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- Herausgeber: Packt Publishing
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
Construct Classic is a free, DirectX 9 game creator for Windows, designed for 2D games. Construct Classic uses an event-based system for defining how the game behaves, in a visual, human-readable way - you don't need to program or script anything at all. It's intuitive for beginners, but powerful enough for advanced users to work without hindrance. You never know when you'll need a helping hand exploring its inner workings, or harnessing its raw power to do your bidding.Construct Game Development Beginner's Guide is the book for you if you have ever felt the urge to make a game of your own. Reading this book will not only teach you to make some popular games using Construct, but you'll also learn the skills necessary to continue on and bring your game ideas to life.Starting as a beginner to Construct Classic, you'll be learning to make platform, puzzle, and shooter games, each styled after popular games of their genre.
This guide covers everything from creating animated sprites, to using the built-in physics and shadow engines of Construct Classic. You will learn the skills necessary to make advanced games of your own.
Construct Game Development Beginner's Guide will lead you on your journey of making games.
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Seitenzahl: 229
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012
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Table of Contents
Construct Game Development
Construct Game Development
Copyright © 2012 Packt Publishing
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.
Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.
Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.
First published: May 2012
Production Reference: 1110512
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd. Livery Place 35 Livery Street Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.
ISBN 978-1-84951-660-0
www.packtpub.com
Cover Image by Vinayak Chittar (<[email protected]>)
Credits
Author
Daven Bigelow
Reviewer
D.M. Noyé
Acquisition Editor
Usha Iyer
Lead Technical Editor
Shreerang Deshpande
Technical Editors
Unnati Shah
Mehreen Shaikh
Project Coordinator
Alka Nayak
Proofreader
Jonathan Todd
Indexer
Rekha Nair
Graphics
Manu Joseph
Production Coordinators
Prachali Bhiwandkar
Nilesh R. Mohite
Cover Work
Nilesh R. Mohite
About the Author
Daven Bigelow is a hobby game developer and a software programmer. He has been creating 2D games for over eight years, across different game creation tools and programming languages. However, most of his experience lies in Construct Classic, which has been his tool of choice over the last three years.
He can often be found on the Scirra forums under the name Jayjay, where he provides advice and examples for new users seeking help.
I would like to thank all my friends and family who encouraged me along the way. I also send thanks to the publisher, Packt Publishing, and all of its employees for their efforts.
Lastly, I thank you, the reader, for reading this book. I hope that it meets all of your expectations.
About the Reviewer
D.M. Noyé is a successful entrepreneur with extensive experience working on major commercial projects with a number of large corporations, as well as independent ventures spanning several fields, from music and literary arts to video games.
I'd like to thank the entire Scirra Construct community and development team for all of their years of hard work and dedication and for always being willing to share their insights and talents, making it possible for me to gain knowledge of how to use this great development tool and pass on that knowledge to others.
www.PacktPub.com
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I dedicate this book to my cousin Ken, who first inspired me to make video games.
Preface
Welcome to Construct Game Development Beginner's Guide. In this book, you will be learning to use the free and open source software Construct Classic to make your own video games from scratch.
Construct Classic is a DirectX 9-based game creation environment for Windows, designed for making 2D games. Construct Classic uses a graphical event-based system for defining how the game behaves, in a visual, human-readable way — you do not need to program or script anything at all. It's intuitive for beginners, but powerful enough for advanced users to work without hindrance.
So, if you have ever wanted to make video games, and haven't tried before, this book will help you get started!
What this book covers
Chapter 1, Our First Look at Construct, covers the basics of the Construct Classic editor.
Chapter 2, Hello World! Construct Style, covers the making our first game, a classic platformer.
Chapter 3, Adding the Challenge, covers creating enemies and a goal for our platform game.
Chapter 4, Making Noise, covers playing music and sound files in Construct Classic.
Chapter 5, Practical Physics, covers making our second game with the built-in physics engine.
Chapter 6, Custom Levels, covers making a level editor to save and load external level files.
Chapter 7, Platformer Revisited, a 2D Shooter, covers learning to make a platform shooter.
Chapter 8, I'm Throwing a Grenade, involves learning to use pixel shader effects in our games.
Chapter 9, Our Final Moments, covers a summary of what we've learned and some extra tips.
What you need for this book
With screenshots and step-by-step instructions, this beginner's guide requires only an interest in making video games, and basic experience with the Windows operating system.
Who this book is for
If you have ever thought of making a 2D computer game of your own, this book is for you.
Conventions
In this book, you will find several headings appearing frequently.
