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

Learning Stencyl 3.x Game Development Beginner's Guide

Table of Contents

Learning Stencyl 3.x Game Development Beginner's Guide

Credits

Foreword

About the Author

Acknowledgement

About the Reviewers

www.PacktPub.com

Support files, eBooks, discount offers and more

Why Subscribe?

Free Access for Packt account holders

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Time for action – heading

What just happened?

Have a go hero – heading

Reader feedback

Customer support

Downloading the example code

Downloading the color images of this book

Errata

Piracy

Questions

1. Introduction

How Stencyl works

How we'll learn to use Stencyl

Why Stencyl is a great development tool

Rapid prototyping and development

No code development

Sharing resources with other Stencyl developers

Platforms that Stencyl runs on

Stencyl target platforms

Targeting specific devices

Publishing desktop games

Publishing to iOS devices

Publishing to Android

What makes Stencyl different

Stencyl runs on almost any desktop computer

Stencyl creates native code

You don't need to be a coder

Using the free version of Stencyl

Using the free version of Stencyl with this book

Successful games created with Stencyl

The Stencyl Showcase

Installing Stencyl and testing the setup

Installing Stencyl

Microsoft Windows

Time for action – downloading and installing Stencyl on Windows

What just happened?

Mac OS X

Time for action – downloading and installing Stencyl for Mac OS X

What just happened?

Linux

Time for action – downloading and installing Stencyl for Linux

What just happened?

Creating a Stencyl account

Time for action – creating an account and signing in

What just happened?

Have a go hero

Testing the Stencyl installation

Time For action – testing Stencyl

What just happened?

Have a go hero

Summary

2. Let's Make a Game!

Using the downloaded game files

Let's get started!

Creating a new game

Time for action – creating a new game

What just happened?

Creating a blank scene

Time for action – creating a blank scene

What just happened?

Downloading resources from StencylForge

Time for action – downloading an actor

What just happened?

Have a go hero – searching StencylForge for interesting actors

Understanding the Stencyl Dashboard

Adding an actor into a scene

Time for action – adding an actor to the jungle scene

What just happened?

Testing the game

Time for action – testing the game

What just happened?

Downloading and using tiles for scenery

Time for action – downloading tiles from StencylForge

What just happened?

Have a go hero – searching StencylForge for tilesets

Adding tiles into the scene

Time for action – adding tiles into the scene

What just happened?

Working with tiles

Deleting tiles from a scene

Replacing existing tiles in a scene

Moving tiles in a scene

Selecting multiple tiles

Placing multiple copies of tiles

Have a go hero – experimenting with tiles in the scene

Finalizing the initial design

Have a go hero – tidying up the scene

Reviewing our progress

Using behaviors to interact with our game

Working with behaviors

Adding behaviors

Time for action – attaching a behavior to an actor

What just happened?

Configuring behaviors with Attributes

Time for action – configuring the behavior

What just happened?

Have a go hero – configuring the remaining animations

Save the game!

Testing the game

Time for action – testing the game to find a problem!

What just happened?

Improving the scene mechanics

Time for action – adding gravity to the Jungle scene

What just happened?

Keeping an actor in a scene

Time for action – attaching another behavior to the actor

What just happened?

Increasing the width of the gameplay area

Time for action – increasing the width of the scene

What just happened?

Have a go hero – adding more tiles to the scene

Making the screen scroll

Time for action – attaching the Camera Follow behavior

What just happened?

Adding some interesting scenery

Have a go hero – adding some interesting tiles to the scene

Fine-tuning the level design

Finding game testers

Summary

3. Detecting Collisions

Working with collision detection in Stencyl

Time for action – enabling the Debug Drawing feature

What just happened?

Modifying an actor's collision shapes

Time for Action – modifying the monkey's collision shapes

What just happened?

Adding multiple collision shapes

Time for action – adding more collision shapes to the monkey

What just happened?

Planning the collision shapes

Have a go hero

Testing the updated collision bounds

Configuring collision shapes for tiles

Time for action – modifying the collision bounds of a tile

What just happened?

Have a go hero

Adding enemies and collectibles

Downloading the enemies and collectibles

Placing the new actors into the jungle scene

Working with collision groups

Time for action – examining the collision group settings

What just happened?

