This book is designed for two purposes.
First, to give you the necessary familiarity with the Buildbox interface, as well as the process of getting your games distributed to players.
Second, to be a reference guide in the future if you find yourself stuck. We tackle many of the most common issues that developers face when using Buildbox.
We use a tutorial method to follow the entire game building process within Buildbox, by leading you through the full process of game development; from design, to development, to distribution, you will gain the necessary knowledge to create your own games. We even cover monetization strategies so that you can make your games profitable!
Whether you're a beginner or an experienced programmer, you’ll find this book helpful while discovering that Buildbox is a great tool for quick-turnaround game creation for mobile and computer games.
Chapter 1, So, You Want to Develop a Video Game?, is designed to set the expectations of the reader, and get them excited about the journey that they are about to embark on.
Chapter 2, Orientation, is an orientation to the game development environment within Buildbox by touring a template of a basic game.
Chapter 3, Your First Game – Ramblin’ Rover, Part 1, will cover setting up the game's structure and create the first world of our motocross-style game.
Chapter 4, Advanced World Design – Ramblin’ Rover, Part 2, will cover adding advanced controls and obstacles to our first world.
Chapter 5, Menus, UIs, Sound, and More! – Ramblin’ Rover, Part 3, will add the finishing touches to our game by adding menus, user interfaces, and audio.
Chapter 6, Monetization – Ramblin’ Rover, Part 4, will walk through how to set up advertising accounts, and set up your game for in-app advertising. We will also talk about monetization models using coin shops, video rewards, and more!
Chapter 7, Exporting your Game and Compiling for Various Platforms – Ramblin’ Rover, Finale, is followed by the summary of this chapter.
Chapter 8, Building Other Popular Game Types, covers some tips and tricks for making other popular game types with Buildbox.
Chapter 9, Buildbox Tips and Tricks, is a quick reference of procedures for certain tasks and reference a for some settings within Buildbox.
You’ll need a Mac or PC that meets the minimum specifications for Buildbox. You should also have either a trial or full license for Buildbox version 2.x. Having graphics software such as Gimp or Adobe Photoshop is highly encouraged, but not required (as for the examples in this book we have created the assets for you). Similarly, having some sort of audio editing software (such as Adobe Audition) is highly encouraged, but not necessary.
This book caters to those who have an interest in or desire to create their own mobile games as a hobbyist, or who are looking to enhance their skills as a professional games developer. No coding experience is required.
In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "Mount the downloaded WebStorm-10*.dmg disk image file as another disk in your system."
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "The shortcuts in this book are based on the Mac OS X 10.5+ scheme."
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We also provide you with a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots/diagrams used in this book. The color images will help you better understand the changes in the output. You can download this file from http://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/downloads/Buildbox2xGameDevelopment_ColorImages.pdf.
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