Indie Devs: Best Practices

Nerdzmasterz

Just a casual chat for indie devs- both for wannabes and young ones who may have never heard of such a thing before.

If I wanted to become an independent developer, running a studio, what would your opinions be on best practices?

From what I've learned, it's to start with very small, non-copy-cat games, have a passion to build- and play- games, and to keep a portfolio/make devlogs/show off your games in a way you're comfortable with.

Now, why play them? :/

If you're trying to build games, you need ideas for mechanics- such as setting up your FPS players, setting up your puzzles, managing the movement of your AI enemies and companions. Additionally, you need an idea to build a game on. Obviously, don't copy-cat, like building a "so-not-familiar, so original game about a plumber jumping on mushrooms." However, you could take the ideas in Mario for, say, going through tunnels to reach secret areas, and implement them into something like an escape game where you're a mouse being chased by a cat, for instance.

Another thing, which if you disagree with me that's fine, is that free assets are excellent. Why use assets used by everyone else?

My humble opinion is, are you really?

Perhaps, but how many games out there don't use assets from OpenGameArt, Itch, Kenney.com, or GameDev Market, to name a few? Even if many games use the same assets, your ideas for the game will still be your original concepts. Game developers don't always have time to make the art by themselves. This is obvious, as AAA companies hire artists to make their 3D models, 2D artwork, special effects, and even sound and music.

Another thing, and, moderators/Administrators/everyone here who calls them a pro, I'll try to explain this, is this:

Don't always worry about messy code.

This sounds weird, I know. A lot of people think the code needs to look nice, which is mostly true. However, in some cases, if you mess with an already messy code that already works, you might break it.

Does this mean that you shouldn't worry about nice code? Yes, you should. And don't forget to comment the code. If you ever leave the game for a while- a week, a month, a year- and you return to it, you may just forget what the variable "speed" was for.

Anyway, enough of me rambling. I would love to read your opinions on this. =)

Nerdzmasterz

Fun fact: ever wondered how the term "computer bug" got it's name?

Here is the very first bug to cause a computer some issues.

some_lame_kid

In the year I've been in the scene, I learned it's a lot like arts. You can't get very far if you're too scared to show how little you know.

Nerdzmasterz

Since you don't just want to hear me talk, here is a video from Thomas Brush. During the time of this video, he has been making games- and living off of the money from them- solo. He develops games with Unity3D, not Godot, but this video doesn't even discuss game engines. It's more about some things you run into developing games on an emotional level.

Please click the link, and welcome Thomas Brush. :)

https://youtu.be/lsF7SpQzfYs

Nerdzmasterz

And, since this is actually about Godot best practices, here's a video about making a scrolling background- by Fahir Mehovic from Awesometuts.com. This was the guy who taught me to code.

The catch?

He doesn't care much for Godot...

Does that mean he's a bad teacher? No, in fact I learned more from him than anything else. Surprisingly, when he explained why he didn't like Godot, although I still like Godot and we disagree on that, he may have been right on his thought process. He claimed that if you want a job in a game studio, you're better off learning Unity or Unreal.

Hence, why I'm here, offering tricks to you guys: in hopes of increasing the knowledge within this community on how to build games with Godot, and hopefully lead Godot to becoming an engine to be reckoned with. The more people know how to develop games with Godot, the more popular this engine becomes. This little chat room is intended to help you learn some essential tools in your journey.

With that, here is Fahir Mehovic.

https://youtu.be/dxJJJE8niXQ

Nerdzmasterz

New fun fact: Roller Coaster Tycoon was written in Assembly. :o

Why is that scary?

Try to explain what all this means:

DaveTheCoder

I've done a lot of programming in Assembly languages. As long as the programmer knows what he's doing, it's just as reliable as higher level languages. In a way, it's even more reliable, since it's not susceptible to bugs resulting from compiler upgrades.

Of course, there are disadvantages too: readability, maintainability, portability and increased development time.

Nerdzmasterz

Hello, again, everyone, now that I finally get to type whatever I want and bore you to death...

What? No.

Actually, from what I've seen, there is a lot of beginners who try to complete Your First 2D Game. In case you haven't noticed, it's not really a beginner tutorial, unless you already have had previous experience.

Because of this, and because there is a lot of garbage online that show you how to "not" code, I guess I will start by showing you how to use basic variables. For the purposes of this short tutorial, I am going to assume you have at least opened up Godot and learned what some of its features are.

