How do I learn Flash Game Development?
I'm currently a PHP programmer and one of my childhood dreams is to create a game.
The problem is I don't know Flash. I'm not great at drawing stuff or even artistic. I could program a little with JavaScript and I could consider myself intermediate with JQuery.
Question
How do I get started with Flash Game development? What books do I read first?
The type of game is a side scroller about an Indiana Jones type of character and the setting is on the jungle with trees and snakes and a lot of animals.
Answer
Two and half years ago I was exactly where you were. I've since learned Flash and released a couple of popular games. Here's what I found out along the way:
- Flash CS is not a good tool for programmers to write Flash games. Use either Flash Develop (free) or Flash Builder (Adobe's IDE with better integration and debugging, but not free).
- I found Colin Moock's "Essential Actionscript 3.0" to be an excellent introduction and overview of AS3.
- AS3 is quite a different language from PHP. It's much more Object-Oriented, very similar to Java. Also, its event system may seem quite confusing at first.
- I found Tony Pa's tile based game tutorials quite useful, even if not creating a tile-based game.
- Read every post in this thread of AS3 tips.
- Start small, with the simplest possible game you'll actually finish and release.