need help with... lots of stuff

[MartinC.]

I have a lot of stuff that I need some help on, and instead of posting different threads for each one, I have decided to post a list of everything here (it will probably grow bigger...).

List (below)
-'launching' a website
*I need to know how to 'launch' a website
*How to make a website that loads pretty fast
*How to make add space on it
*How to much do you usaually make per add
*how to code a website so that you can post comments on it
*how to make a website were I can just 'log in' to it and post something instead of having to edit the website.
*how to make a thing that lets you download a file off the website

-game funding and copywriting
*were can you get funded on a flash game without giving all or most of the games
wrights to the website who founded it.
*does anyone know any contests you can enter?
*how to get a game copyrighted and were?

-AS3 and flash
*good websites that help with AS3
*any good books that cover actionscript
*how to optimize stuff
*if I want to make a game with really good graphics and lots of levels,
and need to optimize it, is there any way I can do it without making the
graphics a lower quality

and that's pretty much all of the stuff i can think of for now...

 

[Daeva]

Well, as far as your first plethora of questions two words: word press.
Copyrighting: http://www.copyright.gov/register/
I cannot answer the other two questions, primarily because it's 4:45 A.M. and my lack of Concerta is causing me to become fixated with going on a posting spree on CF that I CANNOT pull myself away from. But best of luck to you in what sounds like a hefty project.

 

[berry120]

Well, as far as your first plethora of questions two words: word press.

Drupal and Joomla are two alternatives - personally I use Drupal. To run any of those you'll need a MySQL database, which most hosts will provide. Some will even provide software to install some of the above for you which makes things easier still - this isn't essential however.

You COULD code everything you need by hand, but it just isn't worth it (and you'd likely get something wrong and open up your site to all manner of security flaws!)

-game funding and copywriting
*were can you get funded on a flash game without giving all or most of the games
wrights to the website who founded it.
*does anyone know any contests you can enter?
*how to get a game copyrighted and were?

You don't need to do anything specific to copyright a game - you can release it under any license you want to stop / enable people to do things that you choose. Have a look at the GPL and creative commons licenses if you want some ideas. As for funding on a flash game, that's very unlikely to come unless you're already established (and even then you'll usually get funding once you've completed it, not to write it!) I don't think there's one set procedure, it'll probably differ depending on the site you submit to. If you want to know for a specific site, best bet is to email them and find out.

if I want to make a game with really good graphics and lots of levels,
and need to optimize it, is there any way I can do it without making the
graphics a lower quality

Don't worry about optimisation. Just code sensibly and without huge overheads and you should be fine. Keep all media in a sensible format (jpg or png) and then see what the end result is like BEFORE you start trying to optimise away. You'll only become unstuck otherwise. Once you've done everything you can then look back on it and decide whether loading times are unacceptable or not and if so, decide what to compress - but that's something to be decided AFTER you've got a game, not before!

Taking a step back from all of that though, it does strike me that you're trying to run before you can walk. My advice would be to scrap the dreams of getting paid $$ to code flash games for a site and start with a simple breakout clone or something like that. Work on the gameplay and the graphics for a bit, then move up onto something better. There's a reason that most beginners programming textbooks start with simple applications not fully featured 3D shooters - it's not because they're trying to be boring, it's because complicated games with lots of graphics and levels take lots of experience and knowledge to put together properly! Even if you did go for a very ambitious project from the outset and completed it successfully - chances are by the time you finished you'd have to rewrite half of it because when you started you were coding things badly and without the proper understanding of what was happening.

 

[Daeva]

Taking a step back from all of that though, it does strike me that you're trying to run before you can walk.

BOOM. Yeah that pretty much says it all.

**Begin Bull-Crap**

In my case however, I am the only programmer that didn't experience that I wrote an inventory management application (web-based) in .NET when I had absolutely no idea what I was doing and after I was about 3/4 of the way through it I had to go back and re-do everything I had done. It was very easy for me to convert an entire data access layer of my code over to the correct way to do it so that three users didn't crash the application and I found that I was not monumentally frustrated and enjoyed every minute of my tedious line by line code changes that broke the rest of the application...

**End Bull-Crap**

All sarcasm aside, it can, and most times will be very frustrating for you to embark on a huge, yet very exciting endeavor. I think you will find that the scope of your application as berry put it, is too large. Start with smaller more manageable goals. One thing you did mention were some contests and other types of "community" websites. These are all things you find on your journey to learning the languages and how to do everything.

Heck, you've already found one of them on CF.

 

[MartinC.]

Yay! I have moved a (very small) step up in programing with actionscript,
here is my game, you can re-size the man cat and dino, and you can drag
them and the flowers, tophat, and my name around. Also, for some reason
you can see off of the stage.
-
here it is (below)--
-
http://martinc.fileave.com/sizer1.swf
-
P.S the graphics look really bad because I was just trying to learn how to code something simple and didnt even think it would work so i didnt put much time into the graphics
-
EDIT:
also, what is a Boolean, because I am looking at a code right now to try and figure out how to modify it for some practice at as3 and it has boolean in it...
here is part of it

var leftKeyDown:Boolean = false;

EVEN ANOTHER EDIT:
okay, I think I'm going to get a book... does anyone know of a good one, because there are a LOT of them when I look it up on google and I dont
want to pay $50 bucks for a book that wont help much, so does anyone know
of a good one?

 

[root]

EDIT:
also, what is a Boolean, because I am looking at a code right now to try and figure out how to modify it for some practice at as3 and it has boolean in it...
here is part of it

var leftKeyDown:Boolean = false;

the simplest way to define what boolean is, is to say that it either is or it isn't.

a true or false, a 1 or a 0.

in the day time
sky.dark = false
in the night time
sky.dark = true.

there are no maybe, things either "are" or "are not" in boolean.

 

[berry120]

okay, I think I'm going to get a book... does anyone know of a good one, because there are a LOT of them when I look it up on google and I dont
want to pay $50 bucks for a book that wont help much, so does anyone know
of a good one?

There's lots of good ones around, but what do you want to get a book in? Actionscript specifically, or one that teaches some more general concepts? If you're struggling over booleans then you may do better with the latter...

EDIT: Oops, just seen that his account is disabled... Geez I've never seen anyone with 2 negative rep bars before, what did he do?!