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

Call the Monk and start praying—the Monkey IDE


We are just kidding here; there are no religious activities planned in this chapter. Even though sometimes you will find yourself praying that a new piece of code you have created works like it should.

Ok, if you haven't installed Monkey already, then it is time to do that now. We have covered this part in Chapter 1, Monkey — Huh?, already.

Why learn about Monk?

Monk is the code editor/IDE that ships with Monkey. It is the first place that you will fire up when you start using Monkey. So, it is important to know your first main tool, if you want to develop games with Monkey.

Starting up Monk

It's time now to start Monk. You will do this by double-clicking on the Monk.app icon on OSX or start Monk.exe in Windows.

Monk's user interface

Monk's user interface is divided into three sections:

  • The toolbar

  • The code editor area

  • The info box

The toolbar

All functions of Monk can be called through keyboard shortcuts and through the main menu. Some functions are...