I am entirely new to learning programming, and my father recommended this site to me. I wanted to learn Actionscript 3.0 to possibly make my own flash game. There is alot of things I need help on because I am completely clueless. What kind of things should I download, do I have to pay for any of this?(I don't have money to spend, sadly.) Where can I find some good tutorials? Do I need any kind of client to play around with actionscript 3.0 and learn the language? Sorry if some of these questions don't really make sense, like I said, entirely new to the programming world, but I really want to make my own MMORPG,(completely unrealistic dream), and I want to start small, try making money off flash games, get some programming experience, any help anyone can provide would be great. All I ask is please do not tell me how unrealistic my dream of making an MMORPG is, just mentioned it to give a little insight as to why I wanted to learn programming. I know it's crazy, but that's why it's a dream, a goal I'm hoping to achieve one day.
I highly recommend downloading Flash Develop (requires windows) for development, its a free, and also IMO the best, AS3 editor. It'll get you up and running. If you are on a mac you might want to start with free trials of the Adobe code editors.
For resources & tutorials, the web is full of free stuff to get you started. A couple are 8bitrocket & gamedev.stackexchange The first thing to do is just pick a simple game (perhaps a true/false trivia game) And just build it. For getting started with general AS3 programming look here for a variety of docs & tutorials.
Good luck, and have fun!
Flex is a free product made by Adobe itself, and uses ActionScript 3.
Here's a link to a game dev site with tutorials on how to make a game for free using flex:
http://www.dreamincode.net/forums/topic/92205-making-flash-games-for-the-non-flash-developer-part-i/
http://www.dreamincode.net/forums/topic/92293-making-flash-games-for-the-non-flash-developer-part-ii/
http://www.dreamincode.net/forums/topic/92746-making-flash-games-for-the-non-flash-developer-part-iii/
http://www.dreamincode.net/forums/topic/92893-making-flash-games-for-the-non-flash-developer-part-iv/
If you read through the link article carefully, you can use eclipse (free) with a flex plugin, instead of having to use the flex builder.
Related
I am planning to develop a game with HTML5 Canvas. As handling canvas with native JavaScript is very difficult for game development, I am rather thinking to adopt any free and good client side library with good tutorial.
I have started my work with CAAT, but found it has lake of tutorials. I found Cocos2d-x HTML5, but again I faced the same issue.
Can anyone suggest me good library with good tutorial help?
P.S. :: My game contains complex physics operations, so I need to use Box2D. It will be helpful if library has integrated Box2D with it and having good tutorial of integration.
cgSceneGraph can be used with Box2D. We already did it for a basket ball game.
The example page does not include yet a Box2D example, but, as I am the designer of the framework, I can help you by sending you pieces of code.
Have a look at the cgSceneGraph examples page (http://gwennaelbuchet.github.com/cgSceneGraph/examples.html).
Anyway, feel free to ask for more examples or tutorials if you need. I'll be glad to help you.
Is there anywhere a GOOD tutorial page where I can learn ActionScript 3 ? Or can you help me out ?
I don't use a GRAPHICAL DESIGNER and I don't want to. All I need is code.
For example: things I need to learn quick:
Buttons and TextFields (basic form stuff)
Drawing canvas (like the html5 canvas)
Using FlashDevelop + Flash SDK, no plugins, no nothing. I just got it to work (compile, build and start a blank piece of nothing) and now I need to see what I can do with the ActionScript code.
Solved: Thanks to Dannyw the 2 items above could be solved directly (with minor additions)!
Julian's answer is very helpful too. Since I also wanted to browse through all standard classes in Flash:
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FlashPlatform/reference/actionscript/3/index.html
I have some tips for you to become a great flashdeveloper:
Drop everything you know, start fresh. You have strange assumptions of how the workflow should be. If you want to become professional, you should be open for other workflows.
If your coming from actionscript 2, Dont think as2 is like as3, so don't try to do the AS2 thing with AS3. Again, drop everything you know.
Read & Learn the Adobe LiveDocs
Learn how the display list works.
Learn AS3 coding standards, learn to write clean readable code, later try to learn design patterns.
Learn how to use common actionscript libraries, TweenLite, Gaia framework, RobotLegs, Temple Library, Pure MVC, Away3D, as3corelib etc.
Dont try to reinvent the wheel, dont create your own framework, because you think there is none like yours, most starters step into that trap.
Code never inside the Flash IDE actionspanel, there are really nice actionscript editors like FlashDevelop, FDT, FlashBuilder, IntelliJ. But dont lose yourself in code, there is a lot visual stuff that can faster be build using the Flash IDE, so find a nice workflow, instead of limiting yourself.
if you like video tutorials; videos on gotoAndLearn.com, most have common practices.
If you like to learn from opensource projects: find as3 projects on github.com or wonderfl, check out how they did it.
if you like to read blogs: feeds.adobe.com is full of nice relavant blogs. Learn from the best.
Last but not least: there is no ultimate guide to become a flashdevelop-code-only-flash-developer. Like sport, you have to train and just experiment right away. So be open, use google alot, try to challenge yourself with excercises and fun experiments.
For buttons:
http://www.how-to-code.com/as3-actionscript3/as3-buttons/as3-button.html
For Textfields:
http://www.republicofcode.com/tutorials/flash/as3text/
For Drawing:
http://www.republicofcode.com/tutorials/flash/as3drawvectors/
I learnt actionscript the same way you intend to, just by reading tutorials on the internet and picking bits up as I went along. I eventually bought myself a big old actionscript bible too (Essential Actionscript 3.0 by Colin Moock), but can safely say that the internet was my most valuable resource!
