Time for action – creating an account and signing in
Although it is not a requirement to sign in to create games with Stencyl, we won't be able to publish any games, access StencylForge, or contribute to the Stencyl online forums without an account.
In order to follow the tutorials in this book, we'll need access to StencylForge, and we'll also need to be able to publish our games, so I highly recommend creating a Stencyl account and signing in.
Run Stencyl and the following screen will be displayed:
If you do not see the sign-in screen, ensure that you have Stencyl running, and select File | Sign In on the main menu at the upper-left corner of the Stencyl screen.
Note
If you have already signed up for an account on the Stencyl forums, you do not need to create a separate account in order to log into Stencyl. The Stencyl application login and the Stencyl forum login use the same credentials; so, you can sign in to Stencyl without any further action!
Click on Create an Account and enter your username, password, and e-mail address in the right-hand side of the dialog box shown as follows. Note that Stencyl usernames and passwords are restricted to alphanumeric characters (letters and numbers only).
Note
Choose your username carefully as it will be your permanent Stencyl login name and username on the Stencyl online forums!
When you are confident that you have entered the correct details, click on the Sign Up button, and after a few seconds a confirmation message will be displayed as shown in the following screenshot:
Click on OK to confirm, and we are ready to start using Stencyl!
What just happened?
We have created an account so that we can access the important features of Stencyl. The same account credentials can be used to log in to the Stencyl forums at community.stencyl.com.
You do not need to sign in and out of the Stencyl application each time you use it, because your login details are remembered unless you specifically choose to sign out using the File | Sign Out option in the Stencyl menu.
Have a go hero
Why not visit the Stencyl community forums and say hello?
Fire up your web browser and visit community.stencyl.com, sign in to the forums using the account details that you have just created, and have a browse.
You could go to the Chit Chat forum, find the topic entitled Introduce Yourself!, and well, introduce yourself!
Testing the Stencyl installation
Now that we have installed Stencyl, it would be a good idea to carry out a test so that we know that everything is working as it should be.