Alright. For starters, open up Godot and make a new project and call it whatever you want. After that, hit create folder- and if it gives you problems, just give the folder a different name and try again- and then press Create and Edit.

"YAAAAY, WE GET TO BUILD A GAAAAAAME!!!"

Not yet.

"What?"

Don't worry, it is coming. For now, we must understand variables.

A variable is an item in the code that has a value. The most basic values a variable can have is a number, text, or a true or false value. In order to add a variable, you must first have a node. Any of the top three buttons below Create Root Node works.

After you select one of these nodes, a scroll with a plus sign will appear above it. Click on that, and a new window will pop up. Make sure the language that is selected is GDScript. An error appears at the bottom stating that we should not have the script named exactly as a built-in type- in my case, Node2D. However, this is a tutorial, and simply leaving the code as it is will not harm anything, so we can hit "create".

Now that we created the script, we can click on the the tab that says Script at the top-middle of the screen.

A variable needs three things- to be initialized, a name, and a value. For now, we will use a text value.

underneath extends, type the following:

var my_var = "Bubbles!"

Why bubbles? I don't know, I'm bored with typing "Hello, World!" in beginner tutorials, I guess.

Seriously, though, you can type whatever you want in those quotation marks.

Now, in func _ready, we can actually make what we typed appear on the screen, using the print() function. I will go into functions later, but for now, just know that they are bits of code that do something.

To print it to the screen, we simply need to write out print(my_var) under func _ready():

Be careful when doing this. In order for things to work, you must indent print(my_var) in order to work. If you do not, you will see this error:

Here is how it should look after it is done.

Now, hit the play button.

Or not.

The problem is that we didn't tell Godot which scene to run yet.

We could hit select current, but it won't work because we haven't saved the scene.

No problem. Just go to file, hit save scene as, and then just save it. The default settings are fine.

Now hit the play button, and select the current scene.

"Where is what I typed? I don't see it on the screen."

It is down in the tab titled Output at the bottom of the screen. Hit the Output tab if it is closed. From there, you will see your output:

"That's not a game!"

I know, but you can do something with that. Check this out.

print() can take actual text at well. try popping quotation marks in the print function, and type "Octopus". When you next run it, you will see Octopus instead of the value of my_var. This seems boring, but go with me.

Now, let's say you want to put both Octopus and my_var in the print function. Can you do it?

You are asking if we can add my_var to Octopus. Let's see if we can.

Looks promising! Will it work?

Sort of?

Why is it smashed together?

The program does not know that it needs a space between letters. In fact, if you would have typed print("Octopus"+my_var), it would have still worked.

Luckily, the fix is easy.

Instead of print("Octopus" + my_var), we can type print("Octopus " + my_var)

And it works!

Now, I challenge you with a very tiny game: Write three variables my_name, my_animal, and my_action. Then, in print(), write "my_name + "was trying to " + my_action + " outside when I heard the sound of a " + my_animal + " ruining my garden." Have someone give you text values to add to each variables based on their names, ie my_name is for a character, my_animal is an animal, and so on, but don't show then the code. After they are done, run the code and tell them what is printed on the Output.

Nerdzmasterz

Next, we will learn how to use numbers.

Let's make a new project, as we did last time, and name it whatever you want. This time, however, let's use a Node2D for the root scene. The scene will look like this.

Let's add a new script to it, as we did in the last tutorial and open it up.

under extends, type the following:

var my_number = 7

It should look like this.

Now, what can we do with numbers?

The usual- add, subtract, multiply, and divide. We can also print out the results of these things with the print() function.

in the ready(), function, add print(my_number)

Looks good. Remember to save the scene and select as current, press play, and...

Nice!

Now, lets add numbers.

To add numbers, we need two numbers and a + between them., such as print(3 + 5).

Try it! in the print function, type two numbers with a plus sign between them, and see what the answer is. You can keep my_number in the print() function or not, it doesn't matter, my_number will add to any other number.

After that, the next is subtraction, which is typed using the - symbol. In the same way as you added the numbers together, change the print() function to print(8 - 4), or whatever numbers you want to subtract. In case you are wondering, GDScript also recognizes negative numbers, like this.

Let's do something a little harder- multiplication.

The symbol for multiplication is *, which is the symbol above number eight on your keyboard. Change the print() function again, this time to print(6 * 6), or whatever numbers you want, and see what the product is.

"Why did you have me make the variable my_number, again?'

