About the Author

Mark Bocek holds an MA in Dramatic Arts (!!?) from UC Berkeley, a BA from Reed College, and an AAA from the Art Institute of Seattle in multimedia and web design. He teaches Flash computer animation, authoring, web scripting and writing at the Art Institute of Seattle and at Cascadia Community College. He works for a select number of private clients as a designer. He has worked as an editor, writer or designer at a variety of companies, including Starbucks, Boeing and the Seattle Repertory Theatre.

blue world ship

Starting Out With ActionScript
and Games for Artists & Designers

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Introduction

If you're a beginner at anything, be careful asking an expert: you may get a complicated answer that will leave you more confused than you were before. This is especially true of a high-tech subject like game authoring. Truth to tell, some people take very easily to coding in Flash and Director, and it's hard for these guys to see why a normal person just can't get it.

These pages are not for them. There are a lot of sources for those guys, such as the Macromedia site itself. But for artists who have to work hard to pick up the technical side of interactive authoring, there seem to be very few places to go. Artists think in pictures and not numbers. They need not only to be shown what scripting methods are available in ActionScript (and Lingo), but also how these can be practically utilized in real projects. I'm writing these lessons, tips and tutorials with that in mind.

I must say that I envy expert scripters, I still have to work hard at coding. That puts me on your side when it comes to explaining how it works. I think this is simple stuff that functions well, presented in a progressive, visual environment. Since these tutorials are in form of an ongoing "project", you can more easily follow the train of thought, and thus use both the techniques and the process to guide your own project work. I've travelled the road you're on, and I hope I can smooth out the bumps for you.

— Mark Bocek