So lets get started! There are some pretty basic ground rules, or "Rules of Engagement", if you will. These are fundimental basics, like Flash pre-school.

Know your tool
Knowing your tool is the absolute most important aspect of any trade. I cant begin to tell you how many young guns come through this industry thinking they are going to make it big using Flash and honestly dont have a clue of what Flash can really do. They either see it as, "for designers to make things move", or "that cool thing I heard about in wired magazine".

When I was in college, and yes I went to college late in life, I had a professor that was easily in my top 10 list of developers. The guy was just a genius. Flash 5 was just about to be released and we were discussing it. He said he had looked at it and told me, "Flash is for designers that cant program". Needless to say a year later, he was teaching Flash development. Okay, so the moral of the story is, he glanced over Flash and made an assumption. He assumed Flash wasnt capable of data processing and things of that nature, because he didnt bother to learn the tool. You dont have to be a Flash developer to learn what it can do. You can simple ask existing Flash developers, read articles in tech magazines or sites. Read a blog, I hear they are extremely popular these days. Its a simple matter of knowledge and the information is out there and easy to access.

Rule of Engagement : Know what your tool can do before you set out to master it.

Dont Use A Crutch
Dont use tutorials as a crutch to lean on. When I was tinkering with Video Game Design, yes I tried that out as well with no success what so ever. I dont remember who said, or where I exactly I read (so to whoever said it, thank you).  It simply said,

"dont rely on tutorials to get you by. Chances are you will run into many situations which no one has writen a tutorial for..."
These are words to live by and this goes back to "knowing your tool". Search through the forums and you'll find at least a few hundred people asking for a tutorial on something very specific. Unless its an mp3 player, video player, or photo gallery you're more than likely out of luck. Lets says your boss comes to you and says, "I want a function that attaches a clip from the library, aligns it to the lower left corner of the stage, and silently tracks all mouse clicks.." Whats the first thing most people do? They usually go to a forum and ask, "how do I do xyz..is there a tutorial for this?" I've seen it hundreds of times in different forums. <shameless plug>Fortunately, Asctionscript.org has a great bunch of people that will make every effort to help</shameless plug> With that being said, you should first analyze what you need, break it down to its simplest form, press "F1" in the Flash IDE and look up the methods you'll need. If you dont know where to begin, then by all means ask in the forum, but please do not rely on the hope that someone wrote a tutorial for it. I'm not saying tutorials are useless, they are a great learning tool. What I am trying to convey is that you shouldnt rely on them for your needs.

Rule of Engagement : Rely on your knowledge, not a tutorial.


To sum things up, know what your tool can do and learn it. Once you understand these points the door will be wide open for your twisted little mind to create and conquer.