Flash games

I’m still plugging away with the games.  I’ve taken a detour to learn how to create games with Flash.  I’m reading ActionScript 3.0 Game Programming University by Gary Rosenzweig.  I just created my first game – a memory/matching game – just like the first game in my other game programming book.  My biggest issue with Flash games has been learning the Flash tool and understanding how what I create in Flash relates to what I program in ActionScript.  For example, you can create a Symbol/Movie Clip in Flash which you can then use in your ActionScript.  Sometimes I can get the Movie Clip setup correctly and then be able to do something with it in my ActionScript.  Then sometimes I can’t, and I’m not sure what I have or haven’t done.  Since I’ve been able to successfully create a game, I’m assuming with time the relationships will all become clear.

My first game!

Well, it’s actually an example from the game programming book I’m working through, but I made a lot of changes to it to really dig into the programming.  So it’s “my first game for which I’ve ever done some programming.”  That works.  And there were two games, really: a memory game, and a two player motorcycle driving game.  There were a number of other examples that were more animations than games that I made a lot of changes to, also.

What I’ve learned so far is that the math, physics, and graphics programming involved in game programming is much more accessible than I thought it would be.  I’m certain it gets much more complicated than what’s in the toy programs I’m working on, but there is a lot you can do with very, very basic geometry, algebra, and physical laws with which anyone who graduated from high school should be familiar.

It’s a lot of fun to play your own games.  I’m addicted to my memory game.

Everyday Shooter is great.  Buy it and play it.  Now.  I have learned this about Everyday Shooter: it is not really about shooting.

More research

Another day doing “research.”  Besides not having any free time whatsoever, the main reason I haven’t played video games in years is that there haven’t been any games that I’ve been interested in playing.  I don’t like first person shooters or role playing games.  I don’t like sports games.  (In general – there are certainly exceptions to those rules.)  What I have become interested in are games with experimental game play.

So today I played Crayon Physics, Everyday Shooter (from Steam), and Flow.  Crayon Physics belongs to the game genre I refer to as “playing around with physics.”  I really like those games, but the ones I have played have been more toys than games.  So they’re interesting for about 20-30 minutes.  There are some really interesting ideas in Flow about how the player creates their experience, but it didn’t really suck me in.  It was very soothing, which is different and nice.  But I ended up playing Everyday Shooter for most of the afternoon.  Very classic shooter, but the interplay between visuals and audio was very cool, almost hallucinogenic.  I haven’t made it past the second level yet.

Last week I got Portal from Steam and have been playing that a lot.  Wow.  What an amazing game.  Puzzle games are my favorite, and the Portal gun is such a great twist.  The characterization of the narrator is hilarious.  Portal is fully a first person shooter, so I’ve just contradicted myself, but it’s not a war, shoot-em-up, kill-em-all, everyone must die, kill, kill, kill game.  I hate to be such a wimp about subject matter, but I just don’t enjoy those kinds of games At All.  I’ve thoroughly enjoyed House of the Dead in the arcade, but that is cartoonish.  I like cartoonish violence.

Spore is on the way from Amazon!

Playing games

My husband corrected me: I have certainly had times in my life when I have played games, and I was good at them, too.  There was one winter break from school I spent entirely playing Donkey Kong Country on the Super Nintendo.  I finished it.  I played plenty of Atari games for large stretches of time when I was growing up.  

We have one of those joysticks you plug into the tv that has Mappy, Galaga, Ms. Pac-Man, and Pole Position.  We pulled it out last night to do some “research.” I’ve already gained a lot more understanding and appreciation for games from what little I’ve learned from my game programming book.  Those classic games have great game play because they didn’t have good graphics to rely on.  They *had* to have good game play.

I’ve been plowing through my game book.  This is so much fun.  Last year I learned Lisp, Flex, and Ruby/Rails.  All of them were interesting in their own ways, but none of them got me as jazzed as game programming.

Learning game development

It seems that every geeky programmer goes through a stage where they learn game programming.  For one reason or another – most likely that I have never in my life had very much free time for playing games – I never went through that stage.  Suddenly, many years post-adolescence, I have gotten the bug.

We’re in between projects right now, so I got the book Beginning Game Programming by Michael Morrison and am working my way through it.  It’s a very user friendly book if you are already familiar with C++ development.  It works through the basics of game programming using Win32 APIs as opposed to something like DirectX.  This has been really helpful for me because it is giving me a really good grasp of the fundamentals.  When I’m done with this, then I can move on to another book that uses DirectX (or something else).

Graphics programming is something else I’ve never taken an interest in, and I’m really having my eyes opened there.  What was I so turned off by?  It is really fun!  The concepts are really simple, and you get immediate, interesting feedback with having things happen on the screen.

Next week I’m going to start looking into Flash game development for some comparison/contrast.

Ultimately, I’d really like to make games for OS X.  Flash games will probably be it for now.

I’m going to buy Spore when it comes out to play on my Mac.