Flash Game University
By Gary Rosenzweig
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Podcast Description
Gary Rosenzweig talks about Flash game development with audio and video tutorials and information.
| Name | Description | Released | Price | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | VideoCatching Game Part 2 | Gary Rosenzweig builds a catching game in Flash ActionScript 3.0. In this part, you learn how to have a bucket move with the cursor at the bottom of the screen and catch objects. Some are good and some are bad, and the score changes based on what type of object is caught. You can find full resolution video and more podcasts at FlashGameU.com. View video at Blip.TV. Download QuickTime Movie. Subscribe via iTunes. Download the source code (final game, parts 1 and 2). | 3/12/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
| 2 | VideoCatching Game Part 1 | Gary Rosenzweig builds a catching game in Flash ActionScript 3.0. In this part, you learn how to have objects fall from the top of the screen, taken from various movie clips in the library using arrays of strings to determine which movie clip is created and dropped. View video at Blip.TV. Download QuickTime Movie. Subscribe via iTunes. Download the source code (final game, parts 1 and 2). | 3/4/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
| 3 | VideoCommunication Between Movie Clips | Gary Rosenzweig looks at ways movie clips can communicate with each other in Flash ActionScript 3.0. View video at Blip.TV. Download QuickTime Movie. Subscribe via iTunes. | 12/23/08 | Free | View In iTunes |
| 4 | VideoUnderstanding the Display List | Gary Rosenzweig talks about display lists and how you can manipulate them to move display elements ahead or behind others. View video at Blip.TV. Download QuickTime Movie. Download the source file. Subscribe via iTunes. | 10/21/08 | Free | View In iTunes |
| 5 | VideoDynamic Filter Effects | Gary Rosenzweig shows you how to apply dynamic filter effects to a movie clip, such as glows, drop shadows and bevels. You can find the source files, full resolution video, and more podcasts at FlashGameU.com. View video at Blip.TV. Download QuickTime Movie. Download the source file. Subscribe via iTunes. | 9/3/08 | Free | View In iTunes |
| 6 | VideoPausing and Resuming Sound | Gary Rosenzweig, author of ActionScript 3.0 Game Programming University, shows you how to pause a sound in AS3 by recording the position of the sound before stopping it, then resuming the sound at that same position. View video at Blip.TV. Download QuickTime Movie. Download the source file. Subscribe via iTunes. | 8/13/08 | Free | View In iTunes |
| 7 | VideoGame Inventory System | Gary Rosenzweig looks at a basic game inventory system created with Flash ActionScript 3. Using an Inventory object, you can allow the player to add items to their game inventory. Then you can let them click on the items to use them, or test the inventory contents to allow them to complete tasks in the game. View video at Blip.TV. Download QuickTime Movie. Download the source file. Subscribe via iTunes. | 7/15/08 | Free | View In iTunes |
| 8 | VideoSimple Particle System | Gary Rosenzweig, author of ActionScript 3.0 Game Programming University, shows you how to create a very simple particle system using a class and by adding and removing movie clips from the display list. View video in your browser. Download QuickTime Movie. Download the source file. Subscribe via iTunes. | 6/12/08 | Free | View In iTunes |
| 9 | VideoContinuous Animation | Gary Rosenzweig, author of ActionScript 3.0 Game Programming University, answers a question in this podcast of how to maintain continuous animation while receiving user input. The character on the screen continues to follow a walk animation even while the player triggers the animation over and over. View video in your browser. Download QuickTime Movie. Download the source file. Subscribe via iTunes. | 5/29/08 | Free | View In iTunes |
| 10 | VideoExternal Constants From an XML File | Gary Rosenzweig, author of ActionScript 3.0 Game Programming University, shows you how to read in a small XML file containing some constant variable values. View video in your browser. Download QuickTime Movie. Download the source file. Subscribe via iTunes. | 5/13/08 | Free | View In iTunes |
| 11 | VideoCountdown Clock | Gary Rosenzweig from FlashGameU.com shows you how to build a simple clock to count down time until the end of a game. View video in your browser. Download QuickTime Movie. Download the source file. Subscribe via iTunes. | 4/3/08 | Free | View In iTunes |
| 12 | VideoMouse Fade and Base Classes | Gary Rosenzweig from FlashGameU.com shows you how to make a movie clip fade away according to the distance to the cursor location. He uses a Base Class to assign this same script to two different movie clips. View video in your browser. Download QuickTime Movie. Download the source file. Subscribe via iTunes. | 2/21/08 | Free | View In iTunes |
| 13 | VideoCreating a Snake Game, Part 2 | In this mini-chapter two-part episode, Gary Rosenzweig completes a snake game in ActionScript 3. View video in your browser. Download QuickTime Movie. Download the source file. Subscribe via iTunes. | 1/14/08 | Free | View In iTunes |
