Strategy Games Part 1 - Terrain Generation

The intended audience for this course is the programmer with some experience in writing ActionScript 3 familiar with development using Adobe Flash Professional CS5, Adobe Flash Builder 4, or FlashDevelop. This course is taught by John Nyquist, author of our popular Blender Tutorials.

Read what Gary Rosenzweig from FlashGameU.com has to say about this course...

"John's a great teacher. He makes complex concepts seem simple by explaining them in small steps with great clarity. You'll find that you are not just following along, but you are gaining an understanding into the process of how the project was developed. You'll not only learn how it was built, but you'll also know how it works."

You'll learn how to create terrains, using spatial averaging, draw with the graphics class, dealing with bits, connected component labeling to detect regions, and more. It's assumed that you'll work through this course from the beginning, but for convenience (and later reference) you can find major sections and their time indices listed below:

Topics in Part One:

- Development Options - Flash Professional, Flash Builder, and/or FlashDevelop.
- Setting up for your environment
- Creating the main package and Terrain class
- Graphics Class - learn to use the Graphics class to draw and color shapes
- Creating noise
- Using bit shifting to extract RGB values
- Spatial Averaging - softening the noise to create the land forms
- Gridlines - drawing gridlines with a Graphics class object
- Creating the Grid and Node classes
- Game Class - Tying the Terrain, Grid, and Node classes together with the Game class
- BitmapData class - dynamically create bitmaps in AS3
- Terrain - adding Mountains and beaches
- Connected Component Labeling (CCL)
- Creating an interactive test for our CCL algorithm (and debugging)
- Creating the Region class and integrating it with out CCL test
- Bringing in Symbols


Strategy Games Part 2 - A* Pathfinding

The A* pathfinding algorithm is the most popular method of finding a path between two points.

In part two you will:

-Learn the fundamentals of the A* pathfinding algorithm through a "blackboarding" session (as seen in the free tutorial preview below)
-Write an implementation of it from scratch in ActionScript 3.
-Create an interactive movie to test the implementation.
-Integrate it into the main project from part one of the series.

Strategy Games Part 3 - State Machines

In part three you will:

- Create a shaded terrain. Dynamically adjust contrast with the ColorMatixFilter class.
- Create multiple states for an object. Progress from a simple switch statement to object-oritented states.
- Create multiple players.
- Learn to create a turn-based environment for units and players, for both human and computer input.
- Create computer opponents.
- Create multiple unit types: land, air, computer and human.
- Use the bitmap class to create a “fog of war” that reveals the map as units move.
- Differentiate between turn-based and non-turn-based states (and support both).
- Add combat between units.
- Refactor to use a singleton design pattern.

Like all our tutorials, this one includes the source code. You'll also get project files for Flash, Flash Builder (Flex) and Flash Develop.