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Flash Videogame

This version was saved 17 years, 10 months ago View current version     Page history
Saved by PBworks
on May 6, 2006 at 10:17:51 am
 

Flash video game made for Best Buy

 

 

George Coller

George Coller, Inc.

george@coller.com

 

Background

Primarily a J2EE designer/architect. 15 years of development experience. Probably took me about 100-150 hours to learn Flash IDE, ActionScript, and how to setup a decent development environment.

 

Tools

 

Sound Design

  • Free editing software – Audacity
    • EQ is best used to cut frequencies – not enhance
    • Consider the whole sound field
  • Balancing the sounds – Sound class
  • Many samples on the internet
    • Think about making your own
    • Use EQ, effects, and other editing to make the sound unique/avoid lawsuits

 

Lessons Learned

  • Do not use mp3s as sound files – especially for looping
    • mp3s are encoded as blocks – last block is silence filled
    • Flash compresses sound on import so use raw files
  • Don't do other people's jobs
    • Working on physics engine just used a cheap dummy graphic that could be replaced with professional graphics later
    • Spent time working on sounds that were replaced by design team. Would have been better to make a list of required sounds and a delivery date.
  • Get xml property config up and running first.
    • Make as much as possible in a game configurable
  • Much of the tuning of a game is done by hand/feel
  • Easier to tweak one aspect separately
  • Allows non-tech folks to do final tweaking
  • Relearn your trigonometry and basic physics
    • Math actually useful
    • Need to also learn "good enough" approximations of physics
  • Figure out how to separate the project by developers and designers.
    • Make it easy for designer to work on graphics independent of game but also allow them to test the game.
    • We failed a bit here
  • Externalize as much code as possible into files
    • Version control more effective
    • Easier to split up and merge changes
    • Can use external compiler to check code – compiling in Flash IDE is slow
  • Keep team small as possible
    • Developers had to email fat Flash.fla file
  • Only worked because we worked in shifts
  • Get end-to-end setup ASAP
    • We had integration issues the day of deadline
    • Sticky session not turned on
  • Many expected tools/libraries have to be invented or found
    • Logging, Config, Testing
  • Static methods are useful
    • Singleton pattern
    • Would consider doing a mini dependency-injection framework for AS to get away from singletons. Uber-factory.
  • Separate util/framework classes from UI classes
  • When in Rome...
    • Prefer unit tests over static typing
    • Try not to do things the Java way

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