Adobe® Flash® CS4 Professional Bible

Chapter 31. Creating a Game in Flash

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Thinking about game-plan logic

• Using a document class

• Using the break and return functions

• Asking questions with conditionals

• Using arrays

• Writing ActionScript 3.0 code with an event model

• Creating text fields dynamically

• Creating Sprites dynamically

• Using the Timer class

Creating a game requires much more than programming. It is a combination of many skills — game design, interaction design, visual and sound design, and scripting — that brings it all together. These skills also represent the different phases of game design and are covered in this chapter. You must devote your attention to all these aspects of design to produce a successful game.

To illustrate the different aspects of game design, we deconstruct a simple game, the universally known Hangman.

Note

Before reading through this chapter, copy the ch31 folder on the CD-ROM onto your hard drive. Double-click the hangman.html file located inside of the copied folder to play the game in a browser and become acquainted with our project. The functionality of the game is broken down into three custom classes: GameModel, GameView, and GameController. You learn about the purpose of each class file as you proceed with this chapter.

The Game Plan: Four Phases of Game Design

Game development includes the four phases we introduced earlier: game design, interaction design, visual and sound design, and scripting. The following sections discuss those phases in detail.

Note

Many thanks to Jonathan Brzyski ...