Resources

I intend to organize this page and make it more dynamic and filterable. For the time being, this is a dump of my personal bookmarks, resources and blogs that I follow. Just promise me you won’t fall in love with another site and leave me for it. :)

Getting Started with AS3
Understanding Garbage Collection – Whether you’re completely new to Actionscript or if you’re a recent convert to AS3, understanding how the Flash Player handles garbage collection is essential. For the visual learners out there, Grant skinner also built a nice interactive demo of how the garbage collector works.
Senocular’s Getting Started with AS3 – Senocular has written a pretty ambition document for getting up to speed on Actionscript 3. You also cannot afford to miss his Actionscript 3 Tip of the Day thread on Kirupa.
Actionscript 3 Language Reference – Ever since Adobe removed the help docs from the Flash IDE, this has been my home away from home.

Tutorials / Forums
Flash Game Dojo [AS3] – Learn how to make Flash games using Flixel and FlashPunk. Read this article for more info on Flash Game Dojo.
Tile Based Games Tutorial [AS1/AS2] – The code is a little dated at this point, but the concepts are still valid.
Scrolling Engine [AS2] – Again the code is pre-AS3 but the logic is sound.
Moxiecode [AS1] – A whole bunch of Flash games, experiments and tutorials from way back when. Old as they are (Flash 4 & 5) much of what’s here is still worth a look.
Actionscript.org [AS1/AS2/AS3]- In my early years as an Actionscript programmer this is where I spent all my time. I basically have this site and its great community for teaching me Actionscript…I half learned by asking and half by trying to solve other people’s questions. Faffy, McGiver, Ricod and more…miss you guys….sorry I disappeared :/
Kenny Bellew [AS2] – If you still haven’t made the leap to AS3 and have to do something with sound, this is one of the best sound tutorials out there.
GotoAndLearn.com [AS2/AS3] – Lots of video tutorials on Flash, Actionscript, Flex and a few other things.
ASGamer [AS3] – A bunch of game tutorials for Actionscript programmers.
Kongregate Dev Forums [AS2/AS3] – There’s a lot of great game-centric Actionscript discussion going on over at Kongregate.

Actionscript Blogs / Sites
Grant Skinner – If you use Actionscript, follow him. Enough said. His post about Weakly Reference Listeners in AS3 is a must read.
Pixelwit – A great blog about all things Flash, from Adobe gripes all the way down to Actrionscript techniques.
Emanuele Feronato – A blog covering actionscript, css, Flex, Photoshop and all sorts of other stuff. I haven’t always agreed with her approach to game programming, but I’ve found plenty of good stuff on here too.
Kirupa – Possibly my favorite flash resource. Kirupa has all sorts of great Flash/Actionscript resources. And Senocular hangs out here answering all sorts of Actionscript 3 questions. He has an Actionscript 3 Tip of the Day thread that’s a must read for anyone who writes Actionscript, old or new.
Richard Lord – Great blog on Actionscript, Flash, Flex and the like.
Keith Hair – A blog with lots of great actionscript tips.
MochiLand – Lots of great tips on marketing and making Flash games.
Jackson Dunston – His stuff tends to be pretty high level. He tends to do a lot of speed tests and other comparisons to determine what the fastest or most efficient approaches are.
Flash and Math – A great site dedicated to solving math related Actionscripting problems.
Senocular – A great blog dedicated to Flash and Actionscript. He also has a serious library of classes worth borrowing (it’s ok, that’s why they’re on the site)

Frameworks / Classes
Flash Punk [AS3] – FlashPunk is a free ActionScript library designed for developing 2D Flash games.
Greesock Tweening Classes – Impressive classes for creating all sorts of tweeny goodness in pure AS3. There are paid versions of the classes that extend the free ones, but you can do quite a bit with the free classes.
Collision Detection Kit [AS3] – Pixel level collision detection framework. I’ve had some issues with it, but depending on what you need it to do this might be a perfect fit.
A* Pathfinding Class [AS3] – If you play with it enough you’ll find it doesn’t always find the shortest path. But this is still a very useful AS3 implementation of the A* technique.
Flixel [AS3] – You know it from Cnabalt and hopefully Gravity Hook (go play GH if you haven’t already). Now you can have it in your own home! Flixel is an AS3 API for creating games that handles all sorts of common game programming needs.
AS3 Base64 Encoding Class [AS3] – Building a scoring engine and want to keep your data a secret? Steve Webster has written a class that’ll give you a nice head start.
Richard Lord’s Code Repository [AS3] – There are quite a few useful classes here as well as a Tetris engine. I’ll have to see how that holds up against my comments here.
Senocular’s Actionscript Stash [AS1/AS2/AS3] – Tons of Actionscript classes up for grabs. His AS3 KeyObject is particularly popular.

Actionscript Physics Engines
Box2D [AS3] – An open source port of Erin Catto’s powerful c++ physics library Box2D.
Ape (formerly Flade) [AS3] – APE (Actionscript Physics Engine) is a free AS3 open source 2D physics engine for use in Flash and Flex, released under the MIT License. APE is written and maintained by Alec Cove.
Fisix Engine [AS3] – A verlet based physics engine for flash written in Actionscript 3.0. I won’t pretend to know what “verlet” means. Go ask Wikipedia.

Effects
AS3 BitmapData Glitch Generator
Flint [As3] – Open source particle system

General Game Design/Programming
A* Pathfinding Explanation – This is probably the best description of how the A* Pathfinding algorithm works. It’s language independent, this is just a plain English description of the technique.
8/16 Bit Sound Generator – The Super Flash Bros. have a nice sound generator great for making old-school sfx. The “app” lets you randomly generate, save, export and tweak sounds of all different types.
The Rules of Play by Katie Salen & Eric Zimmerman – A book all about games and game design, not limited to video games. Written for game scholars, game developers, and interactive designers, Rules of Play is a textbook, reference book, and theoretical guide. It is the first comprehensive attempt to establish a solid theoretical framework for the emerging discipline of game design.
A Theory of Fun by Ralph Koster – A general look at “fun”…doesn’t that sound, well, fun?

Misc.
ToonMonkey – A few Flash extensions animators might find helpful.
Flash Game Portal Database – Got a game and don’t know where to show it off. Here’s a nice list of Flash Game portals on the net.

Actionscript Books
Essential Actionscript 3.0 by Colin Moock – This is a must have for all AS3 programmers.
Foundation Actionscript 3.0: Making Things Move! by Keith Peters – A great resource for handy stuff like acceleration, rotating a clip toward the mouse, collision detection and more. The source code for all his books can be found on the Friends of Ed website.