ABSTRACT
Animation had for several years been my main motivation. I still get a buzz from making things move. Although initially unconnected, programming shares many similarities with animation. It is a creative pursuit. If you come to programming from an art background then you may find this doubtful. Surely creative implies the visual, written or musical arts. But programming is not a case of just one solution to a problem; there are many solutions and it is the path you take to the solution where the ‘art’ comes in. I got such a buzz from seeing my first programs work that I now spend rather more of my time writing code than creating animation artwork. In this chapter we are going to rush headlong into creating a game. Not a massive multi-player 3D first-person extravaganza, we may have to wait until day two for that! No, the game we will produce will be familiar to anyone who has ever played a computer game. It is a very simple version of ‘Pong’. Along the way we will discover the Flash interface. You will learn how to create simple artwork with Flash, where to find all those panels and what they do. You will add a little code, test your work and do some simple debugging. So without further hesitation, let’s get going. I strongly advise reading this chapter while using your computer. You will get much more from it if you enter the code and follow the tutorial throughout rather than just dissecting the final program.
