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- Herausgeber: Packt Publishing
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
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 – 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 – right through to publishing a game on the Internet and testing games on the most popular mobile devices.
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Table of Contents
Learning Stencyl 3.x Game Development Beginner's Guide
Learning Stencyl 3.x Game Development Beginner's Guide
Copyright © 2013 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 2013
Production Reference: 1170513
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
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ISBN 978-1-84969-596-1
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Cover Image by Vicki Wenderlich (<www.vickiwenderlich.com>) and lnnes Borkwood (<[email protected]>)
Credits
Author
Innes Borkwood
Reviewers
Joe Dolivo
Jean-Marc "jihem" QUÉRÉ
James Vanderhyde
Acquisition Editor
Kartikey Pandey
Lead Technical Editor
Ankita Shashi
Technical Editors
Sharvari Baet
Sayali Mirajkar
Akshata Patil
Dheera Paul
Project Coordinator
Anugya Khurana
Proofreader
Lauren Tobon
Indexer
Rekha Nair
Graphics
Ronak Dhruv
Abhinash Sahu
Production Coordinator
Nitesh Thakur
Cover Work
Nitesh Thakur
Foreword
My journey began nearly 10 years ago creating a map editor for a Mario clone. I had just learned how to program, and like many, I wanted to make games with my newfound knowledge. Even before I learned how to program, I fostered an obsession over editing maps for games on TI graphing calculators, even going as far as drawing such maps out on graph paper as a way of sharing them with friends. Times have surely changed since then!
Over the years, I bounced from one project to another, each with increasingly ambitious scope. The Mario clone begat a general platformer engine, which in turn gave way to a completely general game engine. None of these experiments saw the light of day, but they set the stage for what eventually became Stencyl.
Stencyl was conceived during a time that, despite being a few years back, seems anachronistic. Facebook was closed to the public, YouTube was a novelty, and the iPhone had yet to be invented. Within the gaming world, creating a YouTube for games was considered the holy grail, and no fewer than a dozen companies sought this vision by democratizing game creation in various ways.
A few years later, Stencyl opened its doors to an eagerly awaiting public. Educators in particular loved the combination of a familiar brick-snapping interface with the incentives of building a real game. It was during this time that I met Innes and learned that he wanted to use Stencyl to teach programming and game design to young students. As we grew further acquainted with each other, he proposed this book.
Learning Stencyl 3.x Game Development: Beginner's Guide is a top to bottom treatise on how to build a game using Stencyl, from humble beginnings to the last 10% spent polishing and taking a game to market. Creating a game is portrayed not as a sprint, but as a journey upon which you'll build not just a working knowledge of Stencyl, but acquire a general toolbox of techniques and wisdom that will serve you well throughout your game-creating career.
When I applied to college, one of my essays detailed my early experiences with game programming. I was particularly fascinated by a magical spark of life I bestowed upon a lowly breakout clone when I got a ball to bounce off the paddle and break some blocks. It was a euphoric moment because I finally got my first game to work!
If you're new to the world of game creation, I offer you this one piece of advice: think big but start small. Complete some small projects to get the hang of things and see firsthand just how important that last 10 percent is. When you inevitably hit a brick wall, don't give up. Everybody starts somewhere, and when you get that first game working, you'll experience the same joy that I felt when I finally got my first game to work. Happy Stencyling!
Jonathan Chung
Creator of Stencyl
About the Author
Innes Borkwood is a freelance computer consultant and software trainer living in Perth, Western Australia.
Prior to moving to Perth in 2011, Innes was a full-time teacher at Chesterton Community Sports College in Staffordshire, England, where he taught Information & Communications Technology for four years.
In addition to consulting and teaching, Innes has also worked as a freelance journalist for national computer magazines in the UK.
Since the first personal computers arrived in the UK, Innes has been a dedicated technology enthusiast and electronics hobbyist, with an enthusiasm for participating in, and encouraging, life-long learning. He has a First Class Honours Degree in Business Studies with ICT, and continues to learn something new every day!
Innes is happily married to his very understanding wife, Ellen, with whom he has two wonderful children, David and Catherine.
Acknowledgement
Thanks to my wife, Ellen, and my children, David and Catherine, for being so accepting of my absence from family life during the many, many hours that I spent at my desk while writing this book.
