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What you will learn

Discover the key benefits of Stencyl, its technical structure, and what makes it so special

Understand and work effectively with the Stencyl interface

Set up scenes and alter their settings at will

Import and utilize graphics

Integrate sound FX and music in your games

Create and configure actor types and instances

Implement tilesets and backgrounds by importing them in to your game

Write custom behaviors to control your actors

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Frequently bought together

$32.99

$26.99

Learning Stencyl 3.x Game Development: Beginner's Guide

$48.99

Total $ 108.97

Customer reviews

Rating distribution

4.4

(5 Ratings)

5 star 60%

4 star 20%

3 star 20%

2 star 0%

1 star 0%

brenda o donovan Jun 07, 2015

Great book for anyone interested in beginning game development or even an experienced game developer looking to get to grasps with the Stencyl engine. Stencyl's a wonderful engine for making 2D games and this book is a fantastic resource for learning the ins and outs of the software. By the end of this book you will be savvy in using Stencyl and the logic of game programming in general. For me, it was the perfect first step to coding. I got to learn and understand how game programming works and now the thought of learning the likes of C# and C++ seems less daunting! Definitely recommended.

Amazon Verified review

Perry Nally Jul 31, 2015

I was a bit wary about yet another game creation tool that touted no coding necessary in order to create high quality games for iOS, Android, desktop, etc. So, I read this book and I'm happy to say that I'm very glad I did. Richard Sneyd has done an impressive job at creating a very fast, yet simple to grasp introduction and implementation of a full 2D side-scroller game. In particularl, he gives detail where detail is appropriate in order to help the user understand the "why", and then lays out the "how" in very easy to understand terms. The detail does not come in a lot of vast technical explanations about the underlying system, but rather very well placed analogies that, in my opinion, really helped me understand the tools; after-all, I think that's the whole point of the book (It gives you a well founded explanation of the essential ingredients in order to create a high quality and fun to play game). I had no idea Stencyl was such a powerful tool.I highly recommend this book to anyone - beginner to expert. Though an expert game developer probably would not opt to use Stencyl since they would surely have their own framework setup already, this book really does a great job of convincing me to use Stencyl for some of my 2D games, and I will be using it. Thanks Richard!

Amazon Verified review

Javier Gómez López Jun 29, 2015

The book has everything you need to make a video game. In my case, I wanted to make a video game, just as a hobby and I found helpful information in this book. Finally , I posted my video game Newgrounds and have participated in the contest of 2015 Stencyl Jam.

Amazon Verified review

Amazon Customer Sep 06, 2016

This a was a great starter manual for reading on the train Journeys to and from work. This good thing with the book instead of reading sporadic online tutorials if that it will generally give you a more rounded learning experience in my opinion. I felt this book offered this, although I would have liked a bit more info about Game Attributes