Fine, I will use it.

Division is up next. This time, let's use my_number in the print() function again. Change the print() function to print(my_number / 2).

What did you come up with?

What?

All you get is 3?

Okay, first off, this is not a bug.

When you divide in GDScript using only whole numbers, the result is a whole number.

How do get the remainder?

There is another operator that we will use, and that is modulo.

The modulo operator is marked as %. For a test, change the print function to print(my_number % 2).

What is it doing?

Basically, the modulo operator gives you the remainder of a division. The remainder of 7 / 2 is 1, after all.

So, can we get the result of 7 / 2. which is 3.1?

Yes.

We now have the result of 7/2, and the remainder of 7/2. We also learned that we can add text together... What we need to add to these two results is a "." in the middle, which serves as the decimal place.

However, can you add text and numbers? Let's see.

Replace the print() function, this time with print(my_number / 2) + "." + (my_number % 2)).

And...

What?

So this error is confusing. What is a parser error? Also, the internet shows a lot of different things about parser errors if you try to look it up.

What do you do?

To answer this, let me ask, what are you trying to do? :)

Right now, we want to add text and numbers together. Numbers and text do not add together. Numbers add with numbers, and text add with text.

So, is there a way to turn numbers into text?

And this is my challenge for you this time: See if you can find the way to change numbers to text.

Nerdzmasterz

Last little tutorial I had gave you more of a field trip than a game, even though it was necessary to have you go out into the world wide web to discover answers to problems, as you'll be doing that quite often once you are even a professional coder.

Today, there is no game, but one will come next time- and it will be a full-on game.

So far, we learned how to print text and numbers on the output, but there's one problem with that- Output is only in the Godot engine. How can we put text on the screen, and even change in, in our game? I mean, we can't just code everything out as the game is playing. Besides, who wants to code a game at runtime to make it work?

So, today, let's create a new project and open it. Normally, it doesn't matter what node you use, but this time, it does... kind of.

In this case, you need either a Node2D or a Control Node- or User Interface. Technically, you would use the user interface for this, so let's add that as the root node. After that, we should grab only a few more things.

A label
A LineEdit
and A button

Now stretch each node and place them so they look something like this:

Now, in case you haven't noticed, the lines on the screen around the nodes in the game actually represent the game view. Make sure all of your nodes are within the game view, unless you would, of course, like to try to locate invisible nodes later on. :p

In the Label node, under Text: write "Hello, Water balloon!"

We can see the text is very small.

To fix this, we need to add a new font.

First, go to a site that has fonts, and pick one out. One website that has fonts has its link below, but if you have a favorite place to get fonts, go grab one from wherever you want.

https://fontspace.com/commercial-fonts

After grabbing a font, go to the label, and under Control, find the tab that is called "Theme Overrides". Under that tab, go to the tab titled "Fonts, and click on the area that says "empty".

After that, a menu will show up. Click on "new DynamicFont".

Tap the DynamicFont after this, and you will see yet another list of things. What we are worried about is the font, so click on the tab titled Font, and then drag your font into the little box that is next to Font Data.

Once your font is in place, we can work some magic!

Next click on the tab that says Settings, and increase the size setting. You will notice the text getting much larger.

After you are done, tap click on the DynamicFont to close the the fonts settings, and then click on the little down arrow beside it. Yet another menu will pop up. Click on Save, and just leave the font at its default settings.

Upon doing this, you will notice a new DynamicFont appeared in res//:

This is important. Now that you have changed the text for one node, you have to do the same for the others. Luckily, you saved your original font settings- so it will be easy to implement them!

Instead of having to do all of what you did the first round, you can now go to each node one by one, select their font overrides, go to their fonts, and instead of making a new DynamicFont- since we already have one- we can drag in the original font settings into the empty fonts boxes!

Now let's save the scene as something, and run it.

It doesn't do much... Let's change that. Add a script to the root scene node, and leave it with the default settings.

Now we need to add three variables, but we don't need to give them a value right away, we will do this in func _ready(). Add these variables under extends:

var label var line_edit var button

Next, in ready(), we need to name these variables. These variables' names actually look similar to the names of the node under the root node- and that is exactly what they represent.

To do this, we type the following under func _ready():

Now, this is new. What is get_node()? Well, it's exactly what it sounds like- it grabs a node by name. A little warning, this works perfectly, but only as long as the nodes you are grabbing are children of the one calling them.

What do I mean by that?

