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

Updating and patching the virtual world


Flash virtual world is a kind of online service. The characteristic of online service is that the update is very easy so that we can keep updating the Flash virtual world with new features and bug fixes. When we are operating the virtual world, we get valuable data from players and know where to improve the virtual world.

We should keep developing the virtual world after deploying it. This will include bug fixes, improvement patches, and content updates such as quests or new area.

The World of Warcraft was originally designed to have a maximum 60 levels for the game characters and 300 quests. After operating the World of Warcraft for years with patches and expansions, there are now a maximum 85 levels and over 8000 quests.

Players want fresh new things when they are playing in the virtual world. Without updates and patches, a virtual world will soon be forgotten by players and may lead to a failure result.