I offer thanks and gratitude to the team at Packt Publishing, whose enthusiasm for this book has ensured that the process of creating it was an enjoyable, rewarding, and challenging experience; it has been a pleasure working with you. For the Technical Reviewers—thank you for your generous comments, helpful suggestions, and for your vigilance in detecting my errors.
For my daughter, Catherine; thank you for proof reading the early drafts, testing the accompanying code, and for providing such helpful, constructive criticism.
My final acknowledgements are reserved for Joe Dolivo and Jonathan Chung of Stencyl, LLC. Joe, thank you for responding to each of my many questions so promptly and comprehensively; I am indebted to you. Jon, thank you for creating Stencyl; it is a wonderful tool that has already enabled, and will continue to enable, many people to "find the fun!"
This book is dedicated to my dear wife, Ellen; thank you for your love, your support, and your encouragement. Here it is in print; I love you.
For David and Catherine—I love you too!
About the Reviewers
Joe Dolivo is a practicing electrical engineer (BSEE, UIUC-Illinois 2010) by day and Stencyl team member by night. Originally an inquisitive volunteer, he now handles numerous aspects of Stencyl's operations, including content development, site maintenance, social media, business partnerships, educational outreach, and support. Most recently, Joe's taken an interest in using innovative technologies such as Stencyl to improve STEM education in the US and abroad.
Jean-Marc "jihem" QUÉRÉ is a senior computer science engineer, and is also the author of numerous articles in the French specialized press and books (on WinDev). Self-taught, he provided software for more than 20 years in every domain: decision-making methods, artificial learning, robotics, and autonomous systems. Technology evangelist, he has chosen to support Stencyl (since the migration from Flash to haXe). He actively contributes to the community (extensions, translation, and support). Undoubtedly, you will meet him one day or another on the Stencyl forums. And you will be welcome!
Being part of something, implies to be welcomed by a community. Stencyl users are part of one of the best communities I have been in touch with as far as I can remember since the first steps of Internet (and Linux). You know that a person uses Stencyl because he (or she) has sparks in his (or her) eyes and a child-like spirit to create amazing games. I have found this in Innes. And if you go through this journey, you might have them too.
James Vanderhyde teaches computer science and math at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas. He has a PhD in computer science from Georgia Tech (2007). His research is in computer graphics and computer game development, especially for educational purposes. He has been writing computer games and other computer programs since the Commodore 128 days.
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Preface
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—anyone who has the desire to create his or her own video game can now do so with almost any desktop computer and a free software download from the Internet.
Stencyl eliminates many of the tedious and time consuming aspects of game development, but getting to grips with such a comprehensive software package can be somewhat daunting—there are so many great features that it's difficult to know where to start!
Learning Stencyl 3.x Game Development: Beginner's Guide will guide you through learning the essential skills that are required to create your own video games without knowing how to write computer code. We're going to start with a blank screen and, before we reach the end of the book, we'll have developed a complete game, ready for publishing. We won't stop with just the basics in place—we're going all the way, right through to including many of the important features that we would expect to find in a professional production!
Let's install Stencyl and create a video game.
What this book covers
Chapter 1, Introduction, explains what Stencyl is, how it works, and how we're going to learn the skills that we need to develop our own video games. We'll also install Stencyl and check that the installation is working as expected.
Chapter 2, Let's Make a Game!, guides us through the first steps of creating our game. We'll learn how to control our game's main character, design a game level with platforms, and create a scrolling display.
Chapter 3, Detecting Collisions, explores the management of different types of collisions within Stencyl. We'll add enemy characters and collectible items, and we'll fine tune the collision detection by modifying collision shapes.
Chapter 4, Creating Behaviors, explains how we can take full control of how our games work, by constructing our own custom gameplay routines. We'll learn how to use Stencyl's instruction blocks to introduce more advanced features into our game, such as random in-game events and decision making.
Chapter 5, Animation in Stencyl, introduces some of the different ways in which we can implement animation in our game. We'll discover how to bring our in-game characters to life with Stencyl's built-in animation and graphics editing tools.
Chapter 6, Managing and Displaying Information, focuses on managing information and sharing that information with players of our game. We'll be learning how to display text on screen, keep track of collected items, and also how to display a countdown timer bar.
