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Family Friendly Gaming knows there are plenty of gamers who are also aspiring video game developers. Each and every single video game developer had to start somewhere. Many of them cut their teeth on simple, easy to create video games to get their feet wet. After all one has to learn how to stand, before one learns how to run. Todd Perkins has a new book out called Nintendo Wii Flash Game Creator’s Guide. The publisher is well known McGraw-Hill. It is important to note that this book is written in a simple form that game designers of almost every level should be able to follow.

The would be game developer needs to have a Flash program, and a website where they can upload via FTP (editor: which means an FTP program like FileZilla which is free for download). Adobe CS3 is the Flash program used in the book. The really cool news is this book teaches how to code in Flash, and that is a skill used beyond the Nintendo Wii. This works in the Personal Computer (PC) World, internet programmers, and a few more that may be of interest. Here is an exerpt from the book from Chapter 3:

“Hiding the mouse cursor will not hide the mouse cursor on the Wii. It will
work for testing in Flash and on web browsers installed on computers, though,
so if anyone wants to play your game from a computer, they will not see the mouse.

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CreatingYourFirstWiiGame11. Save the file, and keep it open for the next exercise.
8. Test the movie. Notice you no longer see the mouse cursor. Nice!
9. The last step is to set the mask_mc movie clip as a mask for the all_mc movie
clip. You can do this in ActionScript by using the setMask method. The
setMask method masks the movie clip that calls it using the mask passed in
parentheses. Below the last code you wrote, type all_mc.setMask(mask_mc);.
The completed code should match this snippet:
function startGame():Void

{
mask_mc.startDrag(true);
Mouse.hide();
all_mc.setMask(mask_mc);
}

10. Test the movie. You should see the mask working as shown in the following
illustration, so all you see of the all_mc movie clip is what is revealed by the
mask_mc movie clip (its mask). Cool! Now you are ready to determine a win.”

Once you or one of your friends has created a flash game, then they can give the link to anyone interested. Wii owners can then go to the Internet channel and experience this blossoming video game developer. There will be additional information on this book found in Family Friendly Gaming #18 (due out the last week of June 2008), or pick up the book.

All of the exerpts are copyrighted property of McGraw-Hill, and Todd Perkins. Any duplication of them is a violation of copyright law. Family Friendly Gaming received special permission to include a sample of specific material.