Building Games with Flex: Tic-Tac-Toe V1 Code Explained Pt 1

Part of my goals with these posts is teaching Flex for those just getting started.  What better way to learn Flex than by building a game of Tic-Tac-Toe.  Code is code and lessons can be learned/shared despite the final output.  You’ll (hopefully) learn tricks and methodologies for helping you code non-game projects via the code that I share and explain in this series.

There are  3 files that make up the complete game (right click to view/download the source) :

1. Main.mxml – This has the Application tag
2. GamePiece.mxml – This is the X/O game piece
3. GameBoard.mxml – This is the tic-tac-toe gameboard

I’ll go over the 3 files, explaining logic on why/what from both the Flex and gaming perspective.

Building Games with Flex: Tic-Tac-Toe Version 1

Getting Started

Note,  while this isn’t anything like PlayCrafter, it is my small step into the huge world that is game making.  To get into gaming, I figured it would be best to start with the language I use day in and out: Adobe Flex.  To be honest, I can’t remember the last time I coded just for fun with Flex.  Most non-Workday Flex code I’ve built on my own time has been for 360Conferences, for some technical training/presentation or for my articles on Adobe’s sites.  I forgot just how fun programming can be.

I set out late Friday night/early Saturday morning with one goal:  Exit the weekend with a working version of a game.  I didn’t want to put much game theory in.  I didn’t want to OOP the heck out of the code.  I just wanted to build something that I could play and post on the net to share.

Gaming: Playing both sides

Being an OG – Original Gamer

For as long as I can remember, I’ve gamed (specifically the video kind).  Before I got married, I spent almost every birthday I can remember at Chuck E. Cheese’s (even my 21st!)  To me, birthday equated to gaming.  In addition to those special days, I have a lot of memories in life associated with gaming:

• When I was 6 or 7,  I remember me and my dad going to our frequent hangout, an arcade down the street.  It was actually a miniature golf course, but we never did anything but game.  We’d play Vanguard together.  As you can see by this image, it had this unique setup.  It was one of the first games I can remember that had multiple buttons.  My dad would drive (use the control stick) while I sat shotgun (took control of the 4 direction shoot buttons).  Oddly, I think this contributed to my sense of it being okay to take the back seat for the greater good.  As long as the team wins, it doesn’t matter which position you play.

Special CS4 meeting at Adobe’s HQ in San Jose

I just wanted to do a quick post to mention that I’m hosting a very special CS4 meeting on Wednesday, September 24th.  The meeting will be at Adobe’s Headquarters in San Jose.

We’ll be talking about the new Creative Suite 4 that was just announced.  We’ll have representation from the Illustrator team there to talk about what’s new in CS4.  If we’re lucky, we may also get a rep to show us some of the crazy new features of the CS4 Production Suite.

More details can be found at the Silvafug site.  See you tomorrow!

Birthday Thoughts: Resource Utilization

The phrase “Resource Utilization” has so many meanings in my life currently, that I have no idea where to start.

At Workday, I (relatively) recently got a new manager, Charlie Boyle.  One of his strengths is definitely resource utlization.  Every manager has their own style and no style is right or wrong.  However, Charlie has brought some great plans to the team.  He’s brought on some processes and tools that make our lives as developers more productive. I don’t think we as a team work any less harder, but we’re definitely working a lot smarter due to the resource management.

My Silicon Valley Flex User Group (silvafug) is sorting being revamped as I write this.  At our most recent meeting, several of us got together to discuss how to better the user group in a variety of ways.  After Wednesday’s meeting, we’ll likely be officially announcing the launch of Silvafug South (and by default, Silvafug North).  There are a lot of great people in the user group with great ideas on how to make it better for everyone.  I look forward to working with them.

Birthday Thoughts: Philanthropy

Yesterday was my birthday.  I turned 33 years old.

Ever since I can remember, September has been a time of contemplation for me.  Around Labor Day, I take advantage of the three day weekend to sorta turn inward.  I take inventory of my life in its totality.  I see what I have or have not done, where I can do better and if I need to make a shift in any area of my life.  Some big decisions that have been made during this time include the following:

• Organizing a coup d’etat of the literary/writer’s club my senior year of high school ( I put out more publications that year then the club did the previous 3 years combined, w00t!)
• Meeting my wife’s family to see if I could marry into it (they passed and we got engaged in October)
• Bought my first house, signed docs on my birthday (though later backed out to pay for the wedding instead)
• Got married to my beautiful wife (My reminder: 18 (my b-day) + 4 (ever) = 22 (my anniversary))