Want to Make Games part 2: Assets, Text, Button, Event, Timer

The first article Want to Make Games part 1: Start Up Kit  received feedback and three people already not only want to make games but trying to make games. I was answerving the questions and gathered the next part of information. There are a lot of complex tutorials. They are confusing beginners. So In this article is shown the minimum code needed to start.

Want to Make Games part 2: Assets, Text, Button, Event, Timer Source Code and FlashDevelop Project File - I've made and archive with 8 files adding part of functionality step by step:

1. Main1.as - I guess simplest ActionScript code adding an .svg vector asset to scene, simpler only Hello World! programm ;)
2. Main2.as - Adding a hero to stage also vector .svg
.svg can be made and edited with Inkscape.
3. Main3.as - Adding enemy, he is not vector, it's Bitmap in .png and Sound in .mp3.
.png can be created and edited with GIMP, .mp3 can be synthesized and edited with Wavosaur.
4. Main4.as - Creating and adding TextFiled text.
5. Main5.as - Draw and add simple custom button.
6. Main6.as - Button click interaction.
7. Main7.as - Define main game cycle with timer and simple animation based on it.
8. Main.as - All functionality from above placing to own Game class.
Game.as - The final result code cleaned up with comments:

//Directory where class placed

package 

{

    //Imported classes

    import flash.display.Bitmap;

    import flash.display.Sprite;

    import flash.media.Sound;

    import flash.text.TextField;

    import flash.events.MouseEvent;

    import flash.utils.Timer;

    import flash.events.TimerEvent;



    //Class defenition

    public class Game extends Sprite 

    {

        //Assets

        [Embed(source="resources/vector/background.svg", mimeType="image/svg-xml")]

        public var BackgroundMenuAsset:Class;   

        [Embed(source="resources/vector/hero.svg", mimeType="image/svg-xml")]

        public var HeroAsset:Class;   

               

        [Embed(source="resources/images/circle.png")]

        public var CircleAsset:Class;   

       

        [Embed(source="resources/sound/hit.mp3")]

        public var HitSoundAsset:Class;   

       

        //Variables

        public var background:Sprite;

        public var hero:Sprite;

   

        public var enemy:Bitmap;

       

        public var hit_sound:Sound;

       

        public var custom_button:Sprite;

       

        public var text_field:TextField;

       

        public var timer:Timer;

       

        //Constructor

        public function Game():void 

        {

            //Vector (.svg) background

            //Create

            background = new BackgroundMenuAsset();

            //Place on Screen

            addChild(background);

           

            //Vector hero

            hero = new HeroAsset();

            addChild(hero);

            //Set horisontal position

            hero.x = 125;

           

            //Bitmap (.png) enemy

            enemy = new CircleAsset();

            addChild(enemy);

            enemy.y = 100;

           

            //Sound (.mp3)

            hit_sound = new HitSoundAsset();

            hit_sound.play();

           

            //Custom button

            custom_button = new Sprite();

            //Prommed graphics

            custom_button.graphics.lineStyle(3,0x777777);

            custom_button.graphics.beginFill(0xFFFFFFF);

            custom_button.graphics.drawRect(0,0,100, 20);

            custom_button.graphics.endFill();

            addChild(custom_button);

            //Add responce function to mouse click

            custom_button.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, onClick);

           

            //Create text

            text_field = new TextField();

            //Disable mouse interaction for text

            text_field.mouseEnabled = false;

            //Set text

            text_field.text = "click";

            addChild(text_field);

            text_field.x = 20;

           

            //Create timer for animation

            timer = new Timer(1000 / 25, 0); 

        }

       

        public function onClick(e:MouseEvent):void

        {

            //Testing mouse click responce

            trace("onClick");

            text_field.text = "clicked";

            //Add function to every timer tick once per 1/25 second

            timer.addEventListener(TimerEvent.TIMER, mainCicle); 

            //Start timer

            timer.start();

            //Move character to initial position

            hero.x = 125;

        }

       

        public function mainCicle(e:TimerEvent):void

        {

            trace("mainCycle");

            if (hero.x < 600)

            {

                //Move hero

                hero.x += 10;

            } else {

                text_field.text = "click";

                //Stop hero

                timer.stop();

                //Memory clean up

                timer.removeEventListener(TimerEvent.TIMER, mainCicle); 

            }

        }

    }

}

Source:
Want to Make Games part 2: Assets, Text, Button, Event, Timer Source Code and FlashDevelop Project File 

My friend with this tutorial received a task of making simplified hidden object game that I consider one of the most simple gameplays ever. Basing on his feedback I'm going to edit/improve this tutorial. Any questions and feedback are appreciated to. The 3rd part is going to be about Classes inheritance and more on Events and their targets.

Play more, make Your games! ;)

Want to Make Games part 1: Start Up Kit

As announced I begin to write articles cycle: How to start develop Flash games.

Last 5-6 years our studio released about 40 games a lot of cloned but more then 10 of different kinds. All the ActionScript 2 and 3 code in all but one games I've written by myself somehow. I was trying to engage a lot of developers but didn't managed. It was Flex Enterprise, Flash IDE, serverside PHP/db programmers, enterprise Java, low level C++ and so on but no way.

They received from me as3 gamedev jumpin pack:
0. Get FlashDevelop
1. Getting Started with FlashDevelop
2. as3 with FlashDevelop overview
3. My presentation «Flash Games with Freeware»  and a sample game/tech demo  for FlashGAMM #2  meeting. There are also a lot of useful materials about Flash games development.Altogether here at FlashDevelop Forums
4. Jumpin J game source code and also at FlashDevelop Forums
The task was simple to set up development environment and compile the game. Strange but no one did it. I don't know why and what was my mistake.

Happily a week ago I've given this task to my friend who was looking for some season work. He is not a programmer and don't have technical diploma degree but he's easily managed the task ^) Actually I wasn't ready to it and didn't have the next task prepared. So I've googled and found suitable tutorial: Creating a Asteroids Flash Game Part 1: Setting up FlashDevelop and Planning

A week later after some questions on Flash/ActionScript specifics like Sprite, stage and //entry point in a new as3 project he managed to build a game and make some changes on graphics.

So now he is reading Colin Moock's Essential ActionScript 3.0, O'Reilly, 2007 book that I'll review later on to get in development process.

And I've modified 8bitrocket's essential game framework The Essential Guide To Flash Games book and made commercial game on it also will write about in the next posts when the game releases. Going to use it for the second game as second game theory from the book advices and attach new team members to the process: one friend who already passed the tutorial and the other who is going to try and made me to write this article finally.