Launch Godot and create a new project, making sure to use the Create Folder button to ensure that this project's files will be kept separate from other projects. You can download a Zip file of the art and sounds (collectively known as assets) for the game here, https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Godot-Game-Engine-Projects/releases.

Unzip this file in your new project folder.

In this project, you will make three independent scenes: Player, Coin, and HUD, which will all be combined into the game's Main scene. In a larger project, it might be useful to make separate folders to hold each scene's assets and scripts, but for this relatively small game, you can save your scenes and scripts in the root folder, which is referred to as res:// (res is short for resource). All resources in your project will be located relative to the res:// folder. You can see...

Note: This section is a very brief overview of 2D coordinate systems and does not delve very deeply into vector math. It is intended as a high-level overview of how such topics apply to game development in Godot. Vector math is an essential tool in game development, so if you need a broader understanding of the topic, see Khan Academy's Linear Algebra series (https://www.khanacademy.org/math/linear-algebra).

When working in 2D, you'll be using Cartesian coordinates to identify locations in space. A particular position in 2D space is written as a pair of values, such as (4,3), representing the position along the x and y axes, respectively. Any position in the 2D plane can be described in this way.

In 2D space, Godot follows the common computer graphics practice of orienting the x axis to the right, and the y axis down:

The first scene you'll make defines the Player object. One of the benefits of creating a separate player scene is that you can test it independently, even before you've created the other parts of the game. This separation of game objects will become more and more helpful as your projects grow in size and complexity. Keeping individual game objects separate from each other makes them easier to troubleshoot, modify, and even replace entirely without affecting other parts of the game. It also makes your player reusable—you can drop the player scene into an entirely different game and it will work just the same.

The player scene will display your character and its animations, respond to user input by moving the character accordingly, and detect collisions with other objects in the game.

In this part, you'll make the coins for the player to collect. This will be a separate scene describing all of the properties and behavior of a single coin. Once saved, the main scene will load the coin scene and create multiple instances (that is, copies) of it.

Click Scene | New Scene and add the following nodes. Don't forget to set the children to not be selected, like you did with the Player scene:

• Area2D (named Coin)
• AnimatedSprite
• CollisionShape2D

Make sure to save the scene once you've added the nodes.

Set up the AnimatedSprite like you did in the Player scene. This time, you only have one animation: a shine/sparkle effect that makes the coin look less flat and...

The Main scene is what ties all the pieces of the game together. It will manage the player, the coins, the timer, and the other pieces of the game.

Create a new scene and add a node named Main. To add the player to the scene, click the Instance button and select your saved Player.tscn:

Now, add the following nodes as children of Main, naming them as follows:

• TextureRect (named Background)—for the background image
• Node (named CoinContainer)—to hold all the coins
• Position2D (named PlayerStart)—to mark the starting position of the Player
• Timer (named GameTimer)—to track the time limit

Make sure Background is the first child node. Nodes are drawn in the order...

The final piece your game needs is a user interface (UI). This is an interface to display information that the player needs to see during gameplay. In games, this is also referred to as a Heads-Up Display (HUD), because the information appears as an overlay on top of the game view. You'll also use this scene to display a start button.

The HUD will display the following information:

• Score
• Time remaining
• A message, such as Game Over
• A start button

Create a new scene and add a CanvasLayer node named HUD. A CanvasLayer node allows you to draw your UI elements on a layer above the rest of the game, so that the information it displays doesn't get covered up by any game elements...

You have created a working game, but it still could be made to feel a little more exciting. Game developers use the term juice to describe the things that make the game feel good to play. Juice can include things like sound, visual effects, or any other addition that adds to the player's enjoyment, without necessarily changing the nature of the gameplay.

In this section, you'll add some small juicy features to finish up the game.

When you pick up the coins, they just disappear, which is not very appealing. Adding a visual effect will make it much more satisfying to collect lots of coins.

Start by adding a Tween node to the Coin scene.

In this chapter, you learned the basics of Godot Engine by creating a basic 2D game. You set up the project and created multiple scenes, worked with sprites and animations, captured user input, used signals to communicate with events, and created a UI using Control nodes. The things you learned here are important skills that you'll use in any Godot project.

Before moving on to the next chapter, look through the project. Do you understand what each node is doing? Are there any bits of code that you don't understand? If so, go back and review that section of the chapter.

Also, feel free to experiment with the game and change things around. One of the best ways to get a good feel for what different parts of the game are doing is to change them and see what happens.

In the next chapter, you'll explore more of Godot's features and learn how to use more...