
One of my favorite Actionscript game programming blogs is http://www.emanueleferonato.com. He has been around for quite a long time, and when I decided to go into flash/actionscript from C++, for game programming, his old posts were invaluable.
Check out his book, if you’re interested, let him know, or pick up the book!
$25 for the ebook, I’m going to buy+read it, and next week post a review. Surely another great book to add to your collection, from one of the internet’s experts on Actionscript game programming!
http://www.emanueleferonato.com/2011/03/24/flash-game-development-by-example-my-book-is-on-the-shelves/
Problems with Embedding SWFs in ActionScript or Flex
There are two ways of including assets (images, swf animations, music, ect) in your flash application. Either use the URLLoader to load the files externally, or embed your assets, so you can distribute just your swf, and not need to include any other files.
It sounds straight forward, but there any many places Flash may try to “trick you” into assuming it is behaving as expected.
