Hi,
I have currently been programming for about two years as a student. I have experience with programming languages like Java and C++. I want to take an independent shift and try to develop a simple flash game, similar to the kinds you find on www.armorgames.com. My question is; How do I get started doing this, what language/tools should I be using, and are there any books/websites that give tutorials on this?
Thank you for any help, Zach Smith
the following books are not hard to follow:
http://www.amazon.com/Macromedia-Flash-Game-Design-Demystified/dp/0201770210
haXe is worth mentioning. It's an interesting language designed to target many runtimes, including Flash. The game company Motion-Twin developed it to give them faster compilation, missing features for some platforms, and the ability to write some (though not all) code once and use it across many platforms.
If you're just starting, haXe with an open source IDE may be easier to swallow than dropping $700 for Adobe's Flash IDE.
If you're interested, start here:
Keep in mind, you still need to learn ActionScript (Adobe's Flash language) since the haXe Flash API is modeled after it.
If you tire of Flash, you can always use haXe to compile to JavaScript, PHP, C++, or run it on its own VM. Kinda fun.
I believe you can do a lot worse than using Flex Builder (nowadays known as Flash Builder) from Adobe. With the Eclipse plugin you get a pretty decent IDE as well. Its focus is a bit on the GUI/RIA side of things though, but the whole flash api is of course included and there are quite a lot of graphics related components that can be used for games.
If you decide to take the Flash approach I can highly recommend Essential Actionscript 3.0 by Colin Moock. Probably considered to be the holy book of Flash.
Also be aware that there are a lot of tutorials/guides/whatnot out on the interwebz that might give you more questions than answers. Personally, when I want to pick up something new, I turn to IRC that to some extent can be seen as "live peer reviewed" :)