Learning through game development?

[polyp]

For the past few months I've become increasingly interested in flash game development.
(I think what inspired me was the orisinal.com website!)

I have an extremely limited programming background but I would really like to learn the magic of creating these wonderful little programs

What would you guys recommend for learning flash strictly to develop games?

Should I just learn from web tutorials on a case-by-case basis and just start by learning how to program simple games?

Or is it better to learn flash/AS on the whole? And then transition into game development?

I've gone through several Lynda.com video tutorials and I've found them very easy to follow but difficult to "apply" on my own...


Any suggestions/information would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks

[dandylion13]

Hi,

Don't worry... we all started somewhere, and there's no direct path. I also only started to learn to programming because I wanted to make games - it's defintely possible. This book isn't out yet but teaches game development and programming together, from scratch:

http://www.friendsofed.com/book.html?isbn=9781430218210

Might be worth looking into. As a general approach, this is what I did: I thought of a simple game that would interesting for me to build. Then , piece by piece, I learnt what I needed to make it work. This was from friends, forums, and lots of books. I often didn't find following web-tutorials particularly helpful because, like you said, they tend to be specific solutions to specific problems, and won't help you much with developing your own game. My advice would be to start thinking of a game you'd like to make, and spend a few months figuring it out... it will be a lot of fun, and there are lots of us here on the fourm to help if you get stuck :)

[polyp]

thanks a lot for the response!

appreciate it

I'll start like that too =)

[tapioca]

start by learning to make pong. :P it has all of the core elements of any game you'll ever play with none of the complexity.

[Jephz]

Hehe, I was never the type of guy to sit down quietly and read for hours. I liked to experiment first hand, ask questions later. I turned to tutorials for help if I can't get something right. But thats just me =).

Reading tutorials are great, but its good to experiment with Flash every now and then to USE the knowledge you learned.

[rrh]

I've gone through several Lynda.com video tutorials and I've found them very easy to follow but difficult to "apply" on my own...
That's going to be a really crucial point, and might only "click" for you after practice.

When you're starting something, there's a moment of planning where you'll be thinking. "I'm trying to do ____. But that's really two things, where the one thing is like in this tutorial, and the other is like in this tutorial. And I need to combine them like so..."

[John Barbarossa]

I started in February last year, and I am amazed at the journey so far (with lots of forum help, I would add)

Tapioca has a point, Pong really is a great place to start, and a book that covers it well is Beginning Flash Game Programming for Dummies. I am not normally a fan of the dummies books, but this one really is great as it assumes no knowledge. A lot of books make the mistake of saying things like "this is a bi like C" or "now just do a simple for loop and it's finished", which is fine when you've been going a few months, but a little intimidating at the start.

You can find the book on Amazon or at http://www.dummies.com/store/product/Beginning-Flash-Game-Programming-For-Dummies.productCd-0764589628,navId-322467.html (http://www.dummies.com/store/product/Beginning-Flash-Game-Programming-For-Dummies.productCd-0764589628,navId-322467.html)