Chapter 7, Polishing the Game, shows us how to add some essential elements to our game, such as an introductory screen, a game-over message, and a pause feature with a pop-up banner. We'll also be implementing an interesting visual effect and creating additional levels for our game.
Chapter 8, Implementing Sounds, concentrates on the skills that we need for implementing audio within our game. We'll learn many of the important techniques required for introducing sound effects and a soundtrack, to add that final professional touch to our games.
Chapter 9, Publishing and Making Money from Your Games, explains how we can publish our games on the Internet, and discusses some of the options available to us for selling or licensing our games. We'll also discover how to implement in-game advertising so we can earn some money each time our games are played.
Chapter 10, Targeting Mobile Platforms, discusses how we can test our games on mobile devices, and we'll also learn how to use the accelerometer and touchscreen features to control games.
Appendix, Planning, Resources, and Legal Issues, examines some of the important aspects of planning the development of a video game. We'll also consider the availability of third-party tools and resources and, finally, we'll review some of the legal aspects relating to the use of third-party assets within our video games.
What you need for this book
You will need to download Stencyl 3.x from stencyl.com.
Stencyl can be installed on Microsoft Windows XP (and later versions of Microsoft Windows), Mac OS X, and Linux (Ubuntu distributions recommended).
No prior knowledge of game development or computer programming is required.
Who this book is for
This book is for beginning game developers who have no prior knowledge of creating games or computer programming.
It's also an ideal resource for experienced game developers and designers who need to create rapid prototypes, or who want to speed up the game-development process.
Teachers and students, who think learning should be fun, will also benefit from this book!
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:
Have a go hero – heading
These are 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: "The game file named 5961_02_13.stencyl represents how our game should look at this point in the book!"
Newterms and importantwords are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "Before we can open up another game, we should close the Adobe Flash Player window in which the previously tested game is running, and we must close the current game in Stencyl by clicking on File | Close Game and follow any prompts that appear".
Note
Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.
Tip
Tips and tricks appear like this.
Reader feedback
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To send us general feedback, simply send an e-mail to <[email protected]>, and mention the book title through the subject of your message.
If there is a topic that you have expertise in and you are interested in either writing or contributing to a book, see our author guide on www.packtpub.com/authors.
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Downloading the example code
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Downloading the color images of this book
We also provide you a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots/diagrams used in this book. The color images will help you better understand the changes in the output.
You can download this file from: http://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/downloads/5961OT_ColoredImages.pdf
Errata
Although we have taken every care to ensure the accuracy of our content, mistakes do happen. If you find a mistake in one of our books—maybe a mistake in the text or the code—we would be grateful if you would report this to us. By doing so, you can save other readers from frustration and help us improve subsequent versions of this book. If you find any errata, please report them by visiting http://www.packtpub.com/submit-errata, selecting your book, clicking on the erratasubmissionform link, and entering the details of your errata. Once your errata are verified, your submission will be accepted and the errata will be uploaded to our website, or added to any list of existing errata, under the Errata section of that title.
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Please contact us at <[email protected]> with a link to the suspected pirated material.
We appreciate your help in protecting our authors, and our ability to bring you valuable content.
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. Introduction
Welcome to Stencyl — an exciting and fun game development tool used by many professional and amateur game developers around the world.
By the end of this book, we will know all the skills required to develop a product that exhibits all the features expected in a professionally-developed computer game.
However, before we start to create our game, we're going to learn about the Stencyl toolkit, install Stencyl, and test that everything is working as required, then experiment with some of the sample games that have been provided with the installation.
In this chapter we will learn the following:
How Stencyl works
If you have purchased this book, then you may already have an idea of what Stencyl is and how it works.
However, if you are browsing online or standing in a bookstore flicking through the pages of this book, then you might want to know that Stencyl is a no-coding toolkit for creating 2D video games that will run on many different mobile and desktop devices.
