Installation Instructions
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CODERED Project STENCYL Tutorial Installation Instructions Important Notes: The latest version of Stencyl can be downloaded from: http://www.stencyl.com/download/ Available versions for Windows, Linux and Mac This guide is for Windows installation only Instructions for other platforms can be found online at http://www.stencyl.com/download/ Once you have downloaded the desired version of Stencyl, you run the setup wizard by double clicking the downloaded installation file. This initial screen should appear and the setup wizard will guide you through the installation process by following the on-screen instructions. A screen noting that the installation is complete will verify that Stencyl has been successfully installed to your system. Stencyl can now be accessed through the Start Menu item. If you run Stencyl for the first time, you will need to agree with the software’s licensing agreement in order to access the software. The welcome screen of the software allows you to register or login with an existing Stencyl account. It is recommended to have a Stencyl account since you will need one in order to publish your games. A new Stencyl account requires just a working email address. If you click “Create Account” you will prompted to select a username and a password for the new account. Also, you will be prompted register your email address. This email address will be registered as a credential for the new account. If you already have a registered Stencyl account, you can simply type your user name and password and click “Sign In” at the right-bottom corner of this screen. - 1 / 31 - CODERED Project STENCYL Tutorial Stencyl Resources Each game implemented in Stencyl, is built using the available Stencyl resources described briefly in this section. We will use these resources extensively in our example game guide. Actors Actors represent the living, interactive part of a game. Actors are the players, enemies, projectiles, vehicles, items, interface elements and anything in a game that “lives.” Every actor can be broken up into a few common elements: Appearance - How the actor looks or appears in-game. Behavior - How the actor behaves or acts. Physics - How the actor interacts with the world when it collides with it. Scenes Scenes are where everything in a game takes place. Scenes can be the “levels” of the game or even menus. Scenes are the place where the player and the actors interact with each other. Scenes are connected with other scenes in order to build the “story” of the game. Scenes are built from tiles (or even custom images) and are organized in layers (which tiles/images are in from of others etc, just like Photshop). Every scene can be broken up into a few common elements: Scene - How the tiles are organized in space. Behavior - How the elements (actors, tiles) in this scene behave or act. Physics - How the scene affects its elements (e.g. gravity). Sounds This resource is all the sound effects associated with the game. Each sound can be utilized by actors or scenes to make the game more appealing and interactive. Tilesets/Backgrounds/Fonts Resources that allow for having a pre-defined set of building blocks for easily build each scene of the game. Logic This resource is the “brain” of the game. Logic consists of all of Actor Behaviors and Scene Behaviors. Behaviors are reusable, configurable “abilities” that you attach to Actor Types or Scenes. Together, they handle all interactions that occur in the world of the game. - 2 / 31 - CODERED Project STENCYL Tutorial Stencyl Environment Initial Screen A 1 2 B C 3 4 5 6 D The initial screen of Stencyl (shown above) has four areas: A. The system menu: This is the main menu of Stencyl software and provides access to all of Stencyl tools and system dialogs. The File tab holds the new/open/save/close commands, allows access to the Stencyl account associated with each installation and the system preferences. The View tab allows for showing or hiding additional Stencyl toolbars. The Run tab allows us to test our games and open directly the platforms that we developed our games for (such as the flash player or our browser). The Publish tab provides the tools for finalizing our game and prepares the game for the platform we select. The Extensions tab allows access to Stencyl’s extension manager. The Debug tab is holding all tools associated with resolving errors in games and verifying correct story line. Lastly, the Help tab contains shortcuts to online help resources and information about the Stencyl software. B. The toolbar: Allows easy access to create/save commands and the online Stencyl help system “Stencylopedia”. More importantly, the toolbar allows access to the Game Settings (Item 1) and to the Log Viewer (Item 2). These two Stencyl tools are extremely useful when we develop our games since Game Settings provide access to the global parameters of the game and the Log Viewer is an important debugging tool that allows us to verify the correct execution of our games. - 3 / 31 - CODERED Project STENCYL Tutorial C. The Welcome Center: This is the main area of the initial Stencyl’s screen. The Welcome Center is partitioned in three regions: its menu at the left, the game selection panel in the center, and the useful shortcuts list at the top-most right side (Item 3). The main purpose of the Welcome Center is to allow the selection of an existing game for editing or the creation of a new one. This is reflected on the option of the shortcut list (Item 3) as well. We can create a new game, export an existing game or even importing a Stencyl game created in another installation. The menu of the welcome center provides easy access to existing games in our installation through the Games option (Item 4) and to additional downloadable online material from Stencyl website. The Games option is the default pre-selected value and loads the game selection panel in the center. The game selection panel holds shortcuts for all games associate with our Stencyl installation and has a shortcut for creating new games as well. In our case, the panel has no games since we have a clean install and the only visible shortcut is the new game option (Item 5). D. The status bar: The initial screen’s status bar holds a shortcut to our game folder (Item 6) and a button that opens the game we may have selected in the game selected panel. The game folder is the location in our hard drive where Stencyl operations and files are stored. If we press the View Game Folder (Item 6), our operating system will display the contents of this location in our hard drive: The Game Folder is stored under the stencylworks folder in our system’s hard drive and holds not only our games but all Stencyl tools and procedures as well. The stencylworks\games subfolder is the physical location where our games will be stored each in a new folder named with the same name as each game. Important Notes: Removing a game (for example named <ABCD>) from the game selection panel, immediately DELETES all files from stencylworks\games\<ABCD> and VICE-VERSA! The removal of a game is IRREVERSABLE when done through Stencyl! Please regularly backup stencylworks folders in order to keep your games save! - 4 / 31 - CODERED Project STENCYL Tutorial By selecting to create a new game either through Item 3 or Item 5 of the Welcome Center and giving our game a name, we are ready to start building the recourses for our game. This tutorial will try to provide the necessary know-how to successfully creating a game using the Stencyl software through a hands-on game example inspired by the participants of CODERED workshop in Cyprus. Through a step-by-step guide we demonstrate how we utilize all necessary Stencyl resources for creating a Flash game. First, we will take a look at the Stencyl’s Game Design Screen: Game Design Screen 1 2 3 The Game Design Screen of Stencyl has the same layout, menus and toolbars as the Initial Screen. The only difference is that the Welcome Center is now replaced with our game’s Dashboard panel. Everything we will need to create a game is present in the Dashboard and all toolbars and shortcuts of the Dashboard will change and reflect the selected Stencyl resource’s options. For example, the shortcut buttons (Item 1) are referring to the creation of new scenes since Scenes are selected in the resource list (Item 2). We can access all types of Stencyl resources (Actors, Scenes, Tiles, and Logic) by simply clicking on the name on the resource in the list (Item 2). The toolbar on the bottom of the panel (Item 3), allows for easy access to commands such as Edit, Remove. In our screenshot above, the commands in the toolbar (Item 3) are referring to Scenes since Scenes are the selected resource in the list (Item 2). Now, we are ready to start building our game! The first important step is to analyze the game description and its features in order to extract useful information on the Stencyl resources we will need. - 5 / 31 - CODERED Project STENCYL Tutorial Hands-on Example: “The h-Angry Donkey!” game Important Notes: The h-Angry Donkey game has been designed by the participants of CODERED workshop The game is provided under the EUPL Open Source Software License Download link: http://www.eurocyinnovations.com/project/the-h-angry-donkey-digital- educational-game-prototype Game Features Goal: Feed the hungry donkey or it will be angry Correctly associate each monument/beach with the six pre-defined districts of Cyprus in order to move the donkey closer to its haystack Summary: Learn the location of the key cultural