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
1. Action 1
2. Action 2
3. Action 3
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.
Note
Tips and tricks appear like this.
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