Book Image

Learning Stencyl 3.x Game Development: Beginner's Guide

By : INNES BORKWOOD
Book Image

Learning Stencyl 3.x Game Development: Beginner's Guide

By: INNES BORKWOOD

Overview of this book

Creating video games has traditionally been a long and complicated process, requiring years of experience and a vast array of skills. However, with the introduction of comprehensive game-development toolkits such as Stencyl, the fun has returned to the art of game-creation ‚Äì anyone who has the desire to create their own video game can now do so with almost any desktop computer and a free software download from the Internet!Learning Stencyl 3.x Game Development: Beginner's Guide will put you on the fast-track to learning the essentials of the powerful Stencyl game-development toolkit. You will develop a complete, ready-to-publish video game including in-game advertising, by following the clear, step-by-step tutorials, supported by numerous screenshots and practical examples.This book will guide you through all the important steps required to develop and publish your video game. Starting with the installation and testing of the Stencyl toolkit, you will very quickly advance to the fun and exciting process of creating a playable game. The step-by-step tutorials will guide you from a blank screen, right through to giving your game that final polish and sharing it with the rest of the world. Whilst developing your feature-complete video game, you will learn how to easily detect collisions in your game using Stencyl's built-in physics engine. You'll discover how to use the powerful animation tools included in Stencyl's toolkit, and you'll find out how to make your game shine with sounds and visual special effects. You will also discover how Stencyl makes it easy to utilize the touch-screen and accelerometer features of smartphones and tablet computers. You will learn all the essential skills required to develop a video game from scratch ‚Äì right through to publishing a game on the Internet and testing games  on the most popular mobile devices.

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Learning Stencyl 3.x Game Development: Beginner's Guide
INNES BORKWOOD
May, 2013 | 336 pages
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Table of Contents (20 chapters)
Learning Stencyl 3.x Game Development Beginner's Guide
Learning Stencyl 3.x Game Development Beginner's Guide
Credits
Credits
Foreword
Foreword
About the Author
About the Author
Acknowledgement
Acknowledgement
About the Reviewers
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Preface
Free Chapter
1
Introduction
Introduction
How Stencyl works
How we'll learn to use Stencyl
Why Stencyl is a great development tool
Platforms that Stencyl runs on
What makes Stencyl different
Successful games created with Stencyl
Installing Stencyl and testing the setup
Time for action – downloading and installing Stencyl on Windows
Time for action – downloading and installing Stencyl for Mac OS X
Time for action – downloading and installing Stencyl for Linux
Time for action – creating an account and signing in
Time For action – testing Stencyl
Summary
2
Let's Make a Game!
Let's Make a Game!
Using the downloaded game files
Creating a new game
Time for action – creating a new game
Creating a blank scene
Time for action – creating a blank scene
Downloading resources from StencylForge
Time for action – downloading an actor
Understanding the Stencyl Dashboard
Adding an actor into a scene
Time for action – adding an actor to the jungle scene
Testing the game
Time for action – testing the game
Downloading and using tiles for scenery
Time for action – downloading tiles from StencylForge
Time for action – adding tiles into the scene
Reviewing our progress
Using behaviors to interact with our game
Time for action – attaching a behavior to an actor
Time for action – configuring the behavior
Testing the game
Time for action – testing the game to find a problem!
Improving the scene mechanics
Time for action – adding gravity to the Jungle scene
Time for action – attaching another behavior to the actor
Time for action – increasing the width of the scene
Making the screen scroll
Time for action – attaching the Camera Follow behavior
Summary
3
Detecting Collisions
Detecting Collisions
Working with collision detection in Stencyl
Time for action – enabling the Debug Drawing feature
Modifying an actor's collision shapes
Time for Action – modifying the monkey's collision shapes
Time for action – adding more collision shapes to the monkey
Configuring collision shapes for tiles
Time for action – modifying the collision bounds of a tile
Adding enemies and collectibles
Working with collision groups
Time for action – examining the collision group settings
Time for action – examining the Players and Actors groups
Time for action – creating a collision group for enemy actors
Using collision sensors
Time for action – configuring the fruit as a sensor
Implementing terrain collision shapes
Time for action – adding a terrain collision area to the scene
Summary
4
Creating Behaviors
Creating Behaviors
Creating custom behaviors
Time for action – creating a behavior
Time for action – adding an action and attaching to it an actor
Time for action – adding an event and renaming the behavior
Creating a timed event
Time for action – creating a behavior to drop the statues
Examining screen size and scene size
Time for action – adjusting the drop-location of the statue
Time for action – making the behavior more flexible
Introducing randomness into our game
Time for action – introducing randomness to our behavior
Time for action – making the statues disappear after a delay
Implementing our first special effect
Time for action – making the statues disappear after a delay
Understanding active actors
Time for action – stopping the statues from becoming inactive
Creating a countdown timer
Time for action – creating a countdown timer
Implementing decision making into our game
Time for action – listening for the countdown to reach zero
Repositioning an actor during gameplay
Time for action – creating an event to relocate the monkey
Triggering custom events in our behaviors
Time for action – triggering a custom event
Summary
5
Animation in Stencyl
Animation in Stencyl
Creating an actor using an imported image file
Time for action – importing an image into the Animation Editor
Understanding Stencyl's animation terminology
Importing a ready-made sprite sheet
Time for action – importing a sprite sheet
Fine-tuning an animation's frame durations
Time for action – modifying an animation's frame durations
Editing animation frames
Time for action – editing an existing frame with Pencyl
Time for action – changing the default graphics editor
Using instruction blocks to control animations
Time for action – switching animations with instruction blocks
Implementing tweening with instruction blocks
Time for action – using the grow instruction block
Summary
6
Managing and Displaying Information
Managing and Displaying Information
A review of our progress
Planning ahead – what else does our game need?
Displaying a countdown timer on the screen
Time for action – displaying the countdown timer on the screen
Configuring fonts
Time for action – specifying a font for use in our game
Creating a game attribute to count lives
Time for action – creating a Lives game attribute
Time for action – decrementing the number of lives
Time for action – detecting when Lives reaches zero
Using graphics to display information
Time for action – displaying a timer bar
Counting collected actors
Time for action – counting the fruit
Time for action – detecting when all fruits have been collected
Keeping track of the levels
Time for action – adding a game attribute to record the level
Summary
7
Polishing the Game
Polishing the Game
Adding a background and foreground
Time for action – adding a background to the Jungle scene
Creating a visual special effect
Time for action – making the ground shake
Creating additional levels
Time for action – renaming, duplicating, and modifying a level
Time for action – implementing level progression
Adding a pause feature
Time for action – creating the pause framework
Time for action – implementing the main pause routine
Implementing a level progression routine
Time for action – displaying the message and buttons
Time for action – responding to the player's selection
Creating a game over message
Time for action – modifying the existing banner event
Time for action – displaying the game over banner
Creating a Main Menu scene
Time for action – displaying the introduction scene
Finalizing the game-completed scene
Time for action – implementing the game-completed scene
Summary
8
Implementing Sounds
Implementing Sounds
Adding a jumping sound effect
Time for action – implementing a jumping sound effect
Examining the play sound instruction blocks
Organizing sounds in the game
Adding a pickup sound effect
Time for action – implementing a pickup sound effect
Adding a soundtrack
Time for action – adding a soundtrack
Understanding sound types in Stencyl
Importing sounds into Stencyl
Time for action – importing a sound effect
Summary
9
Publishing and Making Money from Your Games
Publishing and Making Money from Your Games
Publishing to the Stencyl Arcade
Time for action – publishing to the Stencyl Arcade
Making money with in-game advertising
Time for action – inserting an advertisement into our game
Obtaining sponsorship
Improving our opportunities for sponsorship
Summary
10
Targeting Mobile Platforms
Targeting Mobile Platforms
Understanding testing versus publishing
Considering certification requirements
Examining platform differences
Testing on a mobile device
Time for action – testing on an Android device
Time for action – testing on an iOS device
Utilizing the accelerometer
Time for action – experimenting with the accelerometer
Time for action – creating an accelerometer-controlled game
Implementing touchscreen controls
Time for action – implementing touchscreen controls
Exploring additional mobile device features
Summary
Planning, Resources, and Legal Issues
Planning, Resources, and Legal Issues
The planning process
Third-party tools
Third-party assets
Additional resources
Legal issues
Progressing with Stencyl game development
Summary
Index
Index

