If you want to take your Flash Professional 8 skills to a new level while learning how to produce games that rival anything available on the web, this is the book for you. Macromedia Flash Professional 8 Game Development is written by a professional game developer. Using the power of Flash and the most recent advancements in ActionScript, the book progresses through the entire development process to teach programmers and Web developers how to create professional quality games quickly. It teaches techniques for producing fast 3D effects that can be used with ?cheat? techniques to produce powerful, high-performance results. It details the actual science of game development, including design, character development, the physics and motion of a game, and audio issues. And in this new edition, all of the latest features of Flash Professional 8 are covered, including the new sound channels, bitmap caching, texture pages, and more. The book covers many advanced topics in a simple, easy to understand way. It emphasizes the incredible power of the new BitmapData class and teaches how it can be used to take the performance of Flash games to a whole new level. It has never been easier to get right down to the pixel level and manipulate things at blazing speeds, making previously impossible games a breeze to make. So get to your computer, insert the CD-ROM, and prepare to begin your journey into the world of Flash Professional 8 game development.

Written by a professional game developer, this book details the actual science of game development, including design, story character development, the physics and motion of a game, and audio issues. In this new edition, all of the latest features of Flash Professional 8 are covered, including the new sound channels, bitmap caching, texture pages, and more. There is also new coverage of how to add effects to games, including motion blur and depth blur, flow effects, drop shadow, bevel with highlights, and video with alpha. Through the book a variety of games are created using the power of Flash and the most recent advancements in ActionScript. Beginning with the basics of design, the book progresses through the entire process to teach programmers and Web developers how to create professional quality games quickly. With a basic knowledge of Flash and the techniques provided here, developers will be able to enhance their productivity and produce high quality games that make a real impact.

Must buy for Flash game developers! Maybe...
I enjoyed reading this book a lot compared to the other Flash books I’ve read. If you are trying to make Flash games and don’t know where to start this might be the book you should buy! :)

Learned a lot...and had fun while doing so
I bought this book hoping to take steps from mid-level ActionScripter to a more advanced coder. In a world of how-to books that just regurgitate the same ol’ techniques this one not only met, but it exceeded my expectations. I was hoping to improve my techniques for interactivity and thought a book on ActionScript gaming would be the quickest, most thorough and most fun way to do it and this book came through big time. Great examples, and good explanations of every step taken. Sometimes I needed more of an explanation but I think that’s a trade-off of having more examples. So not really a complaint since I can find explanations online, but good examples are far more scarce. An absolute must-have...as someone said even if you are not into gaming. I’ll also add that its still a must-have despite ActionScript 3 being out...but hopefully they put out a new edition covering that.

To respond to the negative reviews: 1. Want to see classes and OOP...that would be an issue if this book claimed to be an AS3 book, but considering it is AS2, when OOP and classes weren’t as en vogue, I don’t think that is a valid complaint. 99% of Flash CS2 books hardly mentioned classes and didnt code that way. 2. Bad habits/naming conventions...I didn’t think so but I think that is a preference and if you don’t like his "style" no one is forcing you to continue coding that way after you finish the book. Every author has their own style, and I didn’t think his coding broke any conventions. 3. Nothing you can’t learn yourself...just not true. I’ve found a lot of great stuff online, but it was a big help and hugely time-saving to have this wealth of info in one place AND with great instruction...and a bonus general ActionScript chapter that is better than many Flash books out there!

Good for the intermediate Flash programmer
The book provides several examples that progress the reader through the programming of gradually more complex games. The reader should have a basic knowledge of Flash and Actionscript, as the book brushes over beginner-level concepts. At the time, the book is fairly up to date, however there is supposedly quite a jump between Flash 8 and Flash CS3, which uses Actionscript 3.0. Nonetheless, the concepts taught in the book are universally applicable regardless of what Flash version you are using. The inclusion of a CD-ROM is an added bonus and a must with this kind of book.

Great Book
I found the book easy to read and very practical. The use of examples to explain things is great. And of course, examples that do work is great also!!!

