Make Your Own Scratch Games!

Make Your Own Scratch Games!

by Anna Anthropy
Make Your Own Scratch Games!

Make Your Own Scratch Games!

by Anna Anthropy

eBook

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Overview

Learn to make interactive games with Scratch—the beginner-friendly, block-based programming language from the MIT Media Lab! Anna Anthropy, game designer extraordinaire, will show you how to do everything from building a game map to creating animations and debugging the end product. Take a peek inside the history of video game design, learn programming basics, and turn your ideas into creative games that you can play and share with your friends.

Learn how to:

•Draw characters like a hungry, leaf-eating bug
•Animate characters—make them walk, jump, climb, and fall!
•Create objects for your player to collect and obstacles to avoid
•Design multiple levels to create a cave exploring platform game
•Create sound effects and music for your games
•Share your games online and use player feedback to improve your games

Isn’t it time to Make Your Own Scratch Games? The world is waiting!

Covers Scratch 3.0

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781593279370
Publisher: No Starch Press
Publication date: 07/02/2019
Sold by: Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format: eBook
Pages: 192
File size: 29 MB
Note: This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range: 9 - 12 Years

About the Author

Anna Anthropy is a video game creator and game historian. She is the author of Rise of the Videogame Zinesters, a guide to game design that encourages aspiring developers from all backgrounds to create games and contribute their unique voice to the video game industry. Her most recent book, ZZT, explores a shareware game from the early '90s and its lasting impact on developers everywhere.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments xvi

Everyone Makes Games xvii

What You'll Need xviii

A Brief History of Games xviii

Who Makes Video Games? xix

Why Make a Video Game? xx

What Should My Game Be About? xxi

About Scratch xxi

How Much Does Scratch Cost? xxii

Do I Need to Know How to Program? xxii

What If I Already Love Programming? xxii

Alternative Tools xxii

1 Leaf Me Alonel: Scratch Basics 1

Getting Started with Scratch 2

Leaf Me Alone (While I Eat This Leaf) 5

Creating Your Own Sprites 6

Drawing Weird Bugs 7

Drawing a Backdrop 8

Using Event Blocks 10

Moving the Bug 11

Steering the Bug 14

Chewing Holes in the Leaf Using Pen Blocks 17

Starting Fresh Each Game 22

Checking for Contact Between the Bug and the Leaf 25

Playing Sounds 27

Organizing Your Code 30

Challenge Level 32

Sharing Your Game 33

What You Learned 36

2 Weird Bug Chowdown: Collecting Items and Avoiding Obstacles 37

Copying a Project and Changing It 39

Tidying Up Your Code 40

Leaving a Rainbow Trail 41

Making Bug Food 44

Making a Sprite Clone Itself 45

Using Negative Numbers 46

Creating a Berry-Free Zone 47

Telling a Cloned Berry What to Do 48

Broadcasting Messages 49

Adding Time Pressure 51

Using Animation to Make Bad Berries 53

Branching with if and else 56

Recording the yuck Message 57

Poop Obstacles 58

Why Poop Obstacles Work 59

Making Poop by Having Sprites Clone Other Sprites 59

Coding the Poop Obstacles 60

Raising the Stakes 63

Creating Our Own Variables 63

Changing Speed 65

Ending the Game 67

Choosing the Butterfly Costume 67

Coding the Metamorphosis 68

Changing the Butterfly's Behavior 72

Adding a Starting Message 73

Optional Things to Try 74

What You Learned 75

3 Hatlight: A Cave Exploring Platform Game 77

About Hatlight 78

Coding Platform Movement 79

Creating a Hitbox Sprite 80

Drawing a Test Area 81

Organizing Our Code with Events 82

Creating Variables 83

Coding Player Movement 84

Moving Left and Right 84

Climbing Slopes and Steps 85

Falling 87

Jumping 88

Creating Natural Movement with Variables 88

Creating a World that's Fun to Explore 91

Using a Variable to Create a Grid Map 91

Moving from Screen to Screen 92

Coding Screen Change 94

Using Light and Darkness 95

Coding the Flashlight 97

Creating Objects to Collect 97

What You Learned 100

4 Designing Levels 101

Let's Make Some Levels! 102

Drawing Levels 103

Drawing a Cave 104

Saving Details for Later 105

Things to Keep in Mind 107

Adding Background Scenery 109

Teaching the Player How to Play 111

Showing Objects Players Can't Reach 113

Creating Interesting Landmarks 114

Creating Animation 116

Animating the Player's Movements 117

Or You Can Just Draw a Blob! 120

Creating a Mirror image of a Costume 121

Coding the Animations 122

Additional Challenges 124

What You Learned 124

5 Creating Sound Effects 125

Sound Design Tools 126

Recording and Editing Sounds with Audacity 127

Recording a Deadly Plummet 128

Sound Selections 130

Using Effects Tools 132

Exporting Sounds 134

Using Sounds from the Internet 136

Generating Sounds with sfxr 137

Waveforms 138

Changing Sounds Using Sliders 140

Exporting Sounds 142

The bfxr Tool 143

Creating Music Loops with Drumcircle 144

Making a Drum Loop 146

Adding Some Drums 147

Adding More Sounds 148

Adding a Melody 150

Saving and Exporting Loops 151

Bosca Ceoil 152

Adding a Music Loop to a Scratch Game 153

Extra Challenges 155

Compose a Score for a Game Using Only Mouth Sounds 155

Use Music to Create a Contrasting Mood 155

Create a Procedural Music Game 156

What You Learned 156

6 Where to Go from here 157

Asking Questions 158

Record Your Game 158

Share Your Game on itch.io 159

Collaborate with Someone Else 160

Make a Game for Multiple Players 160

Make a Weird Controller 161

Keep Exploring and Creating! 163

Index 164

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