| 14 | VideoCreating a Snake Game, Part 1 | In this mini-chapter two-part episode, Gary Rosenzweig starts building a snake game in ActionScript 3. View video in your browser. Download QuickTime Movie. Download the source file. Subscribe via iTunes. | 1/11/08 | Free | View In iTunes |
| 15 | VideoPlaying Multiple Flash Movies Inside a Single Flash Application | Gary Rosenzweig takes a look at how to put two Flash games together, inside of a single Flash movie. The trick is to use the Loader object. View video in your browser. Download QuickTime Movie. Download the source file. Subscribe via iTunes. | 12/7/07 | Free | View In iTunes |
| 16 | VideoPlaying a Song With a Toggle Button | Steve wrote in about the Toggle Button episode. Hi Gary, I'd followed your AS3 toggle button tutorial to Play/Pause a song. 1. What can I do to allow the song to be played again by clicking the toggle button? 2. What is needed to make the toggle button to take on the "play" state when the song has finished on its own? Expanding on the earlier tutorial about creating a Toggle Button, here's how to link the toggle button to a piece of music in the library and to have the toggle button react properly when the song is done. View video in your browser. Download QuickTime Movie. Download the source file. Subscribe via iTunes. | 11/16/07 | Free | View In iTunes |
| 17 | VideoShuffling Arrays | This tutorial shows you how to create an array with a random arrangement of items, like a shuffled deck of cards, or a list of sounds to be played in a random order. View video in your browser. Download QuickTime Movie. Subscribe via iTunes. | 11/6/07 | Free | View In iTunes |
| 18 | VideoMatching Game with Card Pairs | This tutorial shows you how to alter the matching game in the book ActionScript 3.0 Game Programming University to use pairs of cards instead of identical cards. View video in your browser. Download QuickTime Movie. Download the source files. Subscribe via iTunes. | 10/10/07 | Free | View In iTunes |
| 19 | VideoDynamic Buttons | How to create simple dynamic buttons that allow you to create identical buttons with different labels. The buttons also behave like buttons, with rollover and down states. View video in your browser. Download QuickTime Movie. Download the source files. Subscribe via iTunes. | 10/9/07 | Free | View In iTunes |
| 20 | VideoSaving Local Data | How to use the SharedObject to save bits of data to the local hard drive for use at another time. View video in your browser. Download QuickTime Movie. Subscribe via iTunes. | 9/24/07 | Free | View In iTunes |
| 21 | VideoPhysics in Animation | A look at simple animation in ActionScript 3.0 that uses physics and gravity. View video in your browser. Download QuickTime Movie. Subscribe via iTunes. | 9/14/07 | Free | View In iTunes |
| 22 | VideoCollision Detection | Take a look at the two main collision detection functions in Flash AS3 and how they work. View video in your browser. Download QuickTime Movie. Subscribe via iTunes. | 9/11/07 | Free | View In iTunes |
| 23 | VideoMatching Game | This video tutorial shows you the AS3 Matching Game from the ActionScript 3.0 Game Programming University book, and walks you through the steps of creating the basic game. View video in your browser. Download QuickTime Movie. Subscribe via iTunes. | 9/5/07 | Free | View In iTunes |
| 24 | VideoHow to Make an AS3 Toggle Button | Video tutorial about how ot make a simple toggle button in ActionScript 3 and Flash CS 3. View video in your browser. Download QuickTime Movie. Subscribe via iTunes. | 8/27/07 | Free | View In iTunes |
| 25 | VideoPlaying Sounds in AS3 | This video tutorial show syou two ways to play sounds with ActionScript 3.0 in Flash 9. View video in your browser. Download QuickTime Movie. Subscribe via iTunes. | 8/15/07 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Podcast 4: ActionScript 3.0 | What makes ActionScript 3.0 so good for Flash game development? List to the Podcast. Subscribe via iTunes. Transcript: G: Hi and welcome to the Flash Game University podcast, http://flashgameu.com. I'm Gary Rosenzweig and with me is William Follett. W: Hello. G: Hi and in this episode I wanted to take the time to talk about ActionScript 3 which is really what it's all about. The book ActionScript 3.0 Game Programming University, as the title suggests, is about ActionScript 3. The site, even though there's no problem going to the forums and talking about earlier versions of ActionScript, it's really about game programming and ActionScript 3.0 means game programming, it really does. W: That's right. G: That's one of things that makes me so excited about it, it's ten to a hundred to even a thousand times faster than earlier versions of ActionScript. Which is important. I mean you think in a game, an example, you want to have a space rocks type of game, you have things floating around, you can have sixteen different rocks floating around and your ship and you're firing bullets, a lot of collision detection. You've got ten little laser blasts floating around in space, you've got sixteen rocks, you've got you're ship. You have to detect everything is colliding with