ActionScript for Multiplayer Games and Virtual Worlds
- By Jobe Makar
- Published Jul 23, 2009 by New Riders. Part of the One-Off series.
- Copyright 2010
- Dimensions: 7-3/8 X 9-1/8
- Pages: 312
- Edition: 1st
- Book
- ISBN-10: 0-321-64336-4
- ISBN-13: 978-0-321-64336-0
- eBook (Watermarked)
- ISBN-10: 0-321-67945-8
- ISBN-13: 978-0-321-67945-1
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Product Author Bios
Jobe Makar is a founder of and Chief Game and Virtual World Architect for Electrotank (www.electrotank.com), a company that specializes in online multiplayer game and virtual world development technologies and services. He is a developer on the widely used EUP™ virtual world and MMOG platform (www.eupsite.com). Jobe has developed over 200 Flash games and 9 virtual worlds over the last 10 years and has authored several books on advanced Flash, ActionScript, and game programming.
The demand for multiplayer games and virtual worlds has exploded over the last few years. Not only do companies want them for site stickiness through social networking, but developers have tremendous interest in exploring this niche area. While developing multiplayer content is challenging, it isn’t as difficult as you might think, and it is fun and highly rewarding!
ActionScript for Multiplayer Games and Virtual Worlds explains fundamental multiplayer concepts from connecting to a server to real-time latency hiding techniques. In this book you’ll learn:
- How to connect users to achieve real-time interaction
- When to make decisions on the server versus the game client
- Time synchronization techniques
- How to use dead reckoning smoothing to hide network latency
- About tile-based games the isometric view
- Techniques for customizing and rendering avatars in a virtual world
In addition, you’ll learn everything that goes into building:
- A real-time multiplayer tank battle game
- A real-time multilayer cooperative game
- A virtual world
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31 of 36 people found the following review helpful
Nothing more than a promotional piece, By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: ActionScript for Multiplayer Games and Virtual Worlds (Paperback)
I was very excited about this book when I read about it here on Amazon and read others reviews, but was very sadly disappointed by the content of this book when it finally arrived. First, it's very small - much smaller than any other book worth reading on Actionscript. Second, it boils down to little more than a promotional piece for ElectroServer - the commercial game server written by the company started by the author. It lacks any clear examples, and frankly has more 'this topic is too complex to be covered in this book' statements than any other book I've ever read... ever. The examples given are disjointed - I've not seen a single actual class in the whole book - just insignificant bits and pieces of code that don't go together. Lots of examples show just a tiny fraction of the whole class and leave you either having to dig through a download of content that should have been included with the book for the amount of money they charged for this fireplace starter, or imagine it for...
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33 of 42 people found the following review helpful
Big on ideas, fails on examples, By Eric the Red (San Francisco CA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: ActionScript for Multiplayer Games and Virtual Worlds (Paperback)
I'm really motivated to add the concepts in the book to my Actionscript arsenal, so I was excited for the arrival of this book and diving in. The book is an excellent crash course in multi-player game theory and fills a much-needed place in the AS book market.The book fails, however, when it comes to the examples. While carefully avoiding the need to own Flash or Flex to complete the exercises and thereby lowering the barrier to entry, the author requires a free 3rd-party AS editor, Flash Develop, which doesn't have a Mac client. So Mac users, beware, this oversight throws up a road block right away. The author says the projects can be imported into Flex Builder, but I haven't gotten this to work yet. Some projects require the fl.controls class which isn't native to the Flex SDK, so there's another road block. I'm still working on this one. I did get a few examples to run from the Flash IDE, by creating an FLA and assigning the Main.as class as its... Read more
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Great book on multiplayer concepts that you can apply for any language, By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: ActionScript for Multiplayer Games and Virtual Worlds (Paperback)
This book contains a lot of information, but the most helpful are the concepts used when working with multiplayer programming. The book does use their socket server, but they did write it in a way that you can apply the concepts for whatever language you're working in. Things like interpolation, and ways to try to sync the client and server. A decent amount of information about lag compensation in games, that I haven't found elsewhere.It is currently my main go to book while working in kyronet in Java. There could be a lot more information, and I would love to see a follow up book, but I haven't been able to find as much information to actually start multiplayer game programming, as what is in this book. Definitely recommended! |
Online Sample Chapter
ActionScript for Multiplayer Games and Virtual Worlds: Introducing ElectroServer
Table of Contents
1. Web Game Landscape
2. Connecting Users
3. Security: You vs. Everyone Else
4. Introducing ElectroServer
5. Chat
6. Where Decisions are Made
7. Real-time Movement
8. Lobby System
9. Real-time Tank Game
10. Tile-based Games
11. Cooperative Game Play
12. Isometric View
13. Avatars
14. Virtual Worlds
15. Buddies and Relationships
16. User Homes
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