Amazon Verified review

Cal Arts May 30, 2015

SUMMARY:In short, this book makes for a good tutorial for the "somewhat experienced beginner" looking to make exactly the same type of game that Mudslide Cowboy is. I would not recommend it for an absolute beginner or for someone who has already built a few of their own games. I would recommend it for the casual Stencyler who has done the crash course tutorials and read Innes Borkwood's Learning Stencyl 3.X Game Development: Beginner's guide.If you are just getting your feet wet with Stencyl and game design, and are looking to make a clone of Mudslide Cowboy and don't care much about how it works, just that it does work, then this book is perfect for you. If you are looking for a deeper understanding of game design principles, game logic, and programming technicalities then I suggest you move on. This book is very much like the books you see in arts and crafts stores. You know the ones like, "How to Draw Dragons" or, "How to Draw Manga". These books give you what you want on the surface level but do not explain in detail figure drawing, anatomy, color theory, etc. Read below for why.CONS:The author bills the book as having a "no-nonsense style, enabling you to get to grips with Stencyl in a fun, yet fast paced way" and it is. The author structures the book so that you get to setting up and creating the game relatively quickly but at the cost of explaining much of it. You will find irregular explanations of options and code structure. The rest of it is glossed over and you will just be snapping code together, forgetting about it, and then coming back to it at a later point to finish it. You won't know why it was set up that way and you will most likely not understand how it is working together (if you are a beginner). You are expected to just follow along to meet the book's goal of having you create a game quickly with no nonsense. This is typically what you find of many tutorials out there in the infinite universe of the Internet. It shows you how to build something (very well) but doesn't explain it for a deeper understanding.There are times in the book when the author assumes you know your way around Stencyl and forgets to tell you little things like click the ok button. A beginner will be utterly confused when the pop up menu being discussed in the book is not on the screen. In one part, it tells you specifically not to click anything. It does a nice little explanation of things and then it goes onto the next part of the process that cannot be seen unless you specifically click that button you were told not to. Once again, someone who is familiar with the program will know to click that button to go onto the next section. A person with no experience will be lost, at least for a little while, until they get brave enough to click that button.Values for the game are easy to mess up. If you are not careful to read every line you will mistake the necessary values due to screen shots. The screen shot may have one value but in the text there are instructions to change it to another value. You have to be extra careful.Infrequent testing. The game doesn't call for playtesting very much. You can easily find yourself at the end of a few chapters testing the game and discovering that it does not work. Too bad you made ten or fifteen modifications to the game during those chapters. Looks like you will have to back over each step to see what you missed. This shouldn't happen. Testing should happen more than the reader would want in order to keep the game moving forward and to keep the reader smoothly engaged.At certain points, you can tell the author is tired of writing this book. His instructions become this: Set up the code to look like what is in the screen shot. While I am a fan of this style, it is not a good option for beginners. They too easily look over the tiny little details, drop down menus, and similarly-named code blocks. At one point in Chapter 10, he mentions that the next chapter is the end of the book and Monetization and Publishing will be discussed. Then comes Chapter 11: Scoring and Game Rules. This really is a minor detail but it goes to show you the author was a bit tired by the end of the book. But that last part is probably the editors fault.PROS:Now that I have done a lot of complaining, I want to come out and say that I don't dislike this book. It just had some flaws that anyone looking to buy it should know about. The following is short but very powerful. Don't judge it by the length but by the context of it.I can't thank the author enough for his no nonsense way of writing. I applaud him for that. Too many books and tutorials spend their time going off the rails wasting time. I was able to get through this book in a couple of days on and off. If I committed myself to it, I could have probably finished reading it in an afternoon or so.When you do actually get explanations, they are concise, informative, and helpful. The author also provides good tidbits of information that will help trouble shoot during playtesting. For example: Being aware of placing blank tiles from the tileset in the level editor. This can cause a lot of time lost if you don’t know to look for it.The final chapter on Monetization and Publishing provides an excellent overview and starting point for anyone looking to take that next step. It talks about Android, IOS, different types of certificates, Ad extensions, Interstitial ads, Banner ads, etc. Very well done here.The code is set up intelligently. I am not a programmer by profession but I have programmed a few complex games and was delighted to learn a few things. Everyone programs differently and there is no right or wrong. Just better or worse. The author does a good, clean job of setting up the code in an understandable way that is easy to construct for beginners and gives more experienced individuals another option.NOTE:There are issues with Stencyl that will make the author seem like a liar. He isn’t a liar. He just cannot account for the myriad of tiny little things that can cause the reader to get stuck. For example, in Chapter 3 when you import the tileset it may not display properly in the editor. There is no mention of this in the book. You will have to simply adjust a single value to fix it. A person completely new to this would most likely be derailed and blame the author. Once again, it is not the author's fault. It is just the nature of the program.

Amazon Verified review

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Stencyl Essentials: Build beautiful, unique, cross-platform games rapidly with the free Stencyl 2D game engine and toolset

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