everything else. It's a big loop, big test, big mathematical test being done and earlier versions of ActionScript that would take awhile. In ActionScript 3 it just happens, so fast. W: Okay, alright, a pool game. G: Well, ah, a pool game. W: Would that be faster? G: Yes. Well and actually... W: 'Cause your ball hits the other balls... G: Oh my. W: And each ball has to compute. G: It goes exponential, especially when you're breaking. So, there's things like that, that are just because of the brute force in ActionScript 3. The way it does it, is there's a new engine, there's actually two engines in modern Flash. You download Flash 9 player. There's one engine that interprets earlier ActionScript, ActionScript 1 and 2, and an engine that interprets ActionScript 3. The engine that interprets ActionScript 3 is way faster than the other one. If you stick to ActionScript 3 you can do all these calculations way faster. One of the ways it's faster is there's something in ActionScript 3 called strict typing. W: Strict typing. G: Strict typing, yes. What this means is you create a variable, and you say what that variable is going to hold. In earlier versions of ActionScript, even though ActionScript 2 allowed you to do typing, it wasn't strict typing. You could basically have a variable say, variable A. Variable A could be a string, a bunch of characters, it could be an array, it could be a number, it could be all sorts of stuff. In ActionScript 3 you might say it's an integer and that's all it's ever going to be. W: So A will always be an integer? G: Yeah and the speed is incredible. So, for instance, the three type of numbers are number, which is the equivalent to like a floating point value, you know something like 7.839 or whatever. W: Yeah. G: There's integer, which is you know a number like 1 or -5, and then there's even one called unsign integer, uint, which is just zero and up. W: Okay. G: The difference between number, handling a number, a number has got to be this thing, it's got to hold like decimal places, it's this complex construct and if you're going to do something like loop a million times and you're going to use this complex construct to represent this number you're looping, you know, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, it's a lot more memory access, a lot more calculation each time to compare that number and see if, 'Is it equal to three?' Well, I don't know, I have to use this weird construct to determine if it's equal. But if you say it's an integer, it's a very simple little construct, a tiny little thing represented almost by bare bits in the computer. You can compare it, you can change it very easily. So, you can do like a loop using numbers, and then you can do the loop using i | 8/10/07 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Podcast 3: Gary Rosenzweig Bio | Who is Gary Rosenzweig and why did he write ActionScript 3.0 Game Programming University? Listen to the Podcast. Subscribe via iTunes. Transcript G: Hi and welcome to the Flash Game University Podcast episode 3 from http://flashgameu.com. I'm Gary Rosenzweig and with me is William Follett. W: Hello. G: In this episode we're going to... W: We're going to talk about Gary. G: Well, yeah. W: Who is this guy? G: Well, I just want to give a bio since I'm the author of the book and the Dean of Flash Game University. W: That's right. G: I wanted to go into my history. You know, something for people our age Will, especially people into computers, they always like to talk about 'my first computer,' back, I used to use stone tablets with binary bits in them and tubes. W: Yes. G: My story starts with elementary school using a PDP 11 terminal. W: Oh my god. G: Which was like a keyboard with like a printer. There wasn't even a screen. W: Yeah. G: That's my first program that I typed in, but I can't claim to have written it, because I typed in like a Moonlander like thing that you would do. So then it wasn't until I got, just before I turned thirteen, that I got a TRS 80 model 3. W: In your own house. G: I kept begging, begging my parents, my relatives, 'I need a computer, I want a computer.' I remember it was like a thousand dollars for this monochromatic tape drive machine that had Basic built in. But within days I was actually through the 'How To Program In Basic' book and actually making games. W: That's right and you've talked a lot about how you'd sit down at that thing and they had magazines or something that you could copy games from. G: Yes. Yeah, the TRS 80 magazines and you could copy games and you could modify them, and then I actually sent a few into those, never had one published, but I sent some in. My parents, quite wisely, if I wanted to stay up all night programming on this thing they let me. I think they kind of realized that while other kids were out getting in trouble he's sitting, learning more computer skills, 'Yeah, he can stay up as late as he wants.' So, thanks mom and dad. W: You were lucky. G: I was very lucky. W: My parents weren't that caring. G: I went from there. I did a lot of game programming in Basic, and then I started to experiment with other machines because about that time the bottom dropped out of the personal computer market and