[...]... images on the Flash stage and, in conjunction with the Timeline, create your Flash movie The stage and Timeline will be discussed in the next section of the chapter A Flash file is saved with an extension of fla, which is the extension of the source file When this Flash document is ready for export to the Web, it is exported as a swf compressed file To run the swf file, the client machine must have Flash Player... using a symbol in Flash is that the use of symbols reduces the size of the Flash file at run time because the file size is determined by the number of unique symbols in the Flash movie and not the number of times each symbol is used Thus, it is a good idea to create and reuse symbols in a Flash movie to create efficient Flash files There are three kinds of symbols you can build within Flash: movie clips,... panel is the main area with which the developer interacts It is in this panel that you insert the code to control the game assets (graphics and sound files) dynamically and execute the game loop The game loop, in simple terms, checks for interactivity between the player and the game assets and renders the content to the screen The scripting language used to write this code in Flash is ActionScript This... collapsed, depending on your choice The Four Parts of a Flash Document Figure 1.6 The Color Mixer Flash Symbols Symbols are reusable objects created in the Flash authoring environment Once a symbol is created, it is added to the library and can be reused in the current Flash movie or exported to other Flash movies To use the symbol in the current Flash movie, drag the symbol from the library to the stage... 1.1 illustrates the use of a blank keyframe Exercise 1.1 1 If you have not opened Flash yet, go ahead and open a new Flash document If you just opened the Flash program, you will see the different types of documents that can be opened Choose Flash File to open a new Flash document If you already have been working in Flash, then simply choose File, New to open a new document 2 Locate the toolbox (see... Open a new Flash document and use the Drawing tools to create some graphics Also, play with the Color Mixer to get used to the different things you can do with the Flash authoring tool See Figures 1.7 and 1.8 for examples of graphics that you can try, or use your imagination and create your own graphics This chapter provided an introduction to Flash You learned the four main components in the Flash environment,... to Flash The Timeline The Timeline basically consists of a playhead that indicates the current position in a Flash movie, multiple layers for organizing your graphics and other game assets, a large number of empty frames, the current frame, the frame rate, and the elapsed time (see Figure 1.2) The Timeline allows you to arrange and program your game assets in the layers and frames to follow the game. .. performance, Adobe recommends the most current version of Internet Explorer (IE) and Flash Player At the time of this writing, the current versions are IE 7 and Flash Player 9 Flash Player can be downloaded freely from the Adobe Web site: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer9/ The Four Parts of a Flash Document The Flash authoring environment includes four main parts: the stage, where you include... the user to see or interact with; the Timeline, which you use to organize your game assets (graphics, sound files, and the speed for those graphics); the tools and panels, which provide you with the means to create your game assets; and finally, the symbols, which are the buttons, movie clips, and graphics that provide the required interactivity to the user The Stage The Flash stage is similar to a dais... dais (a raised platform) on which actors appear to perform a show In Flash, the stage is a rectangular area The stage is set to default dimensions of 550 Â 400 pixels with a white background where you place your The Four Parts of a Flash Document graphics, videos, buttons, and so on, which will be rendered at run time Objects placed within the boundaries of the stage are the only objects visible to the .