Scenes, or levels, within a game are created using Stencyl's drag-and-drop Scene Designer. The screenshot below shows the Scene Designer being used to modify one of the levels in the game that we'll be creating:
Tip
Downloading the color images of this book
We also provide you a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots/diagrams used in this book. The color images will help you better understand the changes in the output. You can download this file from: http://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/downloads/5961OT_ColoredImages.pdf
The instructions or logic for the gameplay can be created using Stencyl's Gameplay Designer— a clever system that utilizes building blocks which snap together to create a series of instructions that are used by the objects in our game. An example of some instructions being created in the Gameplay Designer is shown in the following screenshot:
How we'll learn to use Stencyl
All that is needed to follow the tutorials in this book are a desktop computer—Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux will do just fine, along with the free version of Stencyl that can be downloaded from www.stencyl.com. The free version of Stencyl can be used to develop and publish Flash and HTML5 games, and it can also be used to develop and test games for desktop computers and mobile devices. If you want to publish games for platforms other than Flash and HTML5, then you'll need to pay for an annual subscription to Stencyl in order to access the additional publishing features.
A great way to learn to use a tool such as Stencyl is to complete a practical project, and over the course of this book, we will develop a game from a blank screen right through to completion, learning all the important features of Stencyl along the way.
The game will start in a very basic form and as we progress, we will use the tools within Stencyl to add features to our game until we have a final product that demonstrates many of the characteristics that a professional game should exhibit.
Later in this chapter, we'll install Stencyl and run some test games to ensure that everything is working properly. Then, in Chapter 2, Let's Make a Game!, we'll jump straight in and create a game with a character that we can control as it runs and jumps across a scrolling jungle scene and interacts with an interesting environment.
We're going to experience some amazing results very quickly, so the learning process is going to be fast paced and fun!
The following screenshot was captured while developing the game in Chapter 2, Let's Make a Game!, so it can be seen how quickly we will be progressing through the development of our game.
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:
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.
Platforms that Stencyl runs on
The Stencyl game development toolkit can be installed on the following desktop computer platforms:
The installation process for each of the above platforms is detailed later in this chapter.
Stencyl target platforms
When we talk about target platforms, we mean the devices that our game can run on.
Games created with Stencyl can be played on most common platforms including web browsers, Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and iOS devices (for example, iPhone and iPad), Android, and Linux. The main issues that we need to think about, when it comes to the target platform, are the screen size of the game and how our game will be controlled (that is, keyboard, mouse, or touch). Stencyl does all the hard work for you!
Currently, at the time of publication, Stencyl can target the following platforms:
Targeting specific devices
If you need to target a specific device, it is important to ensure that it is supported. So, check the Stencyl website for the most up-to-date information, as details may have changed since publication.
Publishing desktop games
When creating games for desktop platforms, it's important to understand that you can only publish games for the platform on which you are running Stencyl. For example, if you are running Stencyl on a Windows PC, you can only create desktop games for other Windows PCs, and if you are running Stencyl on Mac OS X, then you can only create desktop games for other Mac OS X computers.
Publishing to iOS devices
Amazingly, if you want to publish to Apple's iOS devices using Stencyl, you don't need to own an Apple computer, which has been, until now, an expensive barrier to entry for would-be iOS game developers! The Stencyl Mobile and Studio annual subscriptions include access to the StencylBuilder service that enables Windows and Linux users to publish their Stencyl games to the Apple App Store as long as they are current members of the Apple iOS Developer Program.
Publishing to Android
Publishing to Android is a very straightforward process with Stencyl running on any supported desktop platform, and testing on an Android device does not require a developer license.
What makes Stencyl different
There are many game development tools available, but Stencyl has some stand-out features that make it very different from its competitors.
Stencyl runs on almost any desktop computer
Stencyl can be installed on nearly all popular desktop computers, and Stencyl files can be freely exported and imported between the different desktop platforms, which is very useful when working with friends or colleagues who use different platforms for game development.
Stencyl creates native code
Whichever platform we want to publish our game onto, Stencyl does all the hard work for us! It creates the game code specifically for that device, and it will not have to run the game in a wrapper that can slow our games down.
Although that might sound fairly technical, it just means that our games will run at the fastest possible speeds without us having to learn a new programming language for each target platform. Stencyl takes care of all the hard work when it comes to publishing to different target devices; we can just concentrate on creating our games!
You don't need to be a coder
Probably the greatest differentiator between Stencyl and other game development tools is the way in which the gameplay instructions are built. With many game development tools, you must hand-code the instructions in a specific programming language, which can be very tedious and time-consuming. Or, with some other development tools, you are required to point and click on the instructions that you want to select in order to build rules that the objects in your game will follow, which can be very restricting when it comes to complex gameplay.