To give clear instructions of how to complete a procedure or task, we use:
Time for action — heading
Instructions often need some extra explanation so that they make sense, so they are followed with:
What just happened?
This heading explains the working of tasks or instructions that you have just completed.
You will also find some other learning aids in the book, including:
Pop quiz — heading
These are short multiple choice questions intended to help you test your own understanding.
Have a go hero — heading
These set practical challenges and give you ideas for experimenting with what you have learned.
You will also find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text are shown as follows: "In our game, the player will have a Score private variable to store how many enemies they stomped in that life, while a Lives global variable stores how many lives they have left before they lose."
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes, for example, appear in the text like this: "Click on the Application 1 node in the Project window."
Note
Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.
Tip
Tips and tricks appear like this.
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Questions
You can contact us at <[email protected]> if you are having a problem with any aspect of the book, and we will do our best to address it.
Chapter 1. Our First Look at Construct
In this book, we will be learning to use Construct Classic, a free open source 2D game creator. However, before we start making games, we'll need to know how to use the tool itself.
In this chapter, we shall:
So let's get on with it.
The first step: downloading and installing Construct Classic
Before we start using Construct, we need to get it running. In this part of the chapter, we'll be visiting the Scirra website to download a copy of Construct Classic, and then we'll go through the steps for installing it. If you already have Construct Classic installed, you can skip this step.
Time for action — getting Construct Classic up and running
Following these steps will lead to an installation of Construct Classic ready to go. To do this, you'll need access to the Internet and the Microsoft Windows operating system on the computer you're installing Construct on.
Step two: creating a game project
Now that Construct is installed, we will learn how to make a game (Direct-X) project after we first launch it.
Creating a project is the first step in making any game in Construct, but for now, we will create one to set us up for learning to navigate the interface.
Time for action — starting a game project
We are going to make a blank game project to allow us to navigate all areas of Construct.
What just happened?
We've just learned how to create a blank game project file in Construct, give it a name, and run our entire game. These steps will be used again each time we start a blank game project.
Creating the project
While we were creating the project from the menu, you may have noticed the other two types of projects. We won't be requiring them to make our games, but it is worth knowing a little about them.
The first option is New Application, which creates a program that does not rely on Direct-X, and rather uses the built-in rendering used by Windows. This project type greatly restricts the plugins that can be used, and is not intended for creating games. As such, we will not use this application project type in this book.
The third option, New Template/Example, is a collection of starter projects and tutorials that can make creating games of certain genres easier. The most playable template included is the Ghost Shooter tutorial, which includes a fully-working top-down shooter to start with. In our case, however, we will be creating all of our games from scratch, so we can make all kinds of games from the ground up.
Changing the project details
Although our interaction in this step was basic, we caught a glance of all the options available for defining the project. For now, all we needed to know was how to change the name and the creator of the game, but later on, we'll be revisiting many of the properties shown in that list.
Running the project
In this final step, we learned how to start our game up. This step is fairly straightforward, but it is worth noting that another way to click on Run All is to click the small monitor icon next to the save icon.
Have a go hero — try again from memory
Now that we've learned how to create blank projects, try it again to see if you can remember how to do it.
Step three: navigating the interface of Construct Classic
Now that we have Construct Classic and a game project set up, we can explore all the areas of the Construct editor that we need to learn, to make games. For now, we are going to have a glance around the editor.
Time for action — clicking our way around Construct Classic
Using the game project from the previous exercise, we are now going to click through and look at various windows we'll be revisiting many times throughout the book.
What just happened?
We've now learned to switch between the different views of the editor. Now, we can look more closely at what options are available for them.
The layout editor
This is the area that is used to create and modify the objects that make our games. Most changes made here are directly visible when the game is run.
The properties box
This box is used to modify the settings and values for most selectable items in Construct Classic. We will be using it frequently to make games throughout the book.
The event editor
In this area, we can create the rules for our games through conditions that trigger actions. An example of a condition is when a player touches a harmful substance (such as lava), we can make an event that checks for this condition and then triggers an action that removes a life from the player's lives variable.
The animator box
This box is used to create graphics and animations for our game objects the player will be interacting with.
The layers box
The layers box allows the organization of objects into different layers. This is useful for creating objects that scroll at different speeds to create a parallax effect, as well as a separate foreground and background objects. Layers can be hidden by clicking the eye icon, and locked by clicking the lock icon, as shown in the following screenshot. They can also be named in the Properties box.
The eye and the lock icon are found by default (visible and unlocked) on the left of each layer.
The final step: an introduction to objects
To finish the chapter, we are going to look at what objects are and what some of them do. Objects are the most important part of making a game in Construct as they usually interact directly with the player.
