Category Archives: Tutorial-Flash

Tutorial: Exploring the AS3 Bitmap Class Lesson 3 – Scale from the center with a Matrix. In this third lesson we will explore a method of scaling the object from Lesson 1 and Lesson 2 using a Matrix operation. Like … Continue reading →

Tutorial: Exploring the AS3 Bitmap Class Lesson 2 – Rotation and with and without a Matrix. In this second lesson we will explore a couple different methods for rotating the Bitmap object from Lesson 1. We will first try simply … Continue reading →

Tutorial: Exploring the AS3 Bitmap Class Lesson 1 – Creating a basic dynamic tile sheet. We talk a lot about Blitting and BitmapData on this site, but we rarely take a step back and look at the container class for … Continue reading →

Tutorial: AS3: How to Blit an animation from a tile sheet embedded at compile time Today we are going to look at how to use a tile sheet embedded into an AS3 project at compile time.We will cover the embedding, … Continue reading →

Tutorial (AS3): Using Fonts Embedded At Compile-Time I am continuing to explore the use of external assets embedded at compile time in AS3. Today we will look at how to embed and use a font in this manner. The Embed … Continue reading →

AS3 Tutorial: Controlling the Main Timeline of a SWF Embedded at Compile-Time Today I was working a a new piece of the Essential Flash Games framework that allows sponsor swf files to be embedded at compile time and displayed before … Continue reading →

In my last tutorial I focused on the differences in managing the mouse in AS2 and AS3 and how to create a click and drag effect in AS2 and AS3. This tutorial will take the code in those tutorials further … Continue reading →

One of the things designers love to do in the Flash IDE is change the mouse pointer. This was a pretty simple task in AS2, but in AS3 there are few complications. The following short tutorial describes how to hide/show/change … Continue reading →

Clayton Grey’s Blit Layer Erase Speed Test A super diligent and incredibly intelligent (aren’t you all) 8bitrocket reader (and now contributor), Clayton Grey has been running some tests on blitting entire screen-sized portions of BitmapData to clear the screen and … Continue reading →

Tutorial: Clearing a blit canvas by erasing only the portions that have changed. This is commonly called damage mapping or  dirty rect processing. (Squize called this a Damage Map. I have heard that before but didn’t know that it was … Continue reading →

Building A Generalized Flex Game Control Part 4 – TileSheet class In part 1, I discussed and mused over what parts of the MVC pattern (if any) to implement in my Flex game control. In part 2, I dug down … Continue reading →

Tutorial: Using MP3 Files InFlex 3 with Flash Player 9.x This tutorial will explore several different methods to use MP3 files in Flex 3. We will cover simple loading and embedding, as well as strategies for seamlessly looping MP3 files. … Continue reading →

8bitrocket Diatribe: Tile-based BitmapData Fine Scrolling I’m currently working on a 4 way scrolling car driving game, somewhat like Atari 800/C64 Rally Speedway or Mattel Intellivision’s Auto Racing. I have “borrowed” (for testing purposes only” the graphics from a very … Continue reading →

8bitrocket Diatribe: Drawing Vector Primitives into a BitmapData Object in AS2 and AS3. That doesn’t sound too difficult, and it really isn’t. I received an email question this weekend from a game developer who was stumped at how to accomplish … Continue reading →

Tutorial Update: Basic Blit with Transparency Super cool 8bitrocket.com reader, MR. K, asked a very interesting question today. He asked if this tutorial included transparency because both the screen background and the helicopter background are black. Some how I completely … Continue reading →

In this article we will discuss the anatomy of a basic AS3 Flash blit operation, which is useful for rendering game graphics at high speeds. The information in this tutorial can be applied to almost any 2d development language that … Continue reading →

Now this one sounds like a no-brainer, but for some reason almost every book written on AS3 and even the built-in help fail to give adequate information on how to effectively use sounds embedded in the library in AS3. I … Continue reading →

This sounds like a rather simple topic. If you have a game application where you can load all of you assets externally at run time, then you will probably have no need for a special preloader and can follow any … Continue reading →

Tutorial : Creating an Optimized AS3 Game Timer Loop It this tutorial we create what I consider to be my most optimized game timer loop. I will start with the game loop created in my last tutorial and optimize it … Continue reading →

Tutorial: Using Flash CS3 and Actionscript 3 to create Atari 7800 Asteroids Part 4 In this 4th and final part we will cover 2 main topics. First, we will use pixel perfect BitmapData collision detection to detect missile and ship … Continue reading →