Construct Game Development: Beginner’s Guide

Table of Contents

Construct Game Development

Credits

About the Author

About the Reviewer

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Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Time for action — heading

What just happened?

Pop quiz — heading

Have a go hero — heading

Reader feedback

Customer support

Downloading the example code

Errata

Piracy

Questions

1. Our First Look at Construct

The first step: downloading and installing Construct Classic

Time for action — getting Construct Classic up and running

Step two: creating a game project

Time for action — starting a game project

What just happened?

Creating the project

Changing the project details

Running the project

Have a go hero — try again from memory

Step three: navigating the interface of Construct Classic

Time for action — clicking our way around Construct Classic

What just happened?

The layout editor

The properties box

The event editor

The animator box

The layers box

The final step: an introduction to objects

Time for action — creating some objects

What just happened?

Creating an object

Drawing the sprite

Changing the appearance of the sprite

Have a go hero — make a picture of sprites

Summary

2. Hello World! Construct Style

Sprites revisited

Time for action — creating a player sprite

What just happened?

Creating new animations

Animation tags

Choosing the Collisions mode

Tiled backgrounds: defining the world

Time for action — make some tiled backgrounds

What just happened?

Have a go hero — another tiled background

Attributes: telling Construct more about our objects

Time for action — adding attributes to our objects

What just happened?

Behaviors: teaching objects how to act

Time for action — getting our player moving

What just happened?

The behaviors

Setting controls

Variables: private and global

Time for action — giving our player a life

What just happened?

Textboxes: giving the player a heads-up

Time for action — showing our player their health and score

What just happened?

Events: setting the rules and goals of a game

Time for action — very eventful games

What just happened?

The sprites

Events

Conditions

Actions

Summary

3. Adding the Challenge

Before we start

Reaching the goal

Time for action — making the game winnable

What just happened?

Overlapping versus collision

Set activated

Set animation

Avoid the hazards

Time for action — bestowing more challenges on a player

What just happened?

The death of a player

Resurrecting our player

Giving the player a game over

Putting some bad guys in

Time for action — adding an enemy and making him move

What just happened?

Direction of motion

Falling down

Turning around

Looking for a hit

Have a go hero — gaining lives

Improving our interface

Time for action — creating a background for the GUI

What just happened?

Have a go hero — design a custom panel image

Pop quiz — recap

Summary

4. Making Noise

A game and its music

Time for action — add some music to our game

What just happened?

The start of layout condition

Playing the music file

Looping the music file

Modules of music

Time for action — play some mod music

What just happened?

The Is playing condition

Loading and playing the file

Sounds: describing the action

Time for action — adding sounds

What just happened?

Exporting our game

Time for action — exporting our game

What just happened?

Have a go hero — make another platformer

Pop quiz — sound and music

A note on sharing our games

Summary

5. Practical Physics

Creating physical objects

Time for action — creating our objects

What just happened?

The Global property

Aligning to a grid

Setting the Physics properties

The Timer behavior

Creating a custom physics collision mask

Event sheets and groups

Time for action — creating and using Event sheets and groups

What just happened?

Adding a physical force

Time for action — creating forces

What just happened?

Adding special pegs

Time for action — creating specialty pegs

What just happened?

The For loop

Set timescale

Portals: a way of getting from A to B

Time for action — teleporting the ball

What just happened?

Particle objects: creating a fireworks finale

Time for action — creating fireworks

What just happened?

Playing the sounds and music

Time for action — adding the sounds and music

What just happened?

Creating another level

Time for action — making another level

What just happened?

Have a go hero — create additional levels

Meet the debugger

Time for action — looking through the debugger

What just happened?

Pop quiz — physical games

Summary

6. Custom Levels

The user friendly INI file

Time for action — creating an INI file

What just happened?

INI groups

INI items

Loading levels

Time for action — load custom levels

What just happened?

Setting the INI file

Loading the level

Including the Game event sheet

The NextINI layout

The Game Over screen

Time for action — creating the Game Over layout

What just happened?

Making a level editor

Time for action — creating the objects

Time for action — loading and saving levels with events

Time for action — creating events for the interface

What just happened?

The edit region

The function object

Enabling and disabling groups

Writing to an INI file

Positioning the Cursor object to a grid

Placing portals

Have a go hero — make a level editor for your platform game

Pop quiz — INI file recap

Summary

7. Platformer Revisited, a 2D Shooter

Before we start

Multiplayer: getting your friends involved

Time for action — creating the game assets and title screen

Time for action — designing the level

Time for action — creating player characters and conveyor belt objects

Time for action — creating the HUD objects

Time for action — creating the main game events

Time for action — creating the Game Over layout

What just happened?

Families

Containers

Multiplayer

Static scrolling

Shooting bullets

Time for action — adding some guns

What just happened?

Parallax: giving the impression of depth

Time for action — creating parallax scrolling

What just happened?

Have a go hero — add more scenery

Lights and shadows: illuminating the darkness

Time for action — using lights and shadow casters

What just happened?

Enemies with guns: slightly more challenging

Time for action — making some enemies

What just happened?

Manual collision detection

Basic AI

Spawning a gun

Pop quiz — a shot in the dark

Summary

8. I'm Throwing a Grenade!

Grenades — bouncing, timed explosives

Time for action — throwing grenades

What just happened?

Throwing the grenade

Bouncing the grenades

Explosions — big bright lights

Time for action — explosion flashes

What just happened?

Effects — distortions and other nice things

Time for action — adding some distortion

What just happened?

Pixel shaders

The effects used

Have a go hero — more visual effects

Objects — completely blown away

Time for action — blast the robots away

What just happened?

Have a go hero — extend the game

Pop quiz — looking back on timers and effects

Summary

9. Our Final Moments

What we've learned

Chapter 1, the basics of the Construct Classic editor

Chapter 2, our first game, MyPlatformer

Chapter 3, adding enemies and a lives system

Chapter 4, playing sounds and music

Chapter 5, a physics game

Chapter 6, custom levels and level editors

Chapter 7, A sidescrolling shooter

Chapter 8, effects and physics interactions

Extending our games

MyPlatformer

BounceBall

SideShooter

Tips and tricks

Custom collision masks

Adding custom plugins

Adding custom effects

Using the Canvas object

Using the Minimap object

Using the Plasma object

Make backups often; make saves even more

Finding help

A note on Construct 2

Summary

A. Pop quiz Answers

Chapter 3: Adding the Challenge

Recap

Chapter 4: Making Noise

Sound and music

Chapter 5: Practical Physics

Physical games

Chapter 6: Custom Levels

INI file recap

Chapter 7: Platformer Revisited, a 2D Shooter

A shot in the dark

Chapter 8: I'm Throwing a Grenade!

Looking back on timers and effects

Index

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 (<vinayak.chittar@gmail.com>)

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.

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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