It’s the right book for those that already know something about flash and actionscript (doesn’t need to be an expert), and want to learn to develop some games in flash, and perhaps aplly those technics on other apllications.

The book is great fun!!!

very limited discussion of incorporating physics
As a physicist, I looked at the chapter on "Physics for Games". It’s very introductory Newtonian mechanics. Applying these in time-discrete form for moving objects in the game. Gravity is considered for vertical motion, and wind is incorporated to affect horizontal motion. Freshman level stuff. If you are developing a game where you need to seriously incorporate physics, there are entire books devoted to it, like Physics for Game Developers.

Though to be fair, the book is about learning Flash and its effects. Other chapters offer code fragments. Of necessity, these are all elementary, from a programming complexity standpoint. But they help explain how to apply Flash.

The most intricate part of the book seems to be when you model a 3d world. Nice rendering examples. Doesn’t go very deeply here. Flash almost certainly has more advanced functionality.

In-Depth game Development!
I’ve bought this book with the purpose of starting to make flash games. Well, i couldn’t have chosen a better way! The book is very easy to read and understand and the the examples are incredible. It explores the appropriate tools to create games like the BitmapData while giving other tools an explanation too. 5 stars!

Specifics for beginners, bad habits for mid-levels
If you’ve worked with strongly type languages like Java/C++/etc then this book might make you cringe a bit. First, the code is very terse with clever tricks to shorten the number of lines. Eventually it makes sense but methods like makeFader() don’t really make a fader, they do other things like remove a game object from the scene.

So along with softreferences ( for i to 10, make a variable box_i=i ) - ew, and bad naming conventions, it plays out more like an Oreilly Cookbook that encourages bad habits. Granted, I ordered it and I’ll keep it as a book full of complete examples. But I think any of the examples that I copy/type/study, I’ll refactor later to be more clear and well-coded.

It’s a fast ramp-up to ActionScript 2.0. If you’re looking for smarter and more mid-level code then maybe wait for a book on AS3.0 that is more class oriented and less procedural like this book. Else, if you just want to see end-to-end examples as fast as possible the author does a good job of explaining code blocks as he goes even if he’s encouraging bad habits.

Outdated approach
This book has some clever code samples, but the structure of the code is outdated. I would prefer to have seen a class-based, object oriented approach to game development. This would lead to a more flexible and re-usable code library.

Nothing you cant do it yourself
If you are thinking in buying this book, it’s probably that you already know some actionscript. Well, in this book, there is nothing that you cant imagine yourself. Plus there is nothing about oop, and please think.. what kind of game can you make without oop?. I think this book is a joke.

Great Resource
This book is fantastic for those hardcore Flash coders out there (even if you aren’t into game coding). Just the section on the optimization alone is almost worth the buy. Lots of useful nuggets of info in here. Amazon, is of course where you want to buy this, because of the low, low price.

Indispensable for game developers
Glen Rhodes’ Macromedia Flash Professional 8 Game Development is for those who have the basics down and want to learn to produce professional-quality games. The latest enhancements to Flash are taught to programmers and web developers who want to get up and running quickly. From producing fast 3D effects to the hidden powers of Flash Pro 8, this book provides methods for understanding advanced techniques and getting up to speed: indispensable for game developers.

Window into Flash game creation
With Flash 8 Game Development by Glen Rhodes I expected to get a step by step process on how to develop games in Flash in the form of Actionscript examples and tutorials. I didn’t expect much in terms of the other processes of game design, but was pleasantly surprised when Glen related the importance of all game components. While the book doesn’t go into as much detail with other processes as it does the code (and as it is a game development book it shouldn’t), it describes the importance of each part, and gives several extra items beyond what I expected. There is a section on sound, optimization, game physics, portable games and 3D simulation as well as a section by Chris Hildenbrand about game graphics. And you make some fun games as well as explore more complicated versions which are included on the CD that comes with the book.

You should have at least an intermediate understanding of scripting. The basics of Actionscript are not described here - if you need an introduction to Actionscript read another book first. If you are confident with your ability to pick up Actionscript you will do fine, especially given the Actionscript for games primer at the end of the book.

