Animation doesn’t have to be complex to be engaging and, as the Ricky Gervais Show podcasts demonstrate, even a simple dialogue between three people can become top animated entertainment. In this Active Premium Tutorial we’re going to draw inspiration from Mr.Gervais and animate a chunk of the Envato Community Podcast.
The Final Animation:
Feel free to Download the animation, or subscribe to Activetuts+ screencasts via iTunes!
This Premium Tutorial is Filled with Creative Tips
Dive in now and learn about planning, decision making and the technical basics of Flash animation.
What’s Covered?
Preparation: Flash version and document setup.
Sound: Importing and handling sound.
Labeling: Planning and labeling the animation.
Labeling: Taking labeling further with AS3.
Theory: The Preston Blair phoneme series.
Theory: Closure.
Design: Character design.
Workflow: Importing and organizing graphics.
Animation: Working with symbols.
Animation: Random Blinking.
Animation: Repetitive sequences.
Direction: Complementary movement and artistic license.
We run a Premium membership system which costs $9 a month (or $22 for 3 months!) which periodically gives members access to extra tutorials, like this one! You’ll also get access to Psd Premium, Vector Premium, Audio Premium, Net Premium, Ae Premium, Cg Premium and Photo Premium too. If you’re a Premium member, you can log in and download the tutorial. If you’re not a member, you can of course join today!
In today’s Active Premium tutorial we’ll be creating a variant of the classic Tetris game, explaining general game concepts as well as some specific to this genre.
This Premium Tutorial is Filled with Solid OOP Principles and a Whole Pile of Other Programming Concepts
Check out the final result below!
Introduction
Let’s start with a short history lesson for those who are not familiar with this game (even though I doubt that it’s an unknown game to anyone).
Tetris is a puzzle video game from the 80s in which pieces made out of four square units (or cells) fall down in a grid (or matrix) and you have to move and rotate them until they land so that you obtain horizontal lines of units without gaps.
The pieces in the game are called tetrominoes and are geometrical shapes composed of four squares. There are five unique tetrominoes; however in the Tetris game we use two more which are reflections of two pieces from the first five.
The game was designed and programmed by Alexey Pajitnov and released in 1984 and still remains a popular game although many variations of the game were created (but using the same concept).
To read more on Tetris game, Tetrominoes, and associated topics, you can read their wiki pages: Tetris and Tetromino.
Prerequisites
For this tutorial I’ll be using FlashDevelop (see a guide to installing and using that here) but you can use whatever software you like (Flash CS3+, Flash Builder, FDT). If you don’t like or you can’t get FlashDevelop for whatever reason I strongly recommend that you use something other than Flash because of the weak code editor it has and because we will only be writing classes and you’ll like the features that you find in a strong code editor. But if you’ll only be copying and pasting, Flash will do just fine.
We run a Premium membership system which costs $9 a month (or $22 for 3 months!) which periodically gives members access to extra tutorials, like this one! You’ll also get access to Psd Premium, Vector Premium, Audio Premium, Net Premium, Ae Premium, Cg Premium and Photo Premium too. If you’re a Premium member, you can log in and download the tutorial. If you’re not a member, you can of course join today!
Cadin’s back! The man behind such classic Activetuts+ tutorials as the Static Distortion Effect and the Airport Terminal Timer has pulled together a brilliant game development tut for Premium members. You’ll want to check this one out..
Essential Tips for Advanced Game Developers
In this tutorial I’ll show you how to use AS3′s PaletteMap feature to create a character customization interface for your next game.
Why Palette Mapping?
In the past, whenever I wanted to attempt dynamic asset coloring Google searches inevitably led me to the ColorTransform class. ColorTransform works fine for modifying solid colors, but if you’re trying to color a complex piece of art the result is typically not what you want.
With palette mapping we can analyze each pixel of an asset and change the color appropriately to retain the highlights and shading of the original image. It’s not immediately clear from the documentation for paletteMap how to make use of it, so that’s what I’m going to cover here.
We run a Premium membership system which costs $9 a month (or $22 for 3 months!) which periodically gives members access to extra tutorials, like this one! You’ll also get access to Psd Premium, Vector Premium, Audio Premium, Net Premium, Ae Premium, Cg Premium and Photo Premium too. If you’re a Premium member, you can log in and download the tutorial. If you’re not a member, you can of course join today!
During this week’s Active Premium tutorial we’ll be building an amazing BlackJack game, from scratch, using Flash and AS3.
