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

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

By : INNES BORKWOOD
4.5 (19)
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Learning Stencyl 3.x Game Development: Beginner's Guide

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

4.5 (19)
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.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
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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
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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

Third-party tools

Stencyl is an amazing game development tool, and it is even packaged with its own graphics editing application, Pencyl. However, most developers will want to progress to using some more advanced, third-party tools for the creation or modification of graphics, audio, and other assets that will be used throughout the game.

There are many commercially available software packages that can be used for the creation of video game assets. However, as we have created a completed game using the free version of Stencyl, in this section of the book, we'll have a look at some of the free tools that are available to assist in the creation of video games.

Please note that the author does not endorse the use of any specific software applications. Recommendations were solicited in the official Stencyl forums, and the most popular and long-lived applications have been included in this section!

Graphics tools

There are some amazingly high-quality graphics software packages, for creating bitmap and vector images, that are available for download and use free of charge.

Note

There is a detailed explanation of bitmap and vector images at the following website: graphicssoft.about.com/od/aboutgraphics/a/bitmapvector.htm.

Following are some of the most popular packages as recommended by Stencyl users:

GIMP

GIMP is a bitmap graphics application that many users consider equal to the most popular commercially available graphics software. It can be used for creating and modifying many types of graphics images.

GIMP can be found at www.gimp.org. It runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.

Inkscape

Inkscape is a comprehensive vector graphics package. Although Stencyl can import both vector (SVG format) and bitmap graphics files, many graphics artists prefer to work with vector graphics, and then convert the final results to bitmaps for importing into Stencyl.

Inkscape can be found at www.inkscape.org. It runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.

GraphicsGale

GraphicsGale is an animation editor which is designed to ease the process of creating animations that can be used in video games. There is a freeware version of the software, and a more comprehensive version which must be paid for.

GraphicsGale can be found at www.humanbalance.net/gale/us. It runs on Windows.

Audio Tools

As we have learned during the development of Monkey Run, a soundtrack and sound effects can completely change the atmosphere of a game! Following are some useful audio utilities.

Audacity

This very popular audio editing and recording tool has an amazing range of sound editing features, including the ability to add special effects to existing recordings (for example, echo, reverb, and so on). Audacity also includes features which enable conversion among different audio formats, including the configuration of the sample rate and bit depth which, as we discovered in Chapter 8, Implementing Sounds, is essential for ensuring that audio files are compatible with Stencyl.

Audacity can be found at audacity.sourceforge.net. It runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.

SFXR

SFXR is a special effects generator that was created by Tomas Pettersson, originally for a computer programming competition in 2007. Since then, it has become an extremely popular tool for creating sound effects for video games. It's very easy to use and includes preset buttons for creating effects such as explosions, pickups, jumps, and blips.

The original application has now been ported to most development platforms, and there is even a handy web-based version that runs on most browsers.

SFXR can be found at www.drpetter.se/project_sfxr.html. For the web browser version visit www.superflashbros.net/as3sfxr/. SFXR is available for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and Flash-enabled web browsers.

inudge

This interesting browser-based application enables the user to paint sounds onto a grid using various musical instruments. It's very useful for creating short melodies and jingles.

inudge can be found at www.inudge.net. It runs on Flash-enabled web browsers.

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