HD Video

CartoonSmart was the first training website to offer HD video. Seriously. Before YouTube was even founded, we realized screencasts needed to be way bigger than what others were offering. Nothing will replace books in the training spectrum, but sometimes you just want to put your feet up and watch someone else work. Since 2004, our customers haven't had to squint.

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App Packaging

Learn how to develop games with Actionscript 3 and export them to either iOS or Android. Every version of Flash higher than CS5.5 can package your games for both devices. Previous versions of Flash can still use the optimizing techniques taught in this lesson, and export as an AIR app or simply run the game within a web browser.

Relearn your favorite programming language.


Actionscript 3 has grown to be a robust and powerful programming language but it comes at a cost of CPU and memory, two things that are limited on mobile devices. If you've tried to export any of your current or previously-made fast-paced Flash games to iOS or Android with little to no modifications you might have come across this reality. Here's what this course will do for you...

  • Teach you to think different about the Actionscript language.
  • Learn new variables types and pass on some old CPU-hungry favorites, like Movieclips.
  • Discover new programming paradigms that can unleash the full potential of your game.
  • Program a complete game running at 40fps with animation, interaction, scoring, collision, and sound.
  • Work towards not just creating an app, but an app engine.

Your Instructor's Flash-made App...


Is this shameless advertising? No. We think it's important our students learn to build an app from someone who's been there before.


Download it from the App Store

Course Outline



Part 1: Sprite Sheets, Blitting Techniques, Image Classes, Resource Loaders and More.

As Yoda said, you must unlearn what you have learned. And that's a lot of what Session 1 focuses on. Past Actionscript-programmers will need to unlearn using movieclips. Movieclips create too much CPU overhead. Instead you'll learn how to use Sprite Sheets and Blitting techniques for rapidly displaying frames of art.

  • Exporting artwork for sprite sheets.
  • Using Texture Packer to create sprite sheets.
  • Converting the JSON output from Texture Packer to an Actionscript object.
  • Texture Map for reading in the converted JSON object from Texture Packer as an Actionscript object of coordinates.
  • Building the Image Class.
  • Creating Vector Objects, an optimized array to use less memory in the processor at run-time.
  • Good coding habits for clearing out references to prevent memory leaks.
  • Animation Classes that extend the Image Class for frame sequences.
  • Learn alternatives to Event Listeners to reduce CPU overhead and possible memory leaks.
  • Use Resource Loader to manage references so you only have one copy of a resource in memory.
  • Application Model Class, all of the application's core data will go in this class to reduce replication and runaway code.

Session 2: Building up the project to test on the iPhone.

Session 2 continues with the same project files from Session 1. Now we will add code for enemies, collision, interaction, etc to build a more CPU intensive example which we can test on the iPhone itself and see how well our optimized code is running in the "real world" outside of the walled garden of our computer.

  • Entity Class, built off the Animation Class.
  • Extending the Entity Class for the Ninja and Enemy Class.
  • Moving enemies across the screen.
  • Object Pooling with the Enemy Pool.
  • When to use Timers vs Enter Frame.
  • Collision detection.
  • User interaction.
  • Keeping score.
  • How to deploy to the iPhone for a true test of the memory usage and frame per second rates.

Example Video

Below you can watch a sample from the course. After your purchase, you can download every video to your computer to watch anytime offline.







10 Hours of Training.


Only $30.00. You can download these videos directly to your computer. Each session includes source files and free updates (you'll be notified by email whenever there's an update to either the course or collection of source projects).



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