Each of the nodes that we are calling is directly under the node that holds the script calling them, as seen in the image. If you try to do this exact same thing and the button was, say, indented below the line_edit- in which case it would be the child of the line_edit, it will not work, so make sure your nodes are set up exactly as shown here:

Now what?

Let's make the button and line_edit do something.

For this experiment, we will make the text in the label change to whatever is in the line_edit at the press of the button.

This means we must learn a new feature of Godot: signals.

What are signals?

Basically, signals are like letters that can be sent from one node to another.

Right now, we need to check if the button is being pressed, so select the button. In the top right where it says Inspector, there is another tab called Node. Click on Node, and you will see all the signals that the button has. Right now, we only want the top signal called button_down. Double-click it. A new popup will appear, and the default settings are fine- so we only need to click connect.

How do we know that it worked?

Go back to the script.

We did not add these last few lines of code, that was from the signal connecting itself to the code. If you would have added this line of code, it will not work.

Now, how do we get the text from the line_edit?

Probably get_node("LineEdit")...

Wait! We already set the variable line_edit to reference get_node('LineEdit"), so we only need to use line_edit to access it.

So, line_edit...

How do you access things from line_edit?

Simple.

Add a dot after the node being referenced, in this case, line_edit.

So line_edit.

...

What?

What are we trying to do?

Set the text on label to what the text is on the line_edit.

So, is set_text something?

Yes, and it takes the text- or, in programmer's terms a "string" of text as a parameter.

What?

A parameter. Do you remember when you added text and numbers in the print function? Those numbers and letters were each a parameter.

So, we add label.set_text(line_edit.

...

You're getting the text from the line edit. And there is a function called get_text which you can use like this:

Now, as for this tutorial's challenge?

Study what you have already been shown. Our next tutorial is a legit, albeit a tiny, but completely playable- and re-playable- game.

Nerdzmasterz

Hello, everyone! Who is ready to build an awesome game, with amazing graphics, stellar audio, and...

Actually, it's not like that. This is actually going to be a math game.

Oh, you hate math?

Don't worry, the code is going to do all the math for you, except for when you are playing the game. Besides, we are going to cover a lot today!

And, if you really don't want to do any math, even to play the game, you can show it off to someone else and have them do all the math. :p

Additionally, once you learn this, I will show you how to move a player character. =)

Now, we could go in and create a new project, but the thing is, we already have a project that has everything we need in it.

Open Godot, and open the last project you made, the one with the three nodes under the user interface. Now, most of the game is already done for you. You already know most of what you need for this game already- how cool is that?

The object of the game is to answer the math questions that are in the label's text. If you get the correct answer, something good will happen.

Simple!

Now open up the script, and below extends and above _ready(), add these two variables:

var number_1 var number_2

Next, we have to put these numbers onto the screen. Do you remember how to do that?

In the ready() function, underneath the rest of the code, add this line:

get_node(number_1 + " + " + number_2).

Now, if you remember, we had an error last time we did this. If you went on that field trip I sent you on, you would know the way to do that is to add str( before each number, and ) after each number, so your code would look like this:

Now press play. Since you have already saved and set this scene as the current scene, it will simply open.

And, the answer we get is this:

Wait, null? Why is it null?

Simple- we didn't give number_1 and number_2 values yet. If you reference a variable that doesn't have a value, the code will automatically return null.

So, let's give number_1 and number_2 any values you want them to have. We can do this in the ready() function.

Okay, so add number_1 = whatever and number_2 = whatever at the bottom, and press play...

Wait, why is it still null?

Order of operation matters here. You did not tell the program to change the values of number_1 or number_2 until after you printed them on the screen.

To fix this, move the values of number_1 and number_2 above the line of code that prints text to the screen, sort of like this:

Now it should work!

Okay, but now what? If I type something in and press the button, it simply changes the text to whatever I typed in the line_edit... Let's change that.

So what do we want the code to do? We need it to check if the sum of number_1 and number_2 equals the amount displayed in the line_edit.

We need the code to do something, like a function.

How do we make a custom function?

Luckily, this is very simple.

underneath the ready() function, and make sure, this time, that it is not indented, typefunc give_amount():. We will need two parameters in this function, and we can call them no_1 and no_2, like this:

Don't worry about the error message, it will go away once we add our lines of code.

So, what do we need this function to do?

Check if the sum of number_1 and number_2 equal the sum displayed in line_edit.

How do we do this.