The developers of Stencyl have created a system that offers an impressive set of options when compared to other currently available game development methods. There are four different options available to game developers when using Stencyl, so we can do the following:
The magic of Stencyl is that we can mix and match any combination of the above development methods!
For example, if we want to create a basic game with common gameplay features, it's very easy to use Stencyl's built-in behaviors, and it's quite possible to develop a complete game in this manner.
At the time of publication, there were more than fifty built-in behaviors, a small sample of which is shown in the following screenshot:
Once we understand how the prebuilt behaviors work, we can either customize existing ones or we can create our own from scratch using the drag-and-drop behavior editor.
The following screenshot shows an example of a custom-built behavior, and even if you have never seen Stencyl before, you might be able to understand some of the instructions.
Finally, more advanced developers may choose to hand-code their own special game routines using the Haxe programming language (pronounced Hex, according to the main developer). This is certainly not a requirement for creating games, and many Stencyl users have never even tried this kind of development! Most Stencyl developers use a combination of prebuilt behaviors, customized behaviors, and also behaviors that they have created themselves, and these are the methods that we are going to be using throughout this book.
When our game is finished, we just need to decide which platforms we want to target, and Stencyl will do the rest with a few clicks of the mouse!
Using the free version of Stencyl
The free version of Stencyl has very few limitations compared to the subscription versions and in practice, you can use all the important game development features and make any kind of game with the free version that you can make with the subscription versions.
The main limitations of the free version of Stencyl are:
The great thing about the free version of Stencyl is that we can develop our games to completion, publish them for Flash or HTML5, and even sell them if we wish.
If, after publishing for Flash or HTML5, we find that a game is very popular, we can then pay for the appropriate Stencyl subscription and sell the game in the Apple App Store, or for Android devices in the Google Play store. We can learn how to use Stencyl and develop games for free to see if people like them, before paying for an annual subscription!
If you are a member of the Apple iOS Developer program, games can be created and tested for the Apple iOS devices with the free version of Stencyl, but they can't be published to the Apple App Store. In Chapter 10, Targeting Mobile Platforms, we'll look in more detail at the options available, and the requirements for publishing to mobile devices running iOS and Android.
Using the free version of Stencyl with this book
In order to follow the game development tutorials in this book, only the free version of Stencyl is required. Subscriptions to Stencyl are only necessary for publishing to mobile devices and desktop applications.
The following matrix shows the major differences between the free and subscription versions of Stencyl:
Please note that the previous matrix provides only a summary of differences between the available versions of Stencyl. It is vital to check the Stencyl website (www.stencyl.com) for the latest features prior to making a purchasing decision, as the feature list may have been updated since publication.
Successful games created with Stencyl
Many successful games for Flash and mobile devices have been created with Stencyl. In some cases, they have been created by experienced developers who have switched to Stencyl to speed up the development process, and in other cases, the games have been developed by newcomers to game development, who had previously been unable to create their own games due to the complexity of traditional programming languages, or who had simply not attempted to create a game previously.
Following are three examples of successful games that were created using Stencyl:
Greg has stated that it only took him a few days to create the prototype of the game and that Stencyl enabled him to try out new gameplay elements very quickly.
Kreayshawn Goes to Japan: The first game that Beth Maher (www.bethmaher.com) created was called Kreayshawn: The game. The game, shown in the following screenshot, was created by her with Stencyl during a workshop project that was designed to encourage women to become involved in the indie game industry.The development of this fan game led to Beth working with Columbia Records (part of the Sony group of companies) to produce Kreayshawn Goes to Japan, for Kreayshawn's fan website (arcade.kreayshawn.com). The game is a bright, imaginative platform game featuring Kreayshawn as the main character.
Impossible Pixel: Impossible Pixel and the Fate of Destiny, created by 99 Up Games, is a challenging platform game with 93 levels, available on iPad and iPhone. This game takes advantage of the touchscreen features provided by iOS; the buttons for controlling the player can be seen in the lower-left and lower-right corners of the following screenshot:At the time of writing, Impossible Pixel, according to the developer's figures, had been downloaded from the Apple App Store approximately 700,000 times and had reached the position of the most popular free download on the App Store in nine countries. It was also the second most popular free download in thirty other countries, including the US App Store.