We’ll begin by covering the striking UI design, after which we’ll pull the whole game together with ActionScript. For non Premium members we’ve even posted a sample so you can see what you’re missing! Come and check it out..
We run a Premium membership system which costs $9 a month (or $22 for 3 months!) which periodically gives members access to extra tutorials, like this one! You’ll also get access to Psd Premium, Vector Premium, Audio Premium, Net Premium, Ae Premium, Cg Premium and Photo Premium too. If you’re a Premium member, you can log in and download the tutorial. If you’re not a member, you can of course join today!
Sample our Wares..
The best way to demonstrate the value of a tut is to give you a taste, so why not dive into these 6 sample steps right now? The following short chunk will cover some of the UI design; going Premium will give you access to the whole lot!
Sample Step 5: Main Screen
This is the Main Screen or view, it will be the first graphic to appear in our game, continue to the next step to begin its creation.
Sample Step 6: Background
Create a 320x480px rectangle and fill it with the following radial gradient: #2c753d, #3b9d52.
Using the rectangle tool and the poker shapes we created before, we’ll form a pattern to make our background look better.
Duplicate the pattern and arrange it in order to cover the full background gradient.
You can either convert your background to a single Graphic and center it or use the Flash export menu to get a sliced png image. I used the png option and came up with something like this:
Convert the final graphic to MovieClip and name it bg.
For the Main View we’ll use a black gradient on top of this background, duplicate the green gradient, change the color to black and the alpha values to (0, 70).
Sample Step 7: Title
Select the Text Tool (T), select a good looking font to write your game title and apply this radial gradient: #a08c66, #f6e7be.
Convert the text to MovieClip and apply the next filter:
You can also add a poker shape as a detail:
Sample Step 8: Tooltip
The tooltip will show the user an instruction in the Main View.
Create a 84x23px rounded rectangle and fill it with a #000000 to #333333 gradient, change its corner radius to 6.
Duplicate the shape and flip it vertically, change its size to 80x18px and center it in the last shape.
Use the Polystar Tool to create a triangle and place it on the bottom center of the actual shape.
Lastly, add a TextField (T) and center it.
Sample Step 9: Chips
Time for the Chips.
Start with a simple black circle and use the Line Tool (N) to create a dashed white circle inside:
Use the Rectangle Tool to create a plus symbol and use it to decorate the chip. You can also add a logo or any other graphic to the center of the chip.
A white chip will be used as well, just change the black shapes to white and vice versa.
Sample Step 10: Info Button
The info button will call the About View when clicked.
Create a 16x16px white circle and change its alpha to 15%. Use the Text Tool (T) to write an italic i.
Convert the shapes to Button and name it infoButton.
Sample Step 11: Cards
Use the Rectangle Primitive Tool to create a 66x86px, #858D8F shape and change the corner radius to 16.
…Hungry for More?
That’s it for now, I’m afraid. Check out Active Premium to complete the rest of this AS3 Gaming tutorial! Also, let us know in the comments what you think of seeing Premium Samples – is it an effective way of promoting the Premium program? Or would you rather not know what you’re missing?!
This week in Active Premium, we’ll show you how to complete your Bejeweled-style Match 3 game, adding a title screen, a scoring system, and a Hint button; improving the game mechanics; and incorporating sound effects. In other words, a lot of polish!
Final Result Preview
Let’s take a look at the final result we will be working towards:
Switch each jewel into a position where it completes a line of three the same..
Worth Noting..
The code in this Premium tut is divided into several folders (one per milestone) and the assets are all available in a separate folder too. Useful
We’ll build on what we’ve already developed by adding a title screen, a scoring system, a Hint button, incorporating sound effects, adding animations and a fancier interface, increasing the number of gems and reducing lag.
Game mechanics are also improved. We’ll add “chain matches” preventing any matches from existing “naturally” when the game board is first randomly set up.
Finally, we’ll be adding separate game states (i.e. title or game).
Images
Take a look at a couple of the helpful diagrams sketched out to illustrate what’s going on while you’re coding:
We run a Premium membership system which costs $9 a month (or $22 for 3 months!) which periodically gives members access to extra tutorials, like this one! You’ll also get access to Psd Premium, Vector Premium, Audio Premium, Net Premium, Ae Premium, Cg Premium and Photo Premium too. If you’re a Premium member, you can log in and download the tutorial. If you’re not a member, you can of course join today!
Sample our Wares..
The best way to demonstrate the value of a tut is to give you a sample, so why not dive into the first 8 steps of this series right now?. This short chunk will bring you to the first milestone; going Premium will give you access to the whole lot!
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