Note the statement, "Check if the sum of number_1 and number_2 equal the sum displayed in line_edit." It's a question.

A code can answer a question using an if statement.

How do we do that?

Type in if str(no_1 + no_2) == line_edit.get_text():. Why put str() around both variables, can you do that? The variables both have to be turned from numbers to strings, so this does work. It should look like this:

Wait, the error is still there.

Actually, it isn't there anymore, it was replaced with a new error: Expected an indented block after"if".

That means we have to indent before adding code underneath it in order for the code to work.

To keep things simple for now, we will have the label's text changed to "You Win!" if you get the answer right.

Now, we need to have the signal for the button use the function. How do we do that?

In order to have a code call a function, we simply have to write out its name, and give it the amount of parameters it asks for. no_1 and no_2 will take on the values of number_1 and number_2, like this:

Yay! It works!

However, this is the most boring game I have ever played. Each time I open it, it gives me the same math problem!

How do I randomly change the numbers for the game?

That's my challenge for you: go figure out how to randomly generate numbers.

I'm kidding. B)

We need to use rand_range.

How do we do that?

Let's make a new function called generate_numbers(). In that code, we need it to return a random number, so we use the return function. After that, we need to change number_1 and number_2 into random numbers, as shown below:

And now, when we run this...

What the bubbles?

Here's what's going on. These are the docs for rand_range:

So, what does this mean?

A floating number is a number that has a decimal point.

Okay, so how do we change a floating number to an integer value?

That is my challenge for you.

And this time, I'm being serious. :)

However, there is still one other itty, bitty, problem... The randomly generated numbers don't change.

Now go out and fix the last issue, and the game will be done!

I know this was a lot to go through in one tutorial. It is less about getting the tutorials done, and more about taking the time to understand them. Don't feel as though you have to rush through them.

Additionally, if you have questions, don't be afraid to ask in the forums. The people here, including myself, will be happy to answer your questions.

Nerdzmasterz

Oh, my... That was a lot to go over!

This will be a two-part tutorial, but it shouldn't be too hard. :)

No , I did not forget that you were a beginner. And if you don't understand the last section, I encourage you to look over it again. The reason I did all this was to prepare you for this tutorial: player movement!

Today, we are going to take a look at inputs and go deeper into the if statements.

To get started, open up a new project and name it whatever you want. And now, in the top-left corner, instead of grabbing one of the top three nodes, we are going to click on Other Node. You will see a huge list of every single type of node, but, we are only looking for one of them- the KinematicBody2D. How do you find a node by name?

At the top of the popup window, you will see a tab called search. Simply start typing KinematicBody2D, and it will eventually pop up, and the first node that starts with what is being typed will get highlighted.

Select the KinematicBody2D, and then click on Create.

Now what is a kinematicbody?

In the top right corner after selecting the new node, there is a magnifying glass with the word Doc underneath it. If you click on that, it will bring up this screen:

This doc button is available on all nodes. If you want to know more about a node being used, this can offer some excellent information, such as in this case, as it talks about kinematic characters.

We're going to need that.

Right now, however, we have one problem, and that is shown with a little triangle next to the node. Moving your mouse over the triangle will give you this message:

So, how do we fix this?

It says to consider adding a collisionShape2D or a CollisionPolygon2D as a child.

A child... We heard this term before, in reference to nodes. This could mean that CollisionShape2Ds and CollisionPolygon2Ds are nodes.

So, from here, we can hit the little plus button above the KinematicBody2D to bring up the list of nodes again. Let's type the first one in- CollisinShape2D.

Lo and behold, CollisionShape2D and CollisionPolygon2D are both on the list! Let's select the CollisionShape2D.

Great! Now the error message on the KinematicBody2D is gone, but now the collision shape has a triangle. Hover your mouse over it, and see what it says.

A shape resource, you say? Okay, where is that?

In the inspector panel, there is a little box with "Shape" next to it. Let's hit the little box. We have a lot of different shapes here! However, which one do we choose?

That will largely depend on the character you are using.

With that being said, my first challenge for you is to go and find a 2D character to use for this project. If you don't know where to find any, you can look here:

https://opengameart.org/

I, myself will use the greatest icon ever: the little Gobot icon.

Now how do you add your character to the KinematicBody2D?

For this, we use a sprite node. Make sure the KinematicBody2D is selected, hit the little plus button, and search for "Sprite". Great! Now that we have a sprite, we can add in our image.

