Would anyone like to partner up? I'll do 90% of the work!

Hi! I’m a long time Kong member and would love to create my own game. Of course, I know little to nothing about coding and have only made a simple flash game many years ago before CS became complicated.

I’m looking for a partner who would like credit on a game just for answering questions and helping me get started.

The type of game I’d like to make is simple: A choose your own adventure with hopefully a few graphics and simple text. I envision a little intro with graphics telling a very brief story. And then click to begin. At each screen player will read a chunk of text (possibly see a background picture) and choose which path to go by clicking a box or the text itself.

I’m not looking to do anything complicated but when I open up Adobe Flash Professional CS6 – it looks VERY overwhelming. Back in the old days it was very simple to just add a screen with a link.

Would anyone be interested in helping out? I’ll be MORE than happy to credit you in the credits and on the page itself. And, as far as I can imagine, I’ll be doing the majority of the work so you don’t have to take up your time.

If this sounds like something that seems easy enough and you can help guide me through the getting started process that would be great!

Thank you very much!

…before CS became complicated.

In Flash, things don’t become complicated, they change. And some things are not able to adapt quick enough. So they stop altogether. That’s the same reason why the dinosaurs are extinct.

The type of game I’d like to make is simple.

Good news: It won’t be too hard to learn. Bad news: If you’re doing this for money (a lot of people do), it might not get anywhere. But that’s probably a value judgement.

Would anyone be interested in helping out?

You should really post in the collabs forums then.

Conclusion:

I can’t help you.

But what I can do is provide you with two good links that may help you.

Emanuele Feronato: Italian geek and PROgrammer. Emmanuele talks about physics engines a lot these days, among other things. She has a lot of interesting posts that will also provide source code too. Click this link to go to her blog.

AS3 Shootorials: Yep, the Shootorials are the most renowned tutorials on this forum. Because it’s also the best (Flash AS3) programming tutorial on Kong. Or at least the only undisputed one. “Click this link to go to the Shootorial series.”http://www.kongregate.com/games/Moly/shootorial-1-actionscript-3

IronCoding: Contains a tile-based tutorial that also incorporates other good methods of game development. This is the link for his tutorial.

I recommend looking at the second one first. But that’s up to you. Have fun :D

Emmanuele is not a girl.
That said, I recommend NOT following any of his tutorials. Actually, you may read them, only to know how you aren’t supposed to do things.

Yes, do not read Emanuele’s tutorials, they are very messy and teach bad habits.

Again- I’m kind of baffled how you say you’ll do 90% of the work… but you can’t code.

Originally posted by Senekis93:

Emmanuele is not a girl.

That’s what I thought. :P

You may read them, only to know how you aren’t supposed to do things.

His methodology of doing things seem to be correct. For example, he wrote a triangle collision detection code. The code was messy, I agree – but the idea behind the coding- the barycentric coordinates- was actually a very efficient algorithm.

Thanks for the above notes.

No, I’m definitely not looking to make money from my game. If that happens, neat. If not, I’m cool with that.

I think the coding is where it seems confusing to me/overwhelming. I thought it might be fairly simple to make just a point and click text game.
-
I’ve tried searching tutorials etc but what I have found are great for people that want to do 100 different things. I’m just looking to understand the basic stuff.

Emmanuele’s tutorials are pretty good for beginning coding. At least the AS2 ones. I assume his AS3 stuff is as good. They’re a little indepth for what the OP actually wants to make though.

For a choose your own adventure type game, you have a couple of different options but the simplest would be to use buttons and frames. This isn’t good practice for programming, but if you’re looking for the least complicated solution, then there it is. Each block of text & button goes on new frame, the buttons send you to the frame with the next relevant piece of text on. It’s not a good way to program a game but it is a simple way to make the specific game you’re trying to make.

If you want to try something a bit more advanced, look into using arrays and filling them with the text you want to use, then sending the relevant pieces to a dynamic text box. It’s better than using frames but a little more complicated.