This book gives a lot of helpful information on how Flash works and how to make games with this software. If you’re interested in Flash 8 in particular, it details the creation of a tile-based side-scrolling game using the new bitmap class. I learned several methods of number manipulation and Actionscript methodology that will help me save time and processing power on future games. I learned ways of creating games that I hadn’t thought of before, and he broke the physics down very simply and made it easy to understand. The tutorials and examples were thorough and easy to follow, with explanations of what each part of the code was doing.

The only qualms I had were a few typos in the code (which are easily fixed), the order of presentation of some topics (I would have liked to read about the physics first before some early examples), a few spots where "why the math works" was not completely explained (but can be found through experimentation) and the process of planning the code/outlining functionality wasn’t as prevalent as I would have liked.

Overall though, this book has been extremely helpful in understanding how to implement different types of games. I was making my own version of the popular "Breakout" by Atari in no time. If you are interested in making games with Flash, this book is loaded with ideas and information on how to go about creating them.

Superb tutorial-style guide
Don’t believe the negative reviews of those who don’t understand what a second, or revised edition is.

This book is a superb, tutorial-style introduction to programming games with Flash 8 that quickly gives the reader a basis for learning Actionscript. Within one hour, I had my first game tutorial running and was analyzing the actionscript driving it.

Nice work Glen, thanks!

Very Disappointed
I having been waiting since 2005 for the release of this book and I am very disappointed because so very little was added to this revision and certainly not enough to justify the cost of the book if you purchased the previous edition, Flash MX 2004 Game Development, which I own. The first edition was outstanding. Because I followed the GlenRhodes.com blog and viewed the really cool stuff he is doing like the LightSaber Configurator and the WolfenFlash Game featuring the "Flash Ray Engine", I expected to get more insight into how he is pushing Flash 8 to create such outstanding work! The book would have been much more valuable to me if 4+ games added to the revision and more insight into his current Flash 8 work.

Excellent Introduction
For programmers who are new to flash, this book is a "must have". It is an excellent introduction to, and explanation for, Flash 8 Game programming. The book includes a companion CD containing all of the images and Flash files (games) referenced.

As a note, another reader commented that this book contains much of the content from Macromedia Flash MX 2004 Game Development. I must admit, I have not read that book, but if you already have it, you may reconsider buying this one. It is good for learning how to use some of the new features in Flash 8, though.

(Playing with.. I mean learning, the games in the examples is fun too!)

Terrible
I just gave andre lamothe 1 star for recycleing his books. But I have to say that you are even worse. You wrote a very good book "Macromedia Flash MX 2004 Game Development" that I didn’t review since 2 people already said is’t very good. So naturally, I expected even better book. Instead of write a new advanced book, you copied the whole book Glen, and just added 2 new chapters:
- Bitmaps, the bitmap data object, and bitmap art
- Jungle adventure
I could believe my eyes today. Hay man, I like you blog, but this is terrible. I don’t want to curse, so I will not say anything. To all people, avoid Glen Rhodes, beside Andre Lamothe.
I give 0 stars to this cheating.

A New Platform for Game Development
Flash has been around for a lot of years. It’s orgin was to provide annimation for flashy web sites. This application seems to have been reduced in recent years for more functional, easier to navigate web sites. The big companies like Intel, Microsoft, IBM and so on stopped using Flash and other people began to copy them.

Flash, meanwhile has continued to grow. Now in its’s eighth major revision it has become a fairly powerful programming language in its own right. Two particular strengths of Flash are that it works with nearly any web browser, and second that they have gone to great lengths to make Flash work with a minimal amount of data being transferred from the server to the client.

Flash 8 has incorporated a major rewrite and extension of the language so that it now rivals C++ or Java as a display driver. As a result, it is quite practical to write reasonable sophisticated games using Flash.

Mr. Rhodes has been a professional game developer for a dozen years. In this book he describes how to use Flash as a programming language with a special emphasis on games. The CD included with the book includes the images and files necessary to complete the tutorials in the book and a 30-day trial version of Flash Professional 8.