How do we do this?

In the inspector, there is a little box that says Texture beside it. Drag your character image into the little box, and it will become the image for the sprite. In the end, it should look like this, apart from the fact that your character might look different:

My character looks like a box, so I'm going to use a collision shape that looks like a box. Go back to the collision shape, and select the shape that best fits your character:

Wait, where is it?

Remember, order of operations matter.

To see the collision shape, we must drag it so it is beneath the Sprite. The things that are placed at the top will be drawn first, and those at the bottom will be drawn last, so the Sprite is now covering the collision shape. You can fix this by dragging the collision shape, and plopping it right under the sprite- but make sure it is the child of the KinematicBody2D, and not the Sprite.

Now we can resize it using the little points on the collision shape. Simply drag these points into place so they are around your character.

Great! Let's save the scene, set it as current, and run it.

Wait, nothing is happening?

Let's make the player move. Add a script to the KinematicBody2D, and click on create.

Now, for those who want to see the docs on this, they are right here:

https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/tutorials/2d/2d_movement.html

However, what does all this mean?

Let's start with the input tab.

Go to Project -> Project Settings, and then, in the popup window, click on the little tab called Input Map. It's at the top-left of the window, right next to the General tab.

On here, we see a lot of inputs already made for us. We could make our own inputs, but I'm feeling lazy, so we'll simply use the ones that are already here. :p

The inputs we need are:

ui_up ui_down ui_left ii_right

Here are the inputs' designated keys to make them work.

So, how do we use these inputs?

The first way to move the player in the docs is as follows:

Let's try to just copy/paste the code in, right? Give it a shot and press play.

Why is nothing moving?

If you noticed, at the bottom of the screen, we are getting all kinds of errors:

Of course- in the docs, the inputs are called up, down, left, and right- but our inputs are ui_up, ui_down, ui_left, and ui_right.

So, we change up to ui_up, down to ui_down, and so on until it looks like this.

Now it's moving!

Nerdzmasterz

However, what does any of this code mean? And what is "+=", and "-="?

Let's start with velocity, what is it doing?

To see what it's doing, go up to the line of code that says velocity = Vector2(), and type a hashtag/pound sign/whatever you want to call it in front of it, like this, and then press play:

Wait, what is the hashtag for?

It basically marks that this line of code should be ignored by the code. It's called a comment.

Why do we need comments?

One reason is for what I just did- to see what happens if you remove a line of code without actually removing it. Another reason to do this is, if you are working with someone on a project, and they hand you their code or you hand them yours, they may not understand what is going on- so you use comments to explain what the code is doing as needed.

Now that we saw what happens when we remove velocity, we see that we pretty much lose control of the player character. Let's remove the hashtag to bring that part of the code back in.

Another thing about velocity- it has an x and y coordinate. These represent the coordinates on a grid in math. I know, you're probably sick of me talking about math after the last game, but don't worry, this stuff is easy. The x controls the velocity that moves the player left and right, and the y controls the velocity moving the player up and down.

Simple!

Now, what is +=, -=, and whatever?

+= basically adds whatever is on its right to whatever is on its left. Similarly, -= subtracts whatever is on its right from whatever is on its left. 5 -=1 gives you 4, 2 +=3 gives you 5.

And, what is move_and_slide()?

Try commenting out velocity = move_and_slide(velocity)

Basically, it moves the player based on the given velocity.

It's a little more complicated than that, but for now, that is all you need to know.

Now, for my next challenge for you:

In the next tutorial, we are going to need a a sprite that is shaped like a cube. Go out to wherever you got your last sprite, and find a nice-looking box. Note that this sprite is not going to be a character, so find a boxy sprite of an inanimate object. I will see you in the next one.

Nerdzmasterz

Hello, again. Now, this next section is going to be incredibly easy. =) :p

Let's open the same project we had last time, but instead of using our KinematicBody2D this time, we are going to go to Scene -> New Scene.

From there, click on Other Node.

Today, we are going to use a StaticBody2D and a normal Node2D.

First, we'll add the StaticBody2D. After you have that, add a Sprite and Collisionshape2D to it. On this sprite, drag and drop in the new sprite you grabbed for this tutorial, as I have.

You're probably thinking, "Holy cow, Nerdzmasterz, why is it so huge? Do we need one that big? My elephant character is smaller than that!"