PS: Don’t listen to people telling you how not to do something unless they’re willing to personally teach you how to do it better. You’ll never even get started if you stop working every time someone points out some minor flaw in what you’re doing.

I meant code-wise.

I don’t doubt his math is correct, but that’s not the point of a Flash game tutorial… you can throw numbers in a paper and then implement that in any programming language. And the internet is full of places to learn math, trig or whatever you may need.

On the other hand, his coding style shows nothing but bad practices, horrible understanding of some basic aspects of the language itself, bad implementation, slow code, etc, etc.

So yes, you may take a look to get an idea of the basic implementation of something, then go and do it your own way. But please, don’t follow his tutorials. Take it from someone who got introduced to flash development by one of his tutorials; it took me months to erradicate the cancer (bad practices) taken from that site.

It may not be dangerous for someone experienced, but a newbie has no way to tell “come on, what’s this crap?” after looking at the code and instead will learn by example and think that’s how things are supposed to be done.

E: OP, take a look at the stickied “Making games” thread. It includes a link to a tutorial which covers the basic elements of AS3. It’s to make an avoider, but what you learn there is more than enough to accomplish what you propose in your original post.

Originally posted by Senekis93:

Emmanuele is not a girl.

Aaw, but she’s got such a pretty name. :(

Actually, I just checked an it’s “Emanuele”, with a single m.

So…
Emmanuelle = girl
Emanuele = boy

Note to everyone: Make sure to google the right spelling before naming your babies.

Originally posted by Aesica:

Originally posted by Senekis93:

Emmanuele is not a girl.

Aaw, but she’s got such a pretty name. :(

I was disappointed when I learned that too. Kind of strange considering his logo.

How did the topic get to whether or not she/he is a boy or girl?

Originally posted by BobTheCoolGuy:

Originally posted by Aesica:

Originally posted by Senekis:

Emmanuele is not a girl.

Aaw, but she’s got such a pretty name. :(

I was disappointed when I learned that too. Kind of strange considering his logo.

You know, guys from Europe enjoy looking like girls:

PS: ♥ Bowie

By logo, do you mean this beast? I don’t know many women who would be caught dead in that getup. Unless they were offering to supersize your order. :D

Edit: And yeah, American boys are too chickenshit to be fabulous. :(

Its funny. Its informal to have your hair long in the united states. But in Europe… That ^{^}

This guy made long hair on guys cool to me :D

Funny digression but please stay on topic; thanks! :]

Also,

Originally posted by saybox:

For a choose your own adventure type game, you have a couple of different options but the simplest would be to use buttons and frames. This isn’t good practice for programming, but if you’re looking for the least complicated solution, then there it is. Each block of text & button goes on new frame, the buttons send you to the frame with the next relevant piece of text on. It’s not a good way to program a game but it is a simple way to make the specific game you’re trying to make.

You hit it right on the nose; that is exactly what I would like to do! I don’t mind if I don’t learn to be a great programmer. Just looking to fulfill this purpose.

Is there an easy way to do the above? – Thank you!!!!

I’ve PM’d you a link because I’m the shy hermit type ;)

Appreciate it a lot Ant! All advice/ideas are helpful! Especially as I am so new at this! :]

Well I was actually going to make a game like that with a Zombie Apocalypse Storyline, but it wasn’t going to be great. All the code I was going to use is onRelease() and gotoAndPlay :P

As I’m quite new to all of this, oat, I’m not sure what that second part means

Originally posted by Aesica:

By logo, do you mean this beast? I don’t know many women who would be caught dead in that getup. Unless they were offering to supersize your order. :D

Edit: And yeah, American boys are too chickenshit to be fabulous. :(

What? What’s wrong with the jeans and t-shirt look?

On-topic, I completely agree that Flash is quite the intimidating program. Actually, I think adobe does a horrible job at making their programs intuitive, and I also think the UI is subpar at best.

Anyway, I normally recommend this tutorial. I think it uses Flash CS3, but it’s not all that different.

There’s no mistaking Feronato for a girl.

To the OP, if you want to make Flash games, the easiest way to do it is with Stencyl.

Japan wins?