Being the Idea Guy and Getting Started in Flash Game Development
If you’re coming to game development with a journalist background, chances are you’re looking for other skilled individuals who can supplement your programming and art skills (or lack thereof). This puts one in the dangerous place of being the “idea guy.” Purely “idea guys/gals” scare off the digitally talented for obvious reasons. They show up with an idea (something quite common and of dubious value) requesting code and artwork (things of very literal value, but which many people don’t like paying for). Frequent requests can look like the following:
- “I have an idea for a game called Gentrification Rumble. I need a team.“
- “I need someone to teach me Flash.”
- “I would like to feature a game about water sanitation in my publication. I need several developers and an artist. It doesn’t pay, but you will have a product for your portfolio.”
This “idea guy” problem recently showed up as a topic on the Kongregate forums (some of those examples are near copies of posts gathered by Ringer). A typical pattern emerges. Idea folks show up on the Collaboration forum, pitch their idea, other idea folks encourage them, legit folks ignore them or send them to tutorials, and it usually goes nowhere. Now, the real issue is that ideas can be stimulating when you have them and you usually want to get feedback and bounce them around during this early idea stage. However, the excitement of the unskilled can clog a good forum with unrealized dreams. Few will follow up on learning new skills to execute their idea, but in the end, sending someone to a tutorial can be the best way to find out if they’ll actually work hard to see their idea come to fruition. So, rather than handing out fish one at a time in the form of tutorials, one Kongregator suggested a master list where idea guys could learn to fish themselves. This was a good idea and while something may be similar elsewhere, I jumped at the chance to develop one of my own.
Below, I’m pasting my first draft of where to start to self-educate in Flash game development. Some sections need to be rounded out a bit and I want to craft this into a list beyond Flash and more tailored to those coming from journalism and other generalist domains. Being a generalist myself, I figure what I find useful will be useful to others of my ilk. Enjoy and please critique:
Where to Start with Flash Game Development When You Don’t Know Where to Start:
Programming/Scripting:
Assuming you’re interested in jumping into Flash and Actionscript, there are several places to start.
- The getting started tutorials that ship with Flash itself aren’t bad. While not game-centric, they’ll introduce you to the development environment, motion, tweening, the timeline and some basic scripting. This is a good foundation for jumping into game tutorials
- Kongregate has an entire section dedicated to tutorials as well as a great intro package for developing a shooter, appropriately name the Shootorial.
- Actionscript.org has an excellent collection of tutorials on best practices in AS3 as well as a wealth of scripting tutorials.
- The TIGSource forums have an excellent section for tutorials all aimed at developing games.
- If you learn from video, you might want to check out Lynda.com’s Actionscript Games and Particle Effects courses (the first chapter on Actionscripting a shooter is free to non-subscribers).
- Finally, for a foundation in the concepts of programming, Code Warrior: Principles of Programming is considered one of the best. It’s hard to find even used copies for sale, but a pdf version is up on scribd here.
Art:
When it comes to developing as a digital artist, there are a couple directions you may have to investigate. One, is the principles of art itself and the other is using the software to create art.
- For flash gaming, you should investigate vector art and know how that’s different from bitmap images (Lynda offers a good explanation here in the video “What are vector graphics?“).
- Kongregate’s tutorials section has many tutorials on approaches to art and creating game characters and backgrounds.
- The TIGfourms’ Tutorials section has tutorials on 2D, 3D and pixel artwork.
- Lynda.com is a top-notch teacher when it comes to digital art and software. If you’re serious about developing as a digital artist, the monthly subscription amount is worth the money and much cheaper than taking a real-life class. Initial videos in any course are free to view and will give you a good idea of the training style. Flash and Illustrator courses would be the good jumping off spot.
- (Need some good links for foundational art concepts)
Audio:
Music, sound effects and possibly voice comprise the audio bits you may want to create for a game. While free audio files are to be found online, you’ll need to learn recording and editing to begin developing your own. Here are some places to start:
- Even though it’s aimed at radio and not games, Transom.org still has some of the best introductory articles for editing audio. This is due to the site’s focus on the complete amateur. Within the Tools section there, you’ll find excellent intros to the concepts of digital audio as well as how to start editing audio files. While there are articles on ProTools, tutorials on Audacity may be the best start for a newbie. For one, Audacity is free and it’s paired down to the most important tools for the job. Audacity will work well for editing voice and grabbing sound effects from larger files, but not very well for music. However, this may be a way easier learning curve before jumping into music. Here are three specific articles to check out:
- (Need some good links for music)