Book Image

Flash Multiplayer Virtual Worlds

Book Image

Flash Multiplayer Virtual Worlds

Overview of this book

Flash virtual worlds are some of the most exciting—and profitable—online business being built today. Using Flash, developers can build interactive environments where users can interact with the virtual world and one another, compete, and have fun. Creating a playful environment on an electronic network presents unique challenges as you combine a fun, upbeat frontend with some serious and complex server logic. This handy book assists you in building amazing virtual worlds in no time by implementing ActionScripts in a Flash IDE. With this book in hand, you will build virtual worlds that have avatars walking around and interacting with non playing characters, completing challenging quests, and allowing users to link with real-world friends. The fun begins with first exploring existing virtual world games such as Club Penguin, Mole, Dofus, and World of Warcraft. We will then design our virtual environment. Then we will create avatars and move the avatars in the virtual world. We will add some triggers to add amusement and life to the virtual world. We will allow the avatars to interact with other players and create a buddy list for each user. Then we will integrate buildings and other environment to the virtual world. We will also let the players interact with non-player characters to complete some tasks. Finally, we move on to add interesting quests to the virtual world, which need to be accomplished by the player to gear up to the next level of the game. This example-rich, hands-on guide sequentially develops a multiplayer virtual world—the platform, the environment, quests, avatars, non-playing characters, and interaction between them.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Flash Multiplayer Virtual Worlds
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
Preface

Introducing quests


Quests are some tasks that players can accept and complete in the virtual world. The content of the tasks is often related to the places or people nearby. For instance, a farming quest will most likely appear from a farmer in countryside.

Most probably there is a theme for every virtual world. The world can be set in modern age, middle age, or ancient. The theme can be around pirate, elf, or villages. The tasks and quests will be based on the theme of the virtual world. Players may need to kill sea monsters in a pirate theme virtual world. They may need to make friends to earn points in a social-based virtual world. In our theme, the players may need to contribute to build the town and quest around the town.

One feature of the quest is to tell stories. There is a reason for every quest that makes it meaningful. Pieces of the story will focus one at a time when players are working on the quests. Completing the quests is like putting missing puzzles at the correct place....