I know this is just after my poll result post, but since I’m using WordPress now it makes better sense to split unrelated topics off into their own posts. I get email notications on every reply, so it’s not as if someone’s useful comment will get lost along the way.

I spent a chunk of the weekend working through the first two chapters of ActionScript 3.0 Game Programming University. These chapters cover the basics and a bunch of universal elements, many of which are analogues of the sorts of techniques I’ve been using in plain vanilla C and C++ style games. In fact, ActionScript’s interface seems pretty close to what I was building towards in my own game library, such as the display list, event listeners and even the method for storing local data.

This week I’m keen to get started on making games. My plan is to work through a chapter of the book a day if I can, which roughly equates to a game every evening. I’ll also try to do all the artwork too, as I need to get to grips with that aspect of Flash and Illustrator as well. Some days I’ll have to skip game work, and I’ll only have a few hours every evening, but I think it’ll be enough time with the book to help me.

Obviously only spending a few hours per game doesn’t lend itself to producing anything too spectacular; I expect some pretty bland games over the next week. But I’ll see what I can get done each day.

This evening I’ll get started on chapter three, which describes the process of making a tile matching game in Flash. We’ll see how it goes.