you could pick up like Commodore 64's and Timex Sinclair's and all that like cheap and at flea markets and stuff. W: Yeah. G: So we started to collect these things at our house and I started to like, like I actually made a game for the Timex Sinclair which had 1K of memory. W: Oh my god. Huge! G: But it was fun to actually try to work within those constraints. But then in high school I had Apple II's and I started to do a lot of programming on Apple II's and simulation stuff because I was part of this special group, Northeast High School in Philadelphia, that did space shuttle simulations, a student club kind of weird thing. I won't go into that. But I was head of the computer group and I did lots of space shuttle simulation type stuff on Apple II's. And then I went to college at Drexel University for computer science. I was one of those rare people who knew pretty much from the time I was in ninth grade that I wanted to go to college for computer science. W: Yeah. G: And then I went to college for computer science and then I got my degree in computer science. There was no changing majors, no switching. I was lucky though, Drexel University had one of the first accredited computer science programs. I started in '87 in college and now, of course, there's hundreds and hundreds of colleges across the United States have accredited computer science programs and I can still recognize their curriculum. I'm actually on the advisory board for one here in Denver, and the curriculum is almost the same like with the same like, 'this is how you learn how to program.' And Drexel did this r | 8/7/07 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Podcast 2: About the Book | Learn about the book ActionScript 3.0 Game Programming University. Listen to the Podcast. Subscribe via iTunes. Transcript: G: Hi, and welcome to the Flash Game University Podcast episode number 2. W: Or welcome back if you've just listened to our first one. G: This is...we're at http://flashgameu.com. I'm Gary Rosenzweig and with me is William Follett. W: Hey guys. G: In this episode I want to talk specifically about the book. The book is ActionScript 3.0 Game Programming University by Gary Rosenzweig. Hey, that's me. W: Some illustrations by Will Follett. G: Yes, and the front cover character and everything like that... W: By Will Follett. G: By Will Follett. So, I wanted to talk about the book and talk about what it's about. It comes out end of August, hopefully, according to Amazon. It's all done now at this point we're recording this the very last day of July. W: And you can probably pre-order it. G: You can definitely pre-order it, and I have a link at the website. You can even preview the book at this thing called IT Safari which I think I have a link to in one of my blog posts. But, no point in doing that now and paying all the extra money now because by the time you hear this it will be really close for the book to come out. So the book is about ActionScript 3 game programming. I'm really excited about ActionScript 3 because this is not...it's almost misleading to say well there's ActionScript and there's ActionScript 2 and there's ActionScript 3 and they're just like iterations of the same thing. ActionScript 3 is almost a totally different thing than previous versions of ActionScript. W: Really? G: Yes, there's an engine in Flash that interprets the commands and in Flash 8 and earlier it interpreted all these ActionScript commands and everything and it was very slow which made it hard to make games. W: It wasn't zippy at all. G: No. You couldn't program things like path finding and checking lots of collisions and all this stuff, because it was just too slow and it was a problem with Flash. ActionScript 3 is a completely new engine for doing this and it is way faster. For a lot of tasks, a level of magnitude faster, maybe two levels of magnitude, maybe a hundred times faster. W: Really? G: Yes, so there's amazing things you can do. It got me very excited about Flash's game development platform again. I liked it at first and of course I wrote two books on Flash programming before, but this time boy you can just do some amazing things. It's not that you couldn't do some things before, but before you had to optimize. You would like write a game and it would work and then you would have to spend like twice that amount of time optimizing it until it would actually work on most computers. ActionScript 3 you can actually just program it and it works and it's done. W: And it works fast. G: And it works fast, like the way you should program it. W: You can see the difference between similar games. G: Oh, huge difference. W: Earlier platform games were slow. G: I tried to make a platform game in Flash and it's kind of slow and it was hard. In ActionScript 3 you can do all of the calculations and everything so much faster. W: This new one is just right on. G: So, I was excited about that. I've decided to come out of kind of retirement. For the last four years I've been saying I've retired from book writing. But, I got so excited about ActionScript 3 and I said boy there really needs to be a book on this soon and I think I'm going to do it, why not? I wrote a new one. I've written...the books