question

I sense a laughable attempt to to start a mac vs pc debate. Which is stupid, since pc’s (and Windows) are just far better. For example, they can actually run decent games!

Dave

It really all depends on how sophisticated you want your combat system to be. You could probably do those systems very simplisticly or you could do the same system very complex. Depends on what factors you want to put into it really….

MS say apple technology works better for the xbox design. Xbox design is nothing like their pc design so its a mute point.

Well they are using IBM G5 chips for the x box 2 yes. The operating system is a very slimline windows xp one afaik. The card is ATI Radeon. The architecture will be based around Directx surprisingly. Hardly a bowing down to the superiority of Macs now.

Anyway Flash, with the use of databases and trunbased combat wight work very well. Ive often thought of embarking on such a project. Keep us posted on how you are getting on with it. I have a mate or two that may be interested in getting involved and are ninja Flash operators.

i’ve found very few decent tutorials for Flash for games online, but most of the best ones can be found here:
http://www.flashkit.com

best bet is that quaint, old-fashioned technology – books! I’ve listed the ones I’ve found useful here:

Flash MX Game Design Demystified (Macromedia Press)
Flash MX Actionscript for Fun & Games (Que)
Flash Games Studio (Friends of Ed)
… and there’s another which I can’t think of off the top of my head, but I’ll post it later

The best overall one was the Friends of Ed one though

re: Flash & databases…. you’ll need a server-side scripting language. I’d recommend PHP, which is relatively easy to install & use, and is very well documented both inside & outside the Flash community

Flash is pretty slow for intensive processing – it’ll all depend on the amount and size of your arrays. Generally, speaking for any kind of data-intensive calculations, I’d go with FreaK_BrutheR’s advice and use the DB

like any good game design, you’ll want to abstract as much of the data from the assets and engine as is possible. This kind of design will give you maximum flexiiblity when it comes to tweaking and refining gameplay, debugging, optimisation, etc.

some sample datasets to store in a data-store of some kind would be:

– any character attributes (speed, strength, etc.)
– NPC attributes
– maybe even asset data (ie. asset locations, tile sets, state, etc.)
– any other gameplay variables

Ive done basic database operations using ASP and flash hand in hand.
Im actually looking at a book I dug out from the past called “Flash 5 Magic with actionscript” which i used to refer to now and again and found very usefull – as tony said there are games specific ones. I would recommend New Riders as key players in multimedia book authoring. I can only go on my own personal experience but I find them concise and to the point and their tutorials actually usefull and not just trickery and showing off. :)

Anyway I find an understanding of OO(object Orientated)programming theory a bonus when trying to work with databases.

Think of the Key variables a character will have – actually think of every variable every character might have would be a better oiption.
Then think how each of these impact each other – armour effecting health loss etc.
Then think of whay they would change – getting health packs armor being attacked etc.

Example
Character 1:
Field 1 – Health 0-100
Field 2 – Armour 0-100
Field 3 – Speed 0-100
Field 4 – Attack Force 0-100
Field 5 – Abilites – Flying yes
Swimming no

Every character will be controlled by a databse entry and every influnce from outside – hits-food pickup etc effects database. I think you could make the animations read from a databse as well but Im not sure what the benifits would be from this – maybe you can think of a reason?

I know very little about programming per say but I understand the logic and theory behind it. Databases work in a very similar way.

Dtatbases can hold graphical images that are read into Flash as far as I know. Could be really cool for showing the weapons a charcter is holding and what state of health he is in (damage skin) etc…

Flash is very powerfull and Flash 6 even more so…. easily enough for your requirements and could produce some excellent results!

More I think of it the more it sounds like a good idea:) Deffo keep us posted!

Mark

some good points there, Mark… you’ve reminded me of a few more things:

– you could avoid the whole server-side scripting /database issue and store your variables as an external XML files and load it on at run-time. Depending on how you set-up this and how many nodes you require, this could result in significantly better performance

– while we’re at it, you could load in bitmaps and mp3 files at run-time too (assuming you’re using MX or above)

the one point Mark made i’d disagree with is that of storing your images in a DB. Better to store the path to the image in the DB table and serve it up from a directory, as BLOBs in DBs are performance and storage nightmares in my experience

Look into using generator by Macromedia for the database perhaps – its apparently very powerfull and will work hand in hand with Flash!

You’re right on the databse image storing too Tony. Bad game designer – No Twinkie!

(oh and i edited the post there while you were writing yours :)

>>You’re right on the databse image storing too Tony. Bad game designer – No Twinkie!

you’ll have to restrict yourself to a strict ration of Snickers, Mark!

on the Generator thing… this was really ony a benefit if you were using Flash 5 (or lower?). The functionality Generator offered (client-side, run-time, free) is now built into Flash MX by default.

The server-side stuff is now only available using Remoting & ColdFusion