Viewing the actors' collision groups

Time for action – examining the Players and Actors groups

What just happened?

Creating a new collision group

Time for action – creating a collision group for enemy actors

What just happened?

Have a go hero

Configuring collisions for the fruit actors

Using collision sensors

Time for action – configuring the fruit as a sensor

What just happened?

Have a go hero

Implementing terrain collision shapes

Time for action – adding a terrain collision area to the scene

What just happened?

Have a go hero

What else can we improve?

Summary

4. Creating Behaviors

Creating custom behaviors

Creating our first custom behavior

Time for action – creating a behavior

What just happened?

Time for action – adding an action and attaching to it an actor

What just happened?

The actor's behavior screen

Adding an additional event to a behavior

Time for action – adding an event and renaming the behavior

What just happened?

Understanding the instruction block palette

Considering future refinements

A review of the gameplay

Introducing a new challenge

Have a go hero – downloading and configuring the statue

Creating a timed event

Time for action – creating a behavior to drop the statues

What just happened?

Identifying and resolving problems

Examining screen size and scene size

Time for action – adjusting the drop-location of the statue

What just happened?

Examining the scene instruction blocks

Preparing for future changes

Time for action – making the behavior more flexible

What just happened?

Introducing randomness into our game

Time for action – introducing randomness to our behavior

What just happened?

Optimizing the number of actors

Time for action – making the statues disappear after a delay

What just happened?

Implementing our first special effect

Time for action – making the statues disappear after a delay

What just happened?

Experimenting with the timings

Have a go hero – making the fruit fade when collected

Understanding active actors

Experiencing a freezing statue

The origin of the actors

Time for action – stopping the statues from becoming inactive

What just happened?

There's more than one way

Have a go hero – using the offscreen bounds block

Creating a countdown timer

Time for action – creating a countdown timer

What just happened?

Examining the debug blocks

Implementing decision making into our game

Time for action – listening for the countdown to reach zero

What just happened?

What if? Otherwise…

Repositioning an actor during gameplay

Time for action – creating an event to relocate the monkey

What just happened?

Triggering custom events in our behaviors

Time for action – triggering a custom event

What just happened?

Triggers and more triggers

Taking time to learn the available blocks

Learning from the provided behaviors

Summary

5. Animation in Stencyl

Creating an actor using an imported image file

Time for action – importing an image into the Animation Editor

What just happened?

Understanding Stencyl's animation terminology

Animation frames

Animation settings

Name

Looping

Synchronized

Origin Point

Default animation

Have a go hero

Importing a ready-made sprite sheet

Time for action – importing a sprite sheet

What just happened?

Fine-tuning an animation's frame durations

Time for action – modifying an animation's frame durations

What just happened?

Have a go hero

Editing animation frames

Time for action – editing an existing frame with Pencyl

What just happened?

Using an alternative graphics tool

Time for action – changing the default graphics editor

What just happened?

Have a go hero

Using instruction blocks to control animations

Time for action – switching animations with instruction blocks

What just happened?

Have a go hero

Implementing tweening with instruction blocks

Time for action – using the grow instruction block

What just happened?

Have a go hero

Summary

6. 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

What just happened?

Configuring fonts

Time for action – specifying a font for use in our game

What just happened?

Using font files in Stencyl

Have a go hero

Creating a game attribute to count lives

Time for action – creating a Lives game attribute

What just happened?

Using game attributes

Time for action – decrementing the number of lives

What just happened?

No more click-by-click steps!

Time for action – detecting when Lives reaches zero

What just happened?

Have a go hero

Removing debug instructions

Using graphics to display information

Time for action – displaying a timer bar

What just happened?

Activating and deactivating instruction blocks

Have a go hero

Counting collected actors

Time for action – counting the fruit

What just happened?

Time for action – detecting when all fruits have been collected

What just happened?

Preventing multiple collisions from being detected

Keeping track of the levels

Time for action – adding a game attribute to record the level

What just happened?

Fixing the never-ending game!

Have a go hero

Summary

7. Polishing the Game

Adding a background and foreground

Time for action – adding a background to the Jungle scene

What just happened?

