[Review Question] A book towards learning AS3

[Evaman]

Hi.
I was wondering about buying a book to learn more AS3. And why the book is because I haven't been home enough along with time to get into heavy tutorials on the computer. However, I've been looking at a book store, and I found this book from Flash Game University that seems to go over all the basics and then towards the gaming direction with the coding. It seems to be what I'm looking for since I'm trying to accomplish a Flash game. Of course I just want to make sure that I putting my money on the right book.

Any suggestions or anything?

And sorry if I posted this in the wrong place, but it does revolve around AS3.

[Liquid Genius]

I am not familiar with that book. Recently, I bought Essential Actionscript 3.0 by Colin Moock and published by O'Reilly. It has a ton of information, but I am slightly frustrated and wishing it had a much wider view of the use of object orientation and the strategy for laying out a website completely in a oop format. Who knows, give me a few weeks and maybe Ill catch on. I am finding that when I ran into trouble in AS1 or AS2 some simple research would usually enlighten me. Not so with AS3, I need a completely different mindset in order to deal with the object orientation. This makes the learning curve huge for me. So to cut short on the rant, I do recommend Essential Actionscript 3.0 you'll find a ton of information there. I have many older Actionscript books by Colin and have always found them exceptionally useful.

[illustratedlife]

Foundation Actionscript 3 Animation
$20 on friendsofed.com

Buy it. You will thank me later.

[Liquid Genius]

Yeah, I almost bought it last week at Borders. Thanks for the recommend, Ill snag it.

[Creative Action]

Which one? Or are they the same?

Foundation Actionscript 3.0 Animation: Making Things Move! by Keith Peters (Paperback - April 2, 2007)

Foundation ActionScript Animation: Making Things Move! (Foundation) by Keith Peters (Paperback - Oct 17, 2005)

Thanks

[illustratedlife]

The first one. Note:
1) The phrase "ActionScript 3.0"
2) The publication date

If you are trying to learn AS3, get the newer book. As Liquid Genius pointed out, you can easily learn AS1/2 without a book. (You can with AS3 too, but Peters has a great chapter introducing the mindset of AS3. You'll learn much quicker after reading it).

[deadlock32]

my recommendation >>>
Foundation Actionscript 3.0 Animation: Making Things Move! by Keith Peters (Paperback - April 2, 2007)

[Evaman]

Thanks so much for the advice guys.

Advice taken!

[Liquid Genius]

Illustratedlife and deadlock32... your right! I bought it this evening and it has helped a ton. Much easier to read than Moock's book. Peter's book admittedly leaves alot out, but it gets you over the hump quickly and then you can start thinking about the complicated stuff. Very down to earth explainations.

[Evaman]

But just to be sure, this material will cover a lot of gaming ideas such as tiles right?

That's what I want to get into after getting to know some basics of the language.

[691175002]

Adobe has a few free books on their site:
http://www.adobe.com/support/documentation/en/flash/
(Programming ActionScript 3.0 is 800 pages)

Once you understand the logic of a language, pretty much any programming book or webpage regardless of language can be useful.

[Liquid Genius]

Here are the chapter titles:
Basic Animation Concepts
Basics of Actionscript 3.0 for Animation
Trigonometry for Animation
Rendering Techniques
Velocity and Acceleration
Boundaries and Friction
User Interaction: Moving Objects Around
Easing and Springing
Collision Detection
Coordinate Rotation and Bouncing Off Angles
Billard Ball Physics
Particle Attraction and Gravity
Forward Kinematics: Making Things Walk
Inverse Kinematics: Draggind and Reaching
3D Basics
3D Lines and Fills
Backface Culling and 3D Lighting
Matrix Math
Tips and Tricks

[cancerinform]

Click on my footer.

[Evaman]

Click on my footer.

I'll look into it.

As for the rest of the forums, I took the advice with Keith Peter's book. I trust that this was the right decision and hoping that it will benefit helping me become a little better with AS3.

Thanks.