ActionScript 3.0 Game Programming University

Here's the deal,
I am not a programmer...not even a great flash designer.
My previous knowledge of ActionScript was stop(); and gotoAndStop();
Don't know any other computer language.

I got this book and 2 weeks later I got my very own Flash game.
(two weeks of sitting with a yellow highlighter, and studying like I am back in collage).

I don't mean a customized version of one of the book examples, but a completely new game.
Gary helps you understand the logic behind games and game play, and how to break it down to tasks even a novice can accomplish.
With a bit of help from the flash help menu, you can explore even deeper and very quickly accomplish some amazing things.

If you are a quick learner and are not afraid to jump into the text, this book is for you. (it gets overwhelming for about 5 minutes before it all clicks in and you can see clearly the path between your vision and the execution).

WARNING: if you... Read more

Lets face it. There are a lot of Actionscript game books out there. This one is good because 1) It is entertaining and readable & 2) It's the first game book I have found that works for the new actionscript 3.0.

The code itself isn't exactly as object oriented as I would like, but thats true of all the other game books out there too. It does have enough object oriented content to show some amazingly different, and simple methods for making game characters, detecting collisions, and managing objects that are possible with actionscript 3.0. I value this book as a 'how to upgrade' from 2.0 to 3.0.

The games themselves are pretty good and there is a nice variety of game styles to appeal to a wide audience. For a basic game programming book, it omits or glosses over a few important topics such as caching vector objects as bitmaps, pseudo 3-D and optimization in general.

All in all, I suggest this book if you are upgrading skills to actionscript 3.0 or... Read more

I got interested in this book after discovering Gary Rosenzweig's AS3 tutorials on his Flash Game University Website. I was impressed by his ability to explain things clearly and simply. As other reviews have already stated "AS3 Game Programming University" is an excellent and highly readable book for learning AS3. In practice I find it much more helpful than Colin Moock's book "Essential ActionScript 3.0", which is a little too academic for me (although I'm glad I have it!). I'm also finding that code snippets in Gary's book are just as useful to me as those in Joey Lott's "ActionScript 3.0 Cookbook" (which covers more topics). It's helpful to me that Gary writes from a Flash authoring perspective rather than Flex. He doesn't hesitate to include timeline based assets and code when it makes sense to do so, rather than use the Flex style of generating everything in code.

The actual games are surprisingly varied and complete, but not so complex that they become difficult to... Read more