Impossible Pixel includes many professional features including Game Center achievements, high score leaderboards, atmospheric retro soundtrack, and many interesting challenges throughout the game.
The Stencyl Showcase
The listed games are a very small sample of the successful games that have been published using Stencyl. The Stencyl website contains areas dedicated to showcasing games, and it's certainly worth visiting Stencyl Showcase for inspiration, and to see some examples of impressive games that have been created with Stencyl.
Installing Stencyl and testing the setup
We've had a look at what Stencyl can do and how we are going to learn to use it. So, let's jump right into the next vital step and install Stencyl. The following section of the book is split into four parts. The first three parts will explain how to install and run Stencyl on each of Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, and the fourth part will step through creating an account and quickly testing Stencyl to make sure that everything is working.
Once we have Stencyl up and running, we'll head off into Chapter 2, Let's make a game!, where we'll quickly progress with the development of our first game.
Installing Stencyl
Let's look at how to install Stencyl on each of the three desktop platforms that it supports: Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.
Microsoft Windows
Stencyl will currently install on the versions of Windows listed as follows:
The download and installation methods are the same for each version of Windows, but the following screenshots have been captured in Windows 7.
Time for action – downloading and installing Stencyl on Windows
In this session, we're going to download and install Stencyl on Windows:
Note
Because of the system access that Stencyl requires, you may need to run Stencyl as the Administrator on a Windows PC when updating or the first time after purchasing a subscription. This can easily be achieved by right-clicking on the Stencyl application icon and selecting Run as administrator.
What just happened?
We have just downloaded the latest version of Stencyl for Windows, and the installation is now complete. If you want to delete the installation file that you downloaded, then that's fine; it's not needed any more.
Note
When running Stencyl for the first time, we are asked to sign in. The signing in process is the same for all platforms and is detailed under the heading, Creating a Stencyl account, (after the Linux installation procedure in this chapter).
Mac OS X
Stencyl will currently install on all versions of Mac OS X, but it should be noted that Java 6 must be installed in order for Stencyl to work.
Note
At the time of writing, Java 6 was a mandatory requirement for correct operation of Stencyl; Java 7 is not compatible.
The download and installation methods are the same for each version of Mac OS X, but the following screenshots have been captured in Mac OS X 10.7.4.
Time for action – downloading and installing Stencyl for Mac OS X
In this session, we're going to download and install Stencyl for Mac OS X.
What just happened?
We have just downloaded the latest version of Stencyl for Mac OS X, and the installation is now complete.
The stencyl.dmg file can now be unmounted and deleted; it's not needed anymore.
Note
When running Stencyl for the first time, we are asked to sign in. The signing in process is the same for all platforms and is detailed under the heading, Creating a Stencyl account, (after the Linux installation procedure in this chapter).
Linux
Stencyl should install on most recent versions of Linux, but Ubuntu distributions are recommended. For the following screenshots, Stencyl was installed and tested on Ubuntu Version 10.10.
Time for action – downloading and installing Stencyl for Linux
In this session, we're going to download and install Stencyl on Linux.
What just happened?
We have just downloaded the latest version of Stencyl for Linux, and the installation is now complete.
The Linux version of Stencyl doesn't really need installing – we just needed to extract the files to create the Stencyl folder so that the application files are accessible.
If you want to delete the original download file, that's fine; it isn't needed anymore.
Creating a Stencyl account
Now that we have installed Stencyl, the next step is to run a quick test to ensure that everything is working, so we can then dive into the next chapter and create our first game.
Time for action – creating an account and signing in
Although it is not a requirement to sign in to create games with Stencyl, we won't be able to publish any games, access StencylForge, or contribute to the Stencyl online forums without an account.
In order to follow the tutorials in this book, we'll need access to StencylForge, and we'll also need to be able to publish our games, so I highly recommend creating a Stencyl account and signing in.
Note
If you have already signed up for an account on the Stencyl forums, you do not need to create a separate account in order to log into Stencyl. The Stencyl application login and the Stencyl forum login use the same credentials; so, you can sign in to Stencyl without any further action!
Note
Choose your username carefully as it will be your permanent Stencyl login name and username on the Stencyl online forums!
What just happened?
We have created an account so that we can access the important features of Stencyl. The same account credentials can be used to log in to the Stencyl forums at community.stencyl.com.
