I've been doing front end web developement (HTML, javascript, CSS), and multimedia (Flash, Director, etc) for the past 10 years professionally. Gaming online has always been a passion and a hobby for me and with the new Object Oriented Code base of Actionscript 3.0 I was really hungry to try using my new knowledge of classes and design patterns to break into something more than simple "moon lander" and boring static trivia selection style games. I've been building interfaces for years and code is something i am familiar with but what i needed was someone to take the time to show me, the thinking behind the game engines, the basic structures and the way of problem solving from a purely event driven environment (like a website) to a continuous rendering environment (like video game).

The book did exactly that. It is exactly what i was looking for. It takes me through the structures, how to build the kinds of games a first timer wants to learn. It was excellently explained and very easy to use.

It helped my find my weaknesses (over structuring the framework, and overloading my main functions) by using non-graphic code examples that really boil down to the meat of the development.

Best of all it has invigorated my coding passion and I hope to have some great releases in the next year back into the community to play with.

Thank you Gary Rosenzweig for stepping behind the curtain and giving the rest of us a hand up to the next level. The book is worth twice what i paid for it ($50 Barnes and Noble).

-Brian Wilgus