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Macromedia Flash MX Game Design Demystified Review by Pam B. Jundt
First glance is good, but when you delve deeper...
Let me begin by saying that I consider myself an intermediate Actionscript Programmer and have created several games with Flash, anticipating this book would assist me in my ventures.
At first glance this book seems terrific. You get a large collection of games that vary in genres. Even more appealing is the multiplayer game support.
But when you read more into you discover in the first chapters, most of it is understandable (even the physics and trigonometry) but even with your first game, you can run into troubles. I purchased this book interested in the multiplayer games. I had never done anything with this genre and wasn't sure how players could connect with one another. I discovered how its done, but the games are written with the author's program, Electroserver. This didn't bother me except that the demo included on the disk can only support five members at any one time. A little investigation on the site and I became more disappointed. To have the minimum on the license is 50 people for a whopping $299. Also the Tic-Tac-Toe example is a free download off this page. This made me wonder if the author was filling blank pages.
The book has its high points, especially the pinball and platform game. It also has its low points, such as the rapid bombardment of Actionscript (as someone else put it, little fluff), as well as the electroserver problem.