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How it’s going so far

Flash is so frustrating for me. It’s not that the program is especially difficult to learn or terribly designed, necessarily; I’m just irritated that I’m choosing the slow but steady path in teaching myself how to use it again after years without so much as dabbling in the software.

The last Flash project I made was completed in late 2006, so it’s been nearly four years since I touched the software. Things are fundamentally similar, even after Adobe bought out Macromedia and attempted to Adobe-ize the interface (largely a good thing), so the pace at which my beginner-level Lynda.com tutorials are moving is maddening. I’m trying to remind myself that if I just stick to it and take my time to really nail the fundamentals I’ll be better off in the long run, but that’s not how I’ve taught myself tools in the past. At a certain point, guided instruction is far less helpful than poking around for hours and figuring out things through trial and error. It’s how I got a feel for Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, Final Cut Pro and Vegas. Even when I was 10 years old and first poking around in HyperCard on an old Macintosh, the books I read only got me so far — after a while I wanted to simply see how far my knowledge and imagination could take me.

I’m frustrated because my goal from the outset has been to start making games. The consensus from all sides of the games industry is that the only way to become great at making games is to just start making games and keep making them. There’s no introductory path or universal hierarchy of toolsets; all that matters is being able to make something that works and, ideally, can speak for itself why it was worth making.

So I’ll stick with the ten-minute explanations of how to use the shape tools to draw every sort of oval the mind can conjure up. I’ll try not to fall asleep. But fortunately, if I stick with my schedule I’ll be scripting within a week, and that’s when things get interesting.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, May 13th, 2010 at 11:11 am and is filed under game design, personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “How it’s going so far”

  1. Calen Robinette Says:
    May 13th, 2010 at 1:12 pm

    Hey Nick!

    I’d love to do some audio design for anything you come up with. I’ll be sure to keep up with how you’re doing and just shoot me an email if you need anything done. I’m pretty good with mac based digital audio interfaces (Pro Tools, Logic) and I have a copy of Sound Forge that I can learn how to use if what you’re doing is mostly PC based.

    Good luck! It’s good to see you pursuing what you want to do.

    -Calen

  2. Nick Cummings Says:
    May 16th, 2010 at 9:27 am

    Hey Calen,

    Thanks so much for the positive feedback! It’d be fantastic to have you on board in whatever capacity that you’d like to contribute. Audio’s definitely one of the things I know almost nothing about — I only took one electronic music course in college — so yeah, I’ll definitely be in touch.

    I’m meeting with a friend of mine this morning to discuss the process and practicality of working on a game with people in different parts of the country, so I’ll get in touch with you after that and let you know what my current thoughts are on platform, game concepts, etc. Whatever we do will almost definitely be cross-platform and probably in Flash since that’s what I’m currently learning, so you should be able to stick to your Mac-based applications.

    Thanks for the encouragement! I’ll be in touch.

    - Nick

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