in the past they were Flash 5 ActionScript For Fun and Games, and then the sequel Flash MX ActionScript For Fun and Games. This is not a continuation of that series. W: It's a whole new series. G: It's a whole new series, even though some of the games, of course, I mean you're going to do a book on game programming and you're going to include like a matching game and there's a matching game in those two books and there's a matching game in | 8/3/07 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Podcast 1: Introduction | Gary Rosenzweig and William Follet introduce the FlashGameU.com Web site and podcast. Listen to the podcast. Subscribe via iTunes. Transcript: G: Hi and welcome to the first podcast of Flash Game University, http://flashgameu.com. I'm Gary Rosenzweig and with me here is William Follett. W: Hello. G: We're going to start off by doing a short series of audio podcasts about http://flashgameu.com, about the book, ActionScript 3.0 Game Programming University by me. W: And I did the artwork. G: And Will did a lot of the illustrations. We'll start with, I want to do a series here, I want to talk about the website, and then in future episodes talk about the book, give a little background about myself, and also talk about ActionScript 3, especially as a game development platform. So, in this episode I really just want to talk about the website. W: Okay. G: It's http://flashgameu.com. W: That's right. G: It's a place for Flash game developers to come. W: To learn. I mean this is a place of learning. G: It is an institution, yes. Let's see, we've got a lot of stuff. There's forums, there's a blog and everything. In addition to being this general community, it really starts out as a place about the book, which should be out at the end of August (2007). W: That's right. It's full of tutorials. G: Yeah. W: How to make the games and the concepts behind them. G: Right. It's an ActionScript 3.0 game programming book. W: Yeah. G: From Cue and there's links on the site already to pre-order it. I think August 28th is what http://amazon.com says, when they'll have it. W: After that, you can look for it in a store near you. G: Right. W: I usually see your books in Barnes & Noble. G: Yeah. W: That's where I shop for books. G: Sure. Yeah, I know I've seen them in Barnes & Noble, Borders, independent stores. W: Anywhere. G: They're mass distributed through Pearson, which owns Cue. W: They're everywhere. G: Right. W: I imagine you'll get a load of them just for your own bookshelf. G: No, they only send you ten. W: Only ten? Okay. G: Yeah, but well ten, but you know then all of these people, you've got to give some to your parents, and then you give some to like, you know and you'll get one because you did the illustrations. W: Oh, will you sign it for me? G: Oh sure. W: And then I'll sign it for me too. G: Sure. So, it's about that time, I'm going to talk about in the next episode talk about the book and go into detail about all of the different things, how the chapters work, and what's in the book exactly. W: Okay. G: So there's stuff, so you can find the source files, for instance, for the book, obviously, the source code files, .fla's and .as files. And they'll be on the website, they already are on the website actually. W: So you can see step by step? G: Well yeah. You don't have to type in all the code yourself. W: Oh, you mean copy and paste? G: Yeah, no type. Well no, you can actually open the files in Flash 9. W: Oh, of course. G: In Flash CS3. In addition to having that stuff about the book, and also be a section for like errata and stuff like that, like when there's something I want to point out in a chapter, or add to a chapter, or correct, because these books get published quite quickly. W: There might be a better way of doing it. G: There might be a semicolon when there should be a colon. You know, you never know. W: No, no, just a better way of doing it. G: A better way of doing it. So, there's that. There's also a blog on the site. So, here's what I've got in the past, you know I've written quite a few books and I want to talk about that in episode 3 about the books I've written. So, I get a lot of email from people, you know. W: Probably a lot of questions. G: Questions about things in the book, 'How do I do this?' 'I don't understand this, what you're saying here' or whatever. And in the past I've answered them just by responding to that person. That's not very web 2.0. W: No, it's not. G: There's no community there, right? It's one t | 7/31/07 | Free | View In iTunes |
| Total: 29 Episodes |
Customer Reviews
Great, to the point, and extremely helpful.
Gary is hands down the best for helping you get aquainted with AS3 and OOP practices especially those making the difficult transition from AS2.
Focused, Quick, and to the Point
Too many training video authors talk slowly and in an NPR-like monotone. Not Gary! He's energized and never boring. His 'casts are quick and focused on the issue at hand without any fluff. I just got his book today and it seems quite good as well. There are a few minor glitches in the recordings of some of his video's but other than that they are really excellent.
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