But you're not entirely familiar with Flash? WELL FEAR NOT! Deviantart supplies A VAST AMOUNT OF TUTORIALS from people who know and have some fair amount of understanding of what to do.

So I'll help you get started by supplying some information and also recommending a couple very nice and informative tutorials about Flash. Plus don't be discouraged if you suck at drawing in Flash, I provided a fair amount of information for an alternative solution at the end!  

What you need:
- Flash* (any kind of Flash where you can write Action Script 2.0... NOT Action Script 3.0, these tutorials cover AS 2.0)
- Time
- Patience

^{*If you're wondering what kind of Flash I use, I'll tell you. I use a super old school Flash that does the job juuust fine. It's called Macromedia Flash MX, also known as "Flash 6.0 r25" Yuuuup, really old. I've had it since junior year in high school (approx. 5 years). I have Flash Professional CS5, and it looks pretty much the same as Flash 6, so don't worry.}

OKAY!

So before you get started, you need to know the different types of Flash games there are. Basically, there are two types:

Drag: This type of dress up game is the simplest of the dress up games but can also become very cluttered and messy. Basically, this is the type of game where you open it, you see all the items and you drag and drop them onto your doll base. Drag can become even more complex when you input snap-to options. Snap-to Drag dress up games allow the user to drag their item and drop it onto the character and as soon as the item is within a specified targeted area (i.e. a shirt close to the character's chest), once the user lets go of their drag (releasing their mouse click), the item will automatically snap into place. This is really nice because then you assure that the items you created go specifically where you intended them to. But this type of Drag dress up game requires a little more coding and always knowing the coordinates of your items and character doll base.

Buttons: Also known as "Select," this type of Flash Dress Up Game is a bit more complex to set up than the Drag flash game because it involves a bit more of a thorough understanding of using buttons, coding frames, and setting up images as "movie script" items and whatnot. If you know what I'm talking about, awesome! If not, that's fine too, I'll be listing some tutorials to help you out soon enough. These games can be set up in so many ways, it's not even funny. There's a lot of different ways to approach it, some people set up buttons to change the colors of items, or set up buttons to change items in general. So this type of Flash Dress Up Game is much more organized than Drag dress up games, but again, it's got a lot more to code.

...Unless I'm mistaken and totally can't think of a third one...

Anyway, I'll share some nifty tutorials for you to use. I wouldn't call myself a beginner with Flash since I learned it fair enough in high school. However, don't worry, I have this nice tutorial to get you up to speed with the basics of Flash in general (mostly for Animation use but it will definitely wet your feet and help you learn the language of Flash and where to find things much quicker then if you're a total newbie going straight to those dress up game tutorials):



This tutorial was more like an Overview for me when I was interested in making a Flash Dress Up Game since I had previously learned how to use Flash but long since used it so I needed a few reminders. Aside from that, this tutorial also taught me things I never knew (and totally abused the crap out of in my next games ) such as setting up graphics to fade in and out. You can actually do that in Flash!

Now if you're using a newer version of Flash, you may have to do a little searching around for some of the settings, however I don't believe Flash has changed all too dramatically. I also have Flash Professional CS5, and the layout and accessibility of items didn't look to much different from Flash 6. If you're really struggling, consult your Adobe Online manuals to help you find tools and commands you're looking for.

Okay, so now that you're brought up to speed in Flash basics, it's time to learn some dress up game stuff! I have found (not written, lol) a lot of tutorials and step-by-step processes that help you get from point A to point B. I'll give you some fairly easy ones to start:



This tutorial is a little confusing at times, but one thing I like about it is that it's a lot like the tutorial for Flash Newbies in that it'll explain different things you have to understand to create a dress up game.  It also tries to explain the logic of Action Script 2.0, which I think is an effort worthy of being pointed out. It's a nice and easy read in the sense that it's not essays long (like this journal is).



This tutorial is also a good tutorial for beginners. I believe this is one of the tutorials I found most helpful when I was trying to create my first Drag dress up game because it gives you pretty clear steps.



Now this tutorial by ~BonnieMcBop is one of my personal favorites. Recommended to me by *Ammotu, this tutorial was my biggest aide in creating this pretty awesome flash game. Now while my game is unfinished, this tutorial certainly set me on the right track to creating a Button dress up game. This tutorial is a bit more Advanced, so I highly recommend you get familiar with a Drag dress up game first because the Button dress up game is a really difficult thing to manage, so make sure you're well aware of how to use Flash. But this tutorial supplies a lengthy easy-to-follow step-by-step process on both Drag and Button dress up games.



This tutorial is something I was recently directed to by !Neipy and found equally helpful as ~BonnieMcBop's tutorial. This tutorial goes even further in depth with the possibilities of Drag dress up games and also introduces Button game organization such as "drawers" and "pages." It can be pretty opinionated at times, but the creator raises some pretty valid points all the same. This tutorial is a pretty fun and easy read, so once you've familiarized yourself with Flash a bit, be sure to check this tutorial out, it'll send you along your way as well.

There's obviously a lot of great tutorials and resources for Flash dress up games out there, these are just the ones I found extremely helpful. To look at Flash games and more helpful tutorials that I've found and favorited, visit this collection.



...Oh... one last thing... you're probably thinking now "But I suck at drawing in Flash. ;n;" Again, FEAR NOT!

You can read these helpful tutorials about how to get images like JPG, BMP, GIF, or PNG* all into your Flash game:

1. Importing Graphics and/or Sound into a Flash Movie - This is just what you need to understand importing files to Flash!
2. Importing Photoshop Files Into Flash - This is a bit more complex, but if you're a Photoshop pro and want to set up your layout in Photoshop and import it into Flash, this piece shows you how.

*Pro Tip: If you're drawing your stuff in whatever program you like using and save the items to later import into Flash, you should save them as PNG files with transparent backgrounds, because PNG maintains the image's quality and also allows one to save images with no background, which is exactly what you need for little clothing items.

When you go about exporting your game as a SWF file, please go to File > Publish Settings... and go to the "Flash" (or possibly "SWF") tab and adjust the JPG quality to maximum (100) if you want your images to maintain as much of their pristine quality of your images as possible. Otherwise they start looking sad and pixelated.

What I'm talking about is indicated with a red box here:





SO I HOPE THIS HELPS YOU GET STARTED. IF IT DOES, PLEASE LINK YOUR RESULTS BACK HERE (and maybe even on some of those tutorials) SO I KNOW I HELPED YOU OUT IN SOME WAY OR AT LEAST POINTED YOU IN THE AWESOME DIRECTION.

Lol, sorry for the lengthy read, but I just love writing and journals are for exactly that.

---------

Other helpful journals I've written: