Credits: Kongregate
Genre(s): Weird/unknown (game development)
It's time for Game Dev December!--a very special "mini-issue," if you will, of transcending pixels where every week's new game of interest will come from the area of game design and development. In the same way that we write books on how to write books, some people have designed games or gamification methods that provide instructions on using a game designer's toolbox.
Today's game is actually a series of "games" created by the famous casual game provider Kongregate called "Shootorials"--which I can only best describe as recreationally interactive slideshows, although the potential they offer for game design tools is a little more refined than that crude description.
The catch, obviously, is that the user must acquire a copy of Adobe Flash/ActionScript to be able to complete the exercises, and while this can be a hang-up in and of itself, in terms of the game's actual usefulness, it ranks well with the other games I've looked at this Dev December.
There exist a total of 9 "shootorials" walking you through the coding, animation, and special effects production of making a complete Flash third-person sidescrolling shooter game, complete with enemy waves and a final boss. Along the way there are plenty of interactive opportunities to compare your work side by side with the accompanying actual product. Granted, it's not the most complex game you could make. Honestly, despite its rather bland-sounding structure, it stood out to me mostly because it is on a casual gaming site. Kongregate not only provides its users with an infinite variety of casual and online games (and as you've probably noticed, I always try to link to Kongregate's versions of these games whenever I can because of the site's user-friendly "gamified" interface), but it also encourages player involvement in the actual game design process, rewarding players who contribute their own creations to the game catalog. Such support is included on the expansive forums, but having the additional interactive walkthrough, in the form of actual games themselves, further promotes that user-generated content aspect of Kongregate's site.
I discovered these Shootorials while I had access to ActionScript at the school computer lab, and while I can't say I learned exactly what every line of code is supposed to do, working through the friendly instructions kept me interested in my feeble game without overwhelming my beginner-programmer status. If you're aiming to learn ActionScript, definitely research actual courses and textbooks wherever they're available, but if what you really want to do is just make games, Shootorials throw you directly in that line of thinking to help you make an actual, complete game. Once you've learned the basics, of course, extrapolating that coding information to fit within your own artistic and design personalizations gets easier. Shootorials provides the perfect bare-bones layout for you to get seriously started in Flash game creation.
Ultimately, if you're just looking for a (more) entertaining resource for learning ActionScript than digging through a tech manual to find the droids you're looking for, check out Kongregate's Shootorials.
FYI: Due to the arrival of the Great Snow Season and Accompanying Holidays, there will be no review posted next weekend.
No comments:
Post a Comment