Have a go hero

Viewing foregrounds and backgrounds in the Scene Editor

More about foregrounds and backgrounds

Creating a visual special effect

Making the ground shake

Time for action – making the ground shake

What just happened?

Have a go hero

Creating additional levels

Time for action – renaming, duplicating, and modifying a level

What just happened?

Progressing through the levels

Time for action – implementing level progression

What just happened?

Adding even more levels

Have a go hero

Adding a pause feature

Preparing the pause banner framework

Time for action – creating the pause framework

What just happened?

Implementing the pause feature

Time for action – implementing the main pause routine

What just happened?

Summary of the pause routine configuration

Have a go hero

Implementing a level progression routine

Displaying the message and buttons

Time for action – displaying the message and buttons

What just happened?

Responding to the player's selection

Time for action – responding to the player's selection

What just happened?

Have a go hero

Creating a game over message

Reusing the existing banner event

Time for action – modifying the existing banner event

What just happened?

Understanding internal attribute names

Updating attribute names

Displaying the game-over banner

Time for action – displaying the game over banner

What just happened?

Creating a Main Menu scene

Time for action – displaying the introduction scene

What just happened?

Have a go hero

Finalizing the game-completed scene

Time for action – implementing the game-completed scene

What just happened?

Have a go hero – improving the game-completed scene

Summary

8. Implementing Sounds

Adding a jumping sound effect

Time for action – implementing a jumping sound effect

What just happened?

Have a go hero

Examining the play sound instruction blocks

Organizing sounds in the game

Adding a pickup sound effect

Time for action – implementing a pickup sound effect

What just happened?

Have a go hero

Adding a soundtrack

Time for action – adding a soundtrack

What just happened?

Have a go hero

Understanding sound types in Stencyl

Audio file requirements

Looping music

Importing sounds into Stencyl

Time for action – importing a sound effect

What just happened?

Have a go hero

Summary

9. Publishing and Making Money from Your Games

Publishing to the Stencyl Arcade

Time for action – publishing to the Stencyl Arcade

What just happened?

Have a go hero – changing our game's configuration

Making money with in-game advertising

Third-party advertisement providers

Implementing in-game advertising

Time for action – inserting an advertisement into our game

What just happened?

Have a go hero – finalizing the MochiAds configuration

The Mochi Media review process

Preloaders and advertising

Obtaining sponsorship

Understanding sponsorships

Primary sponsorship

Secondary sponsorship

Exclusive sponsorship

Sponsorship payments

Where to find sponsorship

Flash Game License (FGL)

Industry networking

Improving our opportunities for sponsorship

Mobile game monetization opportunities

In-app purchases

App store sales

Summary

10. Targeting Mobile Platforms

Understanding testing versus publishing

Testing games with the free version of Stencyl

Publishing Stencyl games

Developer licensing for Google Android devices

Developer licensing for Apple iOS devices

Mobile game distribution costs

Considering certification requirements

Examining platform differences

Testing on a mobile device

Testing on an Android device

Time for action – testing on an Android device

What just happened?

Testing on an iOS device

Time for action – testing on an iOS device

What just happened?

Utilizing the accelerometer

Time for action – experimenting with the accelerometer

What just happened?

Understanding accelerometer feedback

Understanding the x axis feedback

Understanding the y axis feedback

Understanding the x axis feedback

Using the accelerometer in a game

Time for action – creating an accelerometer-controlled game

What just happened?

Autorotate

Implementing touchscreen controls

Time for action – implementing touchscreen controls

What just happened?

Exploring additional mobile device features

Summary

A. Planning, Resources, and Legal Issues

The planning process

Where to start

Starting with concept drawings

Starting with a prototype

Finding the fun

Starting small

Using placeholder graphics

Setting small goals

Avoiding burn-out

Third-party tools

Graphics tools

GIMP

Inkscape

GraphicsGale

Audio Tools

Audacity

SFXR

inudge

Third-party assets

Graphics resources

Sound resources

Additional resources

Fonts

StencylForge

Books

Websites

Legal issues

Use of third-party assets

Copyright

Public domain

Licensed works

Royalty-free

A note about collaboration

Clearing up some myths

Myth 1

Myth 2

Myth 3

Myth 4

Myth 5

Myth 6

When it is safe to use third-party game assets

Progressing with Stencyl game development

Summary

Index