Actually, this is simply how it came. And, if that happened to yours, you can easily fix it. :)

Select the Sprite, and in the inspector, select Transform. From there, a drop down will appear, and on that list is two settings for Scale. You can use these settings to resize the image.

There! Now it looks much better!

Now set the collision shape to a box, and, and as we did before, set the little points on it to fit the entire sprite.

The StaticBody2D is done. Let's save the scene, but this time, rename it to Wall.

Next, we will create our 2D scene. For now it won't have much on it, but it will. Name the 2DNode "Main".

Now we get to have some fun. Next to the plus sign above main, we see what looks like chain links. Hit that. From there, you will see the two scenes we just created. Double-click on each one to add them to the Main scene, while making sure they are both a child of Main.

Your two other nodes will be on top of each other, just move one of them. Then save Main and press play.

Wait, you say you don't see both nodes in the scene?

This is because we have already set the KinematicBody2D scene to current.

To fix this, go to Project -> Project Settings. Under the Search bar, we have a tab called application. If it is not open, click on it. Below that, we have another tab called Run. This is the one we need.

The first item in Run is Main Scene. We want Main to be the Main Scene, so hit the file folder next to the box, and select the Main node from the window that pops up. Now press play.

You will notice that the player is stopped by the StaticBody2D, it cannot get past it.

Perfect!

Here's your next challenge:

I want you to go crazy with the StaticBody2Ds and build a maze game for the player. You can have as many StaticBody2Ds in the scene as you want. Go insane with it! And I will see you in the next one.

Nerdzmasterz

Hello, everyone.

In case you ran into some problems, with your maze, say it got too big, or whatever, and the player walks out of the scene view, how do you fix that?

There's a Node for that.

It's called Camera2D.

Let's open up the little maze game again, and go into our player character scene. Now how do we do that?

If you look under Main, where it has its children, you can see each one of them as a little icon on them, one of them has a script the other one doesn't, but they both have these other icons. This is because they are both scenes, and we can use these icons to access their scenes. If they were not scenes, they would not have these.

So, we open up the player scene.

And inside the player scene, we select the KinematicBody2D, and search for Camera2D. Now, to make it follow the player, we need to go to the inspector panel, and select SetCurrent, like this:

And now, when you press play, the camera will follow the player.

This maze game has another minor issue- there is only one maze, right? Is there a way to advance to new levels after completing this one?

Yes, there is, and it will happen in the next tutorial.

In the meantime, I have a new challenge for you:

Find a 2D image of a key, a 2D image of a door, and a 2D image of a lock. We will need them for the next section. Also, change the Main scene's name to Maze1, and then make a new scene with the player and as many walls as you need, and create a new maze- and call it Maze2. These names are important for the tutorial as well.

Nerdzmasterz

Alrighty, let's get onto the next one.

Now that we have pretty much completed at least one maze, we now have to figure out how to go to the next one, correct? So, let's open up our last project and open the scene Maze1. Mine just looks absolutely fantastic!

See, I even have an awesome name for my game that you can see at the top left.

I'm just kidding. Your mazes rock compared to mine. =)

So, first off, what do we need to get started with going from one scene to the next?

get_tree().change_scene("whatever_scene_path").

Before we do that, however, we need to find a way to trigger the player going to the next scene. And we can do that with an Area2D node.

So, select Maze1, and click on the plus button, and search for Area2D. Now before we do anything with it, I'm guessing Maze1 has... more children that it knows what to do with right now, and it's hard to see the Area2D and the player among all of these static bodies.

To fix this, select the first static body, and then shift-click onto the last static body to select all of the walls, and then right-click on all of them while they are selected. If you did this correctly, you will see this popup window:

Then select Reparent to New Node. The nodes list will appear, and you can just use a 2DNode. Now, the parent2D node will have a little dropdown arrow. Click that, and all of the walls vanish into their new parent class.

Now let's select the Area2D again. There's a triangle on this new node as well. It's another node that complains about not having a collision shape, so let's add a collision shape2D and a sprite to it. The sprite will be the image we have for the door.

My actual door has animations on it, so I will use my locked door sprite for now.

Now, we can right-click on the Area2D, and a window will pop up.

We will select "Save branch as scene". Hit create in the new window that pops up, and now the door is its own scene!

Now, what is an Area2D. Well, let's check th Doc button with the magnifying glass and see.

So it detects collisions, but does not prevent it. It's basically a trigger.

So how do we use the trigger? A signal, like we did the button?

Yes, and no.

