Stencyl Last Day

Today is the end of the semester, this class is virtually in my rear view mirror. I hope I can remember some of the computer skills I learned and use them in the future.

Unfortunately, I can't say I ever really understood stencyl. I did the two crash courses and attempted a few other tutorials, including the one with the little pink robot that looked very fun. However, I could never get the sizing to work on my computer, and I never really grasped the code. I think that must have been my fault somewhere, but I never understood it.

What I do have are some tips and tricks from the very first tutorial, maybe if I go through them again, I will have a sudden epiphany and can at least explain WHERE I went wrong.

This is what the crash course gave you when you were introduced to Actors. Actors I kind of understood, because the code was quite simple and reminiscent of Scratch, which I used to love. Sadly, I never got the chance to utilize the fun to have with actors because all of my actors turned out tiny. That really bothered me, and though I tried everything I could think of, I couldn't fix it.

The Actor type editor is, apparently, different than going to the Actor edit tab and adding events. In the Actor Type Editor it's much more focused on physical appearances and animations than actual code and script.

Another interesting aspect of stencyl is the block/tiles that were used to make up a scene. I liked the pixelated look they used, as it reminded me of minecraft and mario, old original games. Also the simplest to use.

So Behaviors are what you use to make sure when something HAPPENS your actor responds to it as you wanted, whether they be your main character or the antagonist.

Going along with Actors and Behaviors, by setting Actors into groups (e.g. Enemies vs Player) you can group their behavior and not have to go to each character and set them individually. Convenience is every game developers best friend.

After all I've explained Attributes are pretty easy to grasp. If you make a behavior specific to a player that you want to reuse but isn't part of the default code that they supply for you BAM make it an attribute. It becomes its own little block and everything. However, that means you are responsible for that attribute and what it does, including all the code. That's your baby, you have to raise it right.

Very important; if you want the game to respond you have to know which key to press to make something happen. There are some default controls (like 'z' being the default 'action' key) but if you want to change them or set new ones that's where you do it.

When you've made tiles and actors and set them up, you need to have a place for them to interact, they can't just float around in the background. That's where Scenes come in. They start out blank, with layers and their own code and quirks. Customizable and easily accessible, Scenes are the backbone to every game.
Playing with the layers in scenes is fun, but be careful if you set a platform in the background and your player in the foreground: they will fall!

I would like to state that, for the record, I understood the basic functions of the game development app that is Stencyl. Due to poor time management and endless frustration, I did not get to display my capabilities, or really get to learn what Stencyl can do.
Maybe in the future I'll return to Stencyl or something like it (if Scratch is any example, there are a few game dev apps out there) and actually figure out where I went wrong.

For now, I'm happy with what I've done.

(Yes, I DID change the scale settings to 1x and everything in between. NO that did not work either.)
(I ALSO tried zooming in on my scene, but as soon as I loaded the game it zoomed back out.)
(So... that was fun.)

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Stencyl Day 3

Time to finish the space invaders game! It's time to fully set up the game. I got ahead of myself last time with all the ship and actors code. They have events and actions, but now we need to put them somewhere. With sound effects, scene code, and a custom font, it's all coming together!



In the game there are two main sounds, both of which are provided for you. There's the spacey music, and the explosion sound. The spacey music is generic and supposed to play the entire length of the game. The explosion is a sound effect, and only plays in the event of a certain action. That creates an important distinction; sound effect, versus music.
I made the mistake of initially making the explosion another music setting. Do not do that, it will not work and you will be confused and you will spend ten minute trying to figure out what you did wrong.

Now that the music is ready, it's time for the most important part; the scene. The actual backbone of the game. The place where all the code and actors come together the make pixels move.


To start, create a new scene. Keep the default setting, since the pack for the tutorial is designed to work with that. The settings need to change if you're making a mobile game, or something that's bigger than a tiny window in the corner of the screen.

Now add the space background. I ran into a bit of a problem at this point, with the background, and the scene, and the scale.
All my actors turned out to be tiny, once uploaded. I tried to figure out why, tried to adjust the scale and everything, but nothing worked. It was frustrating because now my game doesn't look very pretty, and it's super hard to play.
Note to self when you're making your own game, check the sizes.

See, I've placed the actors in my scene, but can you tell? No, because they're freaking TINY!
Ok, I'm done.
In order to get the scene to behave, you need to add code. Thankfully, at this point the actors code is already there, so it's time to manipulate it and fit the scene.


At this point it may seem like I know what I'm talking about, but I really don't.

The object of the game is to shoot the evil space ships out of the sky. It's kind of mean, when you think about it, since the evil ships aren't shooting at you or anything, but the game just assumes they're evil. Have you ever asked how the evil space ship feels?

Anyways, in order to make that look cool you need the ships to explode. You need effects, you need sound, you need PIZZAZ! Also, you need a lovely font of words to show up at the top of the screen when you win. You just need it.

To make your font, just create a new font, call it default font, and set it up how you want. Again, the size is the most important, maybe in the 30s. I tried to give mine a cool gradient but it didn't really show up in the final product.

How to Cook

Another late slideshow! Enjoy.

Stencyl Day 2

I finished the Space Invaders Game! Yay! It was a long tutorial for a very simple game, increasing my respect for actual game developers. That stuff is hard! Keeping track of all the movements and keys and time, I ran into quite a few problems because I missed one (1) tiny step.

Let's start by making our new game!

This is the pack provided to you by the tutorial.

Name the Game. I named it Invaders because I'm SO original.

One of the most important things about this game is setting the collision groups. That makes a big difference to the game. I didn't do that at first, and it really screwed up my game.

The bullet and enemy actor groups need to be set to collide with each other. They're both actors.

Time to set the background! They give you the art for the background galaxy print. I would like this wallpaper for my room.

You have to set up a lot of code for the bullets so they fire properly. In accordance with this, you have to set up codes for the ship, and the enemy ship.



After all that is done, your game should run properly.
Or it will do this;

If that happens, all you need to do is make sure your collision groups are correct and set properly.
This is about halfway done.
So far, I've set up my level by downloading the pack, importing all my actors and giving them behavioral attributes so they work together.
Next time, we will give the bullets the power to destroy their enemies, and set up a way to win the game.
So far we've learned how to code in this app, and we are going to learn how to make our own font, set up sound effects, and game effects. Fun!