Book Image

Monkey Game Development: Beginner's Guide

By : Michael Hartlef
Book Image

Monkey Game Development: Beginner's Guide

By: Michael Hartlef

Overview of this book

Monkey is a programming language and toolset that allows its user to develop modern 2D games easily for mobile and other platforms like iOS, Android, HTML5, FLASH, OSX, Windows and XNA. With Monkey you can create best selling games in a matter of weeks, instead of months.Monkey Game Development Beginner's Guide provides easy-to-follow step by step instructions on how to create eight different 2D games and how to deploy them to various platforms and markets. Learning about the structure of Monkey and how everything works together you will quickly create eight classical games and publish them to the modern app markets. Throughout the book you will learn important game development techniques like collision detection, handling player input with mouse, keyboard or touch events and creating challenging computer AI. The author explains how to emit particle effects, play sound and music files, use sprite sheets, load or save high-score tables and handle different device resolutions. Finally you will learn how to monetize your games so you can generate revenue.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
Monkey Game Development
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
3
Game #2, Rocket Commander
4
Game #3, CometCrusher
5
Game #4, Chain Reaction
6
Game #5, Balls Out!
8
Game #7, Air Dogs 1942
9
Game #8, Treasure Chest

Let's have a little playtime


Now that you have this task out of the way, close Monk again. Why? Because we should first see what kinds of games you could create, and then get familiar with Monkey and its feature set.

Game developers should always play other computer games, not only to have fun but also to study them. When you play a game, try to analyze how it could be done; how a certain feature affects gameplay. Or look at the technical aspects of a game, such as what kind of graphic effects a game uses, how the game rewards the player, and so on. You can get so much information out of a game, that it really can help you become a better game developer and designer.

And to get a better picture of Monkey's abilities, you should take the time now to play some games that have already been created with Monkey. As two of Monkey's target platforms are HTML5 and Flash, we can do this inside your browser.

Just make sure you have installed Internet Explorer 9, Firefox 4, Safari, or Google's Chrome browser. Chrome seems to feature the best performance when it comes to HTML5, but it is up to your personal preference.

Ok, head again to Monkey's website, and from there into the apps section. Have a look and play the first game we want to try.