Intro
Welcome to this introduction to Game Design. We will start by studying how to make a game by using Adobe Flash. Flash has been the most successful platform for web-based games for a very long time and new versions of Flash are still being released - the ltest is CS6. Now, HTML5 game design is taking off and studying it will be useful to you if you want to be a game designer in the future. However, to study the principles of Game Design, Flash is a great place to start!
We will start by creating a game of Pong in Adobe Flash. We will be coding in Actionscript 3 so make sure your version of Adobe Flash is CS3 or higher!
Tutorials
The following tutorials will help you to understand how to build a Pong game in Flash from scratch.
They will introduce you to some basic but powerful game programming concepts.
Each tutorial has a challenge for you to complete.
After you complete each challenge, copy and paste your Actionscript into a Google Document for your teacher to check and grade.
Designing the layout
Understanding co-ordinates
Making the ball move!
Bouncing the ball
Moving the player paddle
Moving the computer paddle
Extension Options
Adapt your game so that everytime the ball hits any surface, it makes an appropriate sound.
Adapt your game so that there is a "worm-hole" in the game area. If the ball goes into the worm hole, it reappears anywhere in the game area.
Adapt your game so that there are 5 bugs moving around the game area. Everytime the ball hits a bug, the bug is killed. When all of the bugs are killed, the game ends. The scoring system is normal Pong-scoring. When the game ends, the player with the most points is the winner.
Any combination of the above ideas.