Why Stencyl is a great development tool

Stencyl is a ready-to-use, complete, game development studio that can be used by anyone from beginners to game development experts to create professional-quality games; there is no requirement to purchase or install additional software. The Stencyl game development process avoids the repetitive, complicated requirements of writing hundreds of lines of computer code, and gets you started with the creation of your games without being distracted by the intricate details that traditional computer programming languages require.

Rapid prototyping and development

If you have an idea for a game, Stencyl will enable you to rapidly create a working prototype, so that you can quickly progress to creating a completed game using the great features that come built into the Stencyl toolkit, including:

  • Scene Designer

  • Drag-and-drop Gameplay Designer

  • Resource management (sounds and graphics)

  • Animation editor

  • Graphics editor

  • Online resource sharing

We'll be learning how to use all these features to enable us to quickly build our video game.

No code development

Games can be created without writing a single line of computer code, by using Stencyl's drag-and-drop Gameplay Designer. Its clever system of building sequences of commands using specially designed instruction blocks means that we can only create instructions that make sense to the computer.

If you have ever tried writing computer games using a language such as Apple's Objective-C or Adobe's ActionScript, you probably know how frustrating it can be to ensure that every bracket, period, and special symbol appears in exactly the right place. That's a problem of the past with Stencyl!

Sharing resources with other Stencyl developers

One of the many great features of Stencyl is StencylForge — a ready-built repository of game resources that can be used for downloading graphics, audio, gameplay rules (known as Behaviors in Stencyl), and utilities. You can also upload your own resources to share with others.

StencylForge is a remarkable asset to the Stencyl community, and it's one of the exciting features of Stencyl that we'll be learning to use while we develop our game.

In addition to being able to share resources using StencylForge, there is a great community of helpful Stencyl users for both beginner and experienced users at community.stencyl.com.

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