Books!?

As I continue with my flash-studies and my design document I get more and more questions popping up in my head. The reason is mainly that I havnt read a single book about gameprogramming in flash, actionsscripts, or flash in general. Everything I learnt so far is from online-tutorials…

So, from my experience in C++, PHP and others, it is always better to start out with a good book, since online tutorials almost never cover thoose 6-700 pages of basic knowledge that is good to know. Only online-tutorial that I found that was capable of explaining every single point was a HTML-tutorial 9 years ago…

So therefore, I ask all of you a little more experienced actionscripters and flash-ers to share what books are good for reading. I want to know the basics as my right-pocket. Even though I already got knowledge about variables, containers, loops and such from my C++ studies, I still feel that I want to redo everything in actionscripts, since even though it might seems similiar there is alot of differences.

So, what I look for currently is good books that covers the basics in flash 8 and actionscripting in general:

  • The eviroment in flash 8, the functions and such that can be found
  • The basics of ActionScripting
  • A book that covers lowlevel game-programming using AS/flash
  • A book that takes it further
  • Networking, using XML, socket-servers and other stuff.

So, even though Im currently capable to do some stuff in flash, I feel that I would be better of if I got the basics covered fully, not only the parts I currently see a use for.

Also, if there is any online-tutorials that you feel covers this type of stuff good, feel free to provide a link. Then Ill have something to do while waiting for the books to arrive :wink:

Best Regards