Things to consider when creating your first flash game
posted on: Fri-Dec-18-2009 by Darren Langham
I’ve been working on a flash game this past week for my company twelve20. This happens to be the first proper flash game we have made from scratch. Now I’ve worked with other people to help build flash games be it the coding of it or just designing elements, building one from scratch is a whole new ball game (excuse the pun).
Now i’m putting this down into a blog post as it may help other people with their first game and to maybe also so I have record of what I was thinking at the time. From my personal point of view your not going to get it right the first time and nor should you try. See your first flash game as a starting point to the basics of coding in flash in a better more object orintated way.
I’ve spent to long worrying about the design or the code when really the main objective is to get the game finished and move onto your next better idea for game. If you don’t finish that game before you move on to your next one you will always be great at starting a game but never be able to finish one. Jot any ideas and sketches down that you do have in a book of some sort and then carry on with getting the current one finished. Even if it’s not great you’ll be proud of having completed game under your belt.
Keep your first game simple and work your way up to more complex game designs later on. By keeping it simple you’ll get to understand how games work better and you’ll be able to finish sooner to move onto your next one. Don’t be tempted to add game features in as you build either. Simple is the key. It means you won’t get confused and create a pile of messy classes or code.
Most games have elements that are going to be the same accross them all. Things like points system, instructions, characters, missiles or other projectiles. Have a think about these as they will form the bases of your game. Keep your code organised, structure the code into reusable classes. These classses may be useful in your next game. I’ve created a class that’s called appUtils this contains math utilities and other functions that maybe reused.
Here at twelve20 we use svn to work on projects, this always means we can work on that same project at the same time. Knowing that we have a backup. We can roll back to any version at the same time.
The most important thing is to have fun with it don’t become precious over your first flash game. You will only keep getting better.
Matt
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