If you haven’t upgraded to the latest version of Mac OS X, go out and get it. I was a little concerned because each version of an OS typically requires more resources and I expected things to get a little slower. To my surprise, things are quite a bit snappier. Fewer spinning beach balls with multiple applications open. Faster browsing. I did do an “Erase and Install” to clear out the cobwebs that had built up over the last 2.5 years, so that may have been some help. But I also did a simple upgrade to an iMac and my wife’s first comment to me was, “Did you install something? Because everything is a lot faster.”

From what I understand a lot of the changes are in the subsystems that will help developers build applications. I can’t wait to see what people come up with, but the speed improvements and Spaces alone have made this a worthwhile upgrade.

This chapter went into programming more specific to ActionScript 3.0. It started off by showing how to add graphics and text to a Flash movie. Then showed how to add event listeners to handle user input. Next came how to animate objects and then being able to drag the objects around and detect collisions. The chapter ended with some basic examples of data reading and writing, and a catch-all section that included playing sounds, loading screens, and protecting your game.

I breezed through chapter 1 because I’ve done a little Flash before and the chapter was simple Flash stuff and some basic ActionScript flow of control which is just like any number of languages I already know.

One thing that surprised me was that when I saved one of the ActionScript classes in my a directory I specified, I got a class not found in classpath error. Classpaths in ActionScript was not something I was expecting to run into. It was easy to specify, but just a little surprising.

The other surprise was how responsive Flash CS3 was. My PowerBook is almost 3 years old and when I first got it, I was trying to do some stuff with a version of Flash that was not really snappy. I figured, new version, more stuff, slower. But it really is pretty fast. Maybe it’ll slow down as I do more complex stuff, but I don’t remember the old version feeling this responsive at any time.

My next action is to learn Flash game programming by following the book ActionScript 3.0 Game Programming University. I hope to complete the book by the end of the year which equates to about a chapter a week. I’m using the online edition which I can use through the Santa Clara County Library.

Here is my, mostly finished, game, Catechism. Here are some screen shots.

So here’s the list of things that aren’t quite right:

• No application icon
• Non-final character and tablet graphics
• Some transition tiles don’t show properly in the build
• Only one background song
• Unused resources which cause the application to be large

That being said, here are the downloads. Just unzip and double-click.

Catechism - Mac
Catechism - Windows

I was a little unhappy that my PowerBook need to be repaired for the 4th time in 2.5 years. A benefit was I got a new keyboard (there was a broken key and some other serious wear), logic boards A and B replaced, and a new sound board. I’m hoping this can now last a couple years until I can afford something new.