What a great book this is! Don’t be deceived into thinking that, since it is a book about games programming, it must necessarily be trivial. It isn’t. I’ve read many books on ‘serious’ programming topics that are much less informative and well structured than this one.

In the course of twelve chapters, the authors guide you through all the essential details of creating and interacting with graphic games programmed in ActionScript. Along the way they create a reusable ‘framework’ of classes and methods which can be employed by the games you create. They explain how to do animation and event-driven programming, how to use audio and graphic assets, perform ‘collision detection’ (e.g. when a missile hits its target) and much more. While this would obviously be of interest to someone who specifically wants to write games, it would also be an excellent and entertaining way for anyone new to ActionScript or Flash to learn to use the language and the technology to good effect.

It is a much (let me repeat that: a much) better book than the vast majority of Flash-oriented programming books on the market. Far too many Flash development books work on the assumptions that a) you will do all your development inside Adobe’s Flash IDE (e.g. Flash CS4 or CS5) and that b) you will write code as discrete chunks that will be ‘welded onto’ the animation timeline. The end result is that, all too often, those books are a mishmash of poorly thought-out code mixed in with animations. The animations come first, the code is a poor second.

This book is different. It puts the programming first. All the code is separated out into carefully structured libraries. The graphics and animations are the servants of the code rather than the other way around. As a consequence, the projects are largely independent of the Flash IDE and can be used with any appropriate Flash, Flex or ActionScript editor or IDE.

There are ten complete games in the book and you can find more detailed information on the Friends Of Ed web site. Recommended!