Glen Rhodes

Well, the new book is out It’s called Macromedia Flash Professional 8 Game Development.

Paperback: 528 pages
Publisher: Charles River Media; 2 edition (June 1, 2006)

It’s not a “brand new book”, it’s a “Second edition”. For those who don’t have the original, it’ll be all great and new to you. For those who have the original, you’re going to find a few updates and items for Flash 8 (and that’s especially what Flash 8 is good at; games)… To me, the entire tile-game engine in Flash 8 is worth its weight in gold.

It’s a great book, and I hope people enjoy it – it took a bit of work to put together.

Click here to order!

I’m really excited about it, and it covers some of the best things that Flash 8 has to offer in relation to games. It’s currently being used as curriculum material at many educational institutions around the world.

We cover full tile game development (like Super Mario) making use of the BitmapData object in Flash 8, and you’ll get to learn all sorts of amazing things and effects that can be specifically applied to games.

by Glen Rhodes

Creating games with Macromedia Flash MX 2004 is a rewarding endeavor for aspiring and seasoned programmers alike. With its quick download time, cross-platform deployment, ease of use, and power, Flash is quickly becoming the program of choice or online game development. The use of vector graphics also makes the games scalable for any resolution from full screen to cell phone.

Intended for both game and Web developers, Macromedia Flash MX 2004 Game Development teaches developers how to maximize Flash for the creation of online and standalone games. The entire development process is covered, from design, story and character development, to the physics and motion of a game, audio issues, optimization, and deployment. As you work through the book, you’ll create eight fun games as you learn and apply the tools of Flash. After completing these projects, you’ll be ready to produce your own high-quality games, and you’ll have the skills needed to take on more complex games. (continue reading…)

by Sham Bhangal, Anthony Eden, Brad Ferguson, Brian Monnone, Keith Peters, Glen Rhodes, Steve Young, Kristian Besley (Editor)

Macromedia Flash MX 2004 Games Most Wanted is the latest title in the popular ‘Most Wanted’ series from friends of ED. This book presents the definitive selection of game design techniques using the latest version of Macromedia Flash – now the industry standard for creating multimedia applications, used by over one million professionals.

Each chapter covers a distinct area of online gaming, describing the design and development of a finished Flash game. The book delivers as many complete example games as possible and is packed full of the most wanted tips, tricks, and techniques to demonstrate exactly how to produce exciting and interactive games. This is an inspiring sample of all the very best techniques that professional Flash game designers are using today.

MX Developer’s Journal, July 2004 (Now called Flex Developer’s Journal).

I wrote this article on Game developement in coordination with a new solo book I had coming out. As you can see, they put the reference to my article right along the very top of the magazine. That was nice to see. The full article can be read here.

This is an old favorite of mine, and so I simply couldn’t resist putting it in.  Click here to play it! It may seem a little old, or “retro”, but remember that’s the point. To accurately represent the original game.

click to play

For MTV, this was for the Viewer’s Choice Award for the MTV Video Music Awards. It essentially involved firing the “Moonman” statues out of a cannon in 3D, at the group, singer, rapper, etc., that you wanted to vote for. This game was used to gather all the votes for the 2005 VMAs in Miami, hosted by Sean “Diddy” Combs.

Title screen with instructions.

The game in action.

The ultimate winner, after all the “votes” were tallied, was Green Day, for their song American Idiot.

A game I created with for Disney Online, which was essentially a very fancy Mahjong themed for a popular TV show, with all sorts of special bonuses. This was created for their TV show, “Jake’s Dragon“.

Intro Screen

Title Screen

The game in action

For Nikelab.com, a cool site run by Nike, I programmed the game “Catch The Train”, for the promotion of their new Shox NZ shoes. Unfortunately, no longer available online to play.

Catch the train in action.

For ArcadeTown, I did the game “The Black Knight: Get Medieval“, along with talented artist Brad Ferguson. The game is a great arcade smash ‘n bash game. I also did the music for this game.

Based on the hit show “The Suite Life of Zack and Cody“, this game, Pizza Party Pickup, is a simple game in which you must navigate through 10 levels to get to the top of the hotel, to get to the pizza party. Anyone who knows the show, will know what that means. Either way, it’s kind of a Pac-Man game, with the addition of needing to collect a key to escape each level, and navigate the maze. This one was the most played/popular game on Disney.com when it first came out.

Game Title Screen

The game in action.