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 »

Book Description

Adobe Flash Professional is the most popular software available for creating animations for the Web. Most people start using Flash to create vector-based animations that output small file sizes perfect for the Web. Later they want to branch out into creating rich interactive experiences for websites and mobile devices, and for that they need to learn ActionScript.

Doug Winnie draws on the experience he’s gained from his years as an educator to teach not only what ActionScript can do, but also to show how the code works. This gives the reader a deeper understanding of how ActionScript functions, and gives them the power to come up with original solutions when creating their own projects.

Doug’s book dives right into the concepts of manipulating Flash objects and the fundamentals of functions and mathematical operators. After presenting events and using scripts to control the Flash timeline, classes and conditionals are covered in depth.

The final part of the book covers creating desktop applications with Adobe AIR, developing mobile applications, and working with external code libraries. Real-world projects are sprinkled generously throughout the book and Appendices include information on debugging, deciphering documentation, and using Adobe Flash Builder as an ActionScript development environment.

Table of Contents
Chapter 1. Accessing and Manipulating Objects
Chapter 2. Dynamically Adding Objects to the Stage Download Now »

Book Description

Automating repetitive programming tasks is easier than many Flash/AS3 developers think. With the Ant build tool, the Eclipse IDE, and this concise guide, you can set up your own “ultimate development machine” to code, compile, debug, and deploy projects faster. You’ll also get started with versioning systems, such as Subversion and Git.

Create a consistent workflow for multiple machines, or even complete departments, with the help of extensive Ant code samples. If you want to work smarter and take your skills to a new level, this book will get you on the road to automation—with Ant.

• Set up your Eclipse work environment with Eclipse plugins, including the FDT code editor and the Mylyn task manager
• Enable several developers to work on the same project simultaneously with a versioning system
• Walk through the basics of Ant, and use sample code to create your first script
• Compile and debug your Ant build with FDT or the Flex SDK
• Apply Ant to mobile development for both the Android Platform and iOS, using the Android SDK and Adobe Air

About the Author
Sidney de Koning is a full time geek. When he was 8, he got hooked on BASIC on his grandfather’s Amiga 500. Now he still gets excited developing mobile applications and websites. His passion is to play with technologies like Adobe’s AIR and the Android platform Download Now »