Have fun with the tutorials :)
Use this:
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FlashPlatform/reference/actionscript/3/index.html
BTW, You should almostly declare this website as holy when programming in AS3.
Using adobe flash or macromedia is recommended, follow these tutorials I learnt everything about flash from this website.
http://www.lynda.com/Flash-CS5-tutorials/flash-professional-cs5-essential-training/59964-2.html
I started learning flash and actionscript very recently and I am having fun with it. Now, here's something I wanna do with actionscript and since I am pretty new, I am not yet sure where to look for to learn what I want. I am specifically looking for image manipulation techniques that can be achieved with AS, for example, basic image manipulation like changing contrast/brightness, transform image etc. Can anyone guide me towards any relevant tutorial/resources that would be easy to understand for a beginner.
Check out these pages:
http://gotoandlearn.com/index.php?currentpage=5
http://gotoandlearn.com/index.php?currentpage=6
Watch the videos titled:
Introduction to Pixel Bender: Part 1
Introduction to Pixel Bender: Part 2
Animating Pixel Bender Filters
This will have you well on your way. The rest of the site is packed with hundreds of free videos + source files (in many cases) so you should be well on your way with this website. The tutorials on that website are actually my foundation/roots/beginnings in flash. Of course since then I've moved on to more advanced topics/theory etc but there is more than enough information to come out a real flash developer. :)
I would recommend buying the book Learning Actionscript 3.0. This is the book I started with and to be honest I never needed another book on Actionscript again. It covers pretty much everything, including image manipulation.
You can see and download the samples from the book here. For image manipulation, I would recommend looking at example of 'Drawing With Pixels'.
There are a lot of good books out there. Colin Moock's Essential Actionscript is by far my favorite book.
If your looking for some online help or tutorials heres a list of references:
A nice tutorial on active tuts for changing the brightness of an image.
Senocular is an AWESOME reference in anything flash. Here he talks about the Matrix class is basically any size manipulation to a movieclip of image.
Finally the Adobe live docs are the best place for you to learn the built in classes AS3 has to offer. the Movieclip.transform property is the basis for all aspects of image manipulation (hue,tint,etc).
Good luck in your learning, I remember how exciting it was for me!
I plan to start web app development. (Html, Css and Php) I want to make a mafia wars style game for the web. Static graphics game is played using buttons.
Its would really just be a database to store stats and a bunch of buttons.
Would this be too hard for a complete beginner to web development to take on? Would javascript even be necessary for this?
Yes. It would be too hard for a COMPLETE beginner to take on. Where complete beginner = just learning to program. If you have some other background (General CS knowledge, Database experience) then you could probably do it.
JavaScript doesn't sound necessary for what you are describing.
I would suggest going through a couple tutorials on web application development so that you understand the basic concepts, and then decide whether you know enough to start building your game app. Here are a couple tutorials for various development environments:
http://webproject.scottgu.com/CSharp/HelloWorld/HelloWorld.aspx
http://www.eclipse.org/webtools/community/tutorials/BuildJ2EEWebApp/BuildJ2EEWebApp.html
http://download-llnw.oracle.com/javaee/1.4/tutorial/doc/WebApp.html
You should probably at least read through some of those to get an idea of what you should know.
Would this be too hard for a complete
beginner to take on?
I don't think so. The game hasn't been developed by a single developer, there is a team of developers behind it. That shouldn't be an issue anyway, however, it won't be that easy for a beginner to take on such website initially unless you have good understanding of various concepts including strong knowledge of the main language, javascript, html, etc.
Would java script even be necessary
for this?
Possibly. Facebook has its own implementation of javascript named FBJS (Facebook JavaScript), it is more or less similar to vanilla javascript. At some stage or the other, javascript is needed to build some dynamic pages and there are certain facebook-related stuff you will need to use javascript (FBJS) for.
JavaScript. Yes. However, it can be done without but it may hurt the game in the long run.
A project for a beginning? It depends how focus the programmer is. If you are using this project to learn, certainly a good place to start. However, if it is for long run serious project, I would reconsider after learning some of the basic of programming.
If you love the idea you have and want to run with it, you will learn a ton in the process. Just don't expect to have a working product in a week. Don't let feature-creep hit too hard either. Odds are you'll end up re-writing it once you have an idea of how the process goes over all. I did something similar a few years back over the course of a month and I was pretty pleased with everything I learned.
You can do it, with patience.
HI All,
I am new to the world of Animation in iPhone, I have a team which has experience of developing CMS apps with little bit of animation in it. I would would like to develop an application like...
link text
I have limitations to put another hyperlink over here but you can search with "Alex Bop Bag" in youtube for other video.
It would be a great help if anybody can suggest how much time i much time it would take for a person who is new to animation world but good in iPhone development.
your feedback would be helpful.
Thanks.
Have you heard the phrase "How long is a piece of string?" before?
There's really so many factors here, how many developers, how well they work as a team, experience and skill levels, project complexity, possible issues/time sinks, project management skills, etc.
It's so dynamic, unless you have an idea from previous attempts at tasks with similar complexity it's very hard to say.
So I guess the answer is the standard "It depends". I would suggest trying something small to get an idea for how well your team performs and to get an idea of what to expect with a more complex project.