We are going to use the signal, but instead of aiming it at the player, we are going to have it detect the signal itself.

Why would you connect a signal to itself?

This is actually very useful. Let's open up the new Door node, and open up the Node tab to view its signals.

There are a lot of collision detection signals. Which one is correct?

If you hover over a signal, it will reveal what it is used for, like so:

This is the one we want!

But why won't it connect?

Because we first need to make the door script. After you add a script to the door, it will work.

Now, under the signal's function, what do we want it to do?

Load the next scene on body entered, if the body is the player.

If... it means we need an if statement.

Now how do we access the player?

Here's a nice trick- each node will have a unique name, and you can call it using that name.

So, first, let's go into the player node, and name it "Player" Also make sure the player's name is Player in Maze1 and 2.

After that, go into the door script, and add:

Now, what's with the double equals sign on these if statements, anyway?

the operator = assigns values to variables, like var number = 1. The if statement, however, doesn't assign variables, it checks to see if two values are equal. This is why they did not use = for this statement, and instead use ==.

Now, how do we change the scenes if the player collides with the door?

get_tree().change_scene(path of scene).

Wait, what is a path?

It's pretty simple, actually. Grabbing nodes from the top right are the nodes already in game. Grabbing the saved node for reuse from the bottom left actually prints out the path of that node. Add that line of code above in, and in the parentheses, drag the Maze2 path in to replace "path of scene".

Now you can advance to the next level... but What if you have Maze3, or Maze4, or up to Maze100?

Let's look at the path for Maze2.

"res://Maze2.tscn"

Does Maze1 print out res://Maze1.tscn?

It does!

So no, you can do something like this.

Above func _ready(), add var level = 1, since we start on level 1.

Now what if we want to go to level 2?

Could we use a function like this?

get_tree().change_scene("res://Maze" + str(level + 1) +".tscn")

And that is my challenge for you. And keep building your maze game! Next, we will use those keys and locked doors.

Nerdzmasterz

Alright. Now, let's make working locks and keys.

This will be another two-part tutorial.

So, what do they have to do?

The keys:

need to be collected

need to be removed from the game after being collected.

The locks:

need to block the player

need to be removed if the player has a key

need to remove a key from the player upon detecting one.

The keys have fewer requirements, so let's start with them.

Now, what should the keys be? A StaticBody2D? an Area2D?

Lets look at the docs for the StaticBody2Ds. You can do this by selecting your walls- which you do by toggling their parent, which is a Static2D.

Next, the door is an area2D, so we can look at the docs for it by selecting it.

Which is better?

The Area2D.

So, create a new scene, and get the Area2D again, and give it the name key, and a Sprite, and a collision shape and fill out the requirements.

However, we have a problem: The keys are not the player's parent. How do we access the player to tell it to collect them? And how to we handle multiple nodes, not just one? For every key, do we attach on area2d_body_entered(body)?

No way!

So, how do we do this?

Well, in the Node, next to the inspector, there are two tabs- signals and Groups. What is the Groups tab for?

Groups are a way to group nodes together... like these keys.

So, how do we use them?

Type the name of the group, say keys, in the little box and click on add. The group will then appear below:

Now that the keys are all in a group, how do we get them?

The Player will have to do it, but it it a KinematicBody2D, which does not detect collision.

Could we add something on it that does?

We can. Let's save the Key scene, and go into the player to add an Area2D as a child.

Of course, we give it a collision shape. As this area is not supposed to be a physical thing, it does not need a sprite. Make the Area2D's collision shape a circle, and a bit wider than the player's collision shape, like this:

I'm going to change my sprite so he is actually a person, but I'll do that in a later tutorial. Gobot is good for now. :)

So, now we connect a signal to the player, but which one? The body_entered(body)?

Actually, that will not work, as the keys are not actually bodies, but areas. Right now, we need area_entered(area: Area2D).

Now, back into the player code... How do we check if an area is in a certain group?

If an area is in group.

That is my challenge for you. See if you can determine how to check if an area is in a group.

For the test, place a key somewhere so the player can walk over to it, and when it collides with the object, have it print("Key collected") if the check is successful.

DaveTheCoder

Simulated user feedback:

I tried your tutorial, but it doesn't work. What do I do?

Nerdzmasterz

@DaveTheCoder said: Simulated user feedback:

I tried your tutorial, but it doesn't work. What do I do?

Who was it, and what happened?

Nerdzmasterz

I am getting into one little bug right now, this might fix it. :)