Wow! eBook – Blog

Book Description

The latest version of Flash Professional can directly target iOS, allowing Flash developers to write applications that will run natively on Apple’s iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. What’s more, with Apple loosening its restrictions on third-party technologies, apps written in Flash can now be sold and distributed within the App Store.

Flash iOS Apps Cookbook provides the recipes required to build native iOS apps using your existing knowledge of the Flash platform. Whether you want to create something new or simply convert an existing Flash project, the relevant steps and techniques will be covered, helping you achieve your goal.

Learn how to configure and use Flash Professional for iOS development by writing and deploying a simple app to a device. Implement many iOS-specific features such a multi-touch, the virtual keyboard, camera support, screen orientation and the Retina display. Overcome the limitations of mobile development by mastering hardware acceleration and optimization. Whether you’re an enthusiast or professional developer, the Flash iOS Apps Cookbook is your toolkit to creating high-quality content for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

What you will learn from this book

• Configure and publish native iOS apps from Flash Professional CS5 or CS5.5.
• Start by quickly building and deploying a simple app to your iOS device.
• Target mobile screens and implement usability considerations. Download Now »

Book Description

In response to the success of the first edition of Foundation Game Design with Flash, Rex van der Spuy has revised and updated all the code to meet current programming best practices, and the focus is now on accurate ActionScript 3.0, regardless of the IDE that you use.

We’ve all sneaked the odd five minutes here or there playing the latest Flash game that someone sent around the office, but creating those games is trickier than it looks. The aim of Foundation Game Design with ActionScript 3.0 is to take you, even if you’ve minimal multimedia or programming experience, through a series of step-by-step examples and detailed case studies—to the point where you’ll have the skills to independently design any conceivable 2D game using Flash and ActionScript.

Foundation Game Design with ActionScript 3.0 is a non-technical one-stop shop for all the most important skills and techniques a beginning game designer needs to build games with Flash from scratch. Whether you’re creating quick blasts of viral amusement, or more in-depth action or adventure titles, this is the book for you.

• Focused and friendly introduction to designing games with Flash and ActionScript
• Detailed case studies of Flash games
• Essential techniques for building games, with each chapter gently building on the skills of preceding chapters
• Modern best practices and new content on ActionScript 3.0
• Also covers asset creation in Photoshop and Illustrator Download Now »

Book Description

Physics for Flash Games, Animation, and Simulations teaches ActionScript programmers how to incorporate real physics into their Flash animations, games, user interfaces, and simulations.

• Introduces Flash physics in an accurate, but approachable way, covering what is required to produce physically realistic simulations (as opposed to animations that look roughly right)
• Packed full of practical examples of how physics can be applied to your own games and applications
• Addresses the diverse needs of game developers, animators, artists, and e-learning developers

The book assumes a basic knowledge of ActionScript and Flash. However, no previous knowledge of physics is required—only some very basic math skills. The authors present everything from basic principles to advanced concepts, so you’ll be able to follow the logic and easily adapt the principles to your own applications. The book builds on your physics knowledge, enabling you to create not only visual effects, but also more complex models and simulations.

What you’ll learn

• Basic math and physics you’ll need to incorporate realism into your games, animations and simulations
• How to incorporate a wide range of forces, including environmental forces such as gravity and friction, and forces due to fluids, such as drag and upthrust
• How to build a number of realistic simulations, like submarines and flight simulators Download Now »

Book Description

Starling is an ActionScript 3 2D framework developed on top of the Stage3D APIs (available on desktop in Flash Player 11 and Adobe AIR 3). Starling is mainly designed for game development, but could be used for many other use cases. Starling makes it possible to write fast GPU accelerated applications without having to touch the low-level Stage3D APIs.

Most Flash developers want to be able to leverage GPU acceleration (through Stage3D) without the need to write such higher-level frameworks and dig into the low-level Stage3D APIs. Starling is completely designed after the Flash Player APIs and abstracts the complexity of Stage3D (Molehill) and allows easy and intuitive programming for everyone.

Obviously Starling is for ActionScript 3 developers, especially those involved in 2D game development; of course you will need to have a basic understanding of ActionScript 3. By its design (lightweight, flexible and simple), Starling can be used also be used for other use cases like UI programming. That said, everything is designed to be as intuitive as possible, so any Java™ or .Net™ developer will get the hang of it quickly as well.

About the Author
Thibault Imbert is a Flash Player product manager focused on graphics and rendering. After a few years working for different French agencies as a Flash developer, Thibault became an Adobe Certified Instructor in Paris where he taught ActionScript at an Adobe training center. Download Now »

Book Description

Gain hands-on experience with PureMVC, the popular open source framework for developing maintainable applications with a Model-View-Controller architecture. In this concise guide, PureMVC creator Cliff Hall teaches the fundamentals of PureMVC development by walking you through the construction of a complete non-trivial Adobe AIR application.

Through clear explanations and numerous ActionScript code examples, you’ll learn best practices for using the framework’s classes in your day-to-day work. Discover how PureMVC enables you to focus on the purpose and scope of your application, while the framework takes care of the plumbing in a maintainable and portable way.

• Get a detailed overview of the PureMVC process for developing your application
• Model the domain by designing the schema and creating framework-agnostic value objects
• Implement framework-agnostic View components that expose an API of events and properties
• Use the Proxy pattern to keep track of value objects and hide service interaction
• Facilitate two-way communication between a View component and the rest of the application
• Stitch the Model and View tiers together with command objects in the Controller
• Manage problematic View component life cycles, and learn how to reuse the Model tier

Table of Contents
Chapter 1. Introduction
Chapter 2. Building an Application with PureMVC Download Now »

Book Description

Adobe’s Stage3D (Molehill) is a set of 3D APIs that has brought 3D to the Flash platform. Being a completely new technology, there were almost no resources to get you acquainted with this revolutionary platform, until now.

This book will show you how to make your very own next-gen 3D games in Flash. If you have ever dreamed of writing your own console-style 3d game in Flash, get ready to be blown away by the hardware accelerated power of Stage3D. This book will lead you step-by-step through the process of programming a 3D game in Actionscript 3 using this exciting new technology. Filled with examples, pictures and source code, this is a practical and fun-to-read guide that will benefit both 3D programming beginners and expert game developers alike.

Starting with simple tasks like setting up Flash to render a simple 3d shape, each chapter presents a deeper and more complete videogame as an example project. Right from a simple tech demo, your game will grow to become a finished product – your very own playable 3d game filled with animation, special effects, sounds, and tons of action. The goal of this book is to teach you how to program a complete game in Molehill that has a beginning, middle, and game over.

As you progress further into your epic quest, you will learn all sorts of useful tricks such as ways to create eye-catching special effects using textures, special blend modes for transparent particle systems, fantastic vertex and fragment programs Download Now »