Have you ever wanted to use a string variable to call a function? Or combine two completely different strings together to form a function name then call it. Okay, that last bit probably not so much. But if you ever do decide to do it, this tutorial will show you how. It’s all about making strings call functions.

Maybe you’re entirely new to this Tweener thing. Wondering what it is or why in the world you would ever want to use it. Let me give you a list of things you can use Tweener for:

fading in and out any Display Object (MovieClip, TextField, Graphic)
scaling an object up and down or in and out over time.
moving an object across the screen with easing over time.
creating a timer.
rotating an object with easing over time.

So far on AS Gamer it’s been all about programming. That’s great and all, but game development isn’t all about programming. A lot of game development involves design and therefore, graphics. So this time I’m going to take you through the process of creating a laser. This should prove to be useful in a variety of flash games. Graphic design for games is more important than most programming sites give credit. While a great game can stand alone with bad graphics… a great game with great graphics is guaranteed to be on a whole new level. Good design is all in the details. Okay open up Photoshop and let’s dive in.

So what’s the point of having a flash game if there isn’t some way to keep score. Whether it be as simple as an incrementing number or as complex as graphics flying all over the place and icons flashing… your game (if it’s a game) has to track score. Ever since I’ve worked with games (particularly FPS games) we’ve called this our HUD. HUD stands for Heads Up Display and originated in combat air crafts . In our case, the HUD will keep track of our score in our game but it could be used to keep up with ammo, health, lives, awards, names…. anything. So let’s get started making a heads up display to display our scores

Honestly this is an addendum to the previous tutorial in this series. This is a simple adjustment to the code we have already wrote but it will give us character movement that eases towards the mouse position instead of keeping a constant speed. It’s a relatively useful effect, I used it in one of my games, Entropy, for the opponent’s paddle movement. So here we go, let’s make our character follow the mouse easing its way into the position.