Learn to make Computer Games: Part 2, Setting Up Impact


This is the second post in a series on how to make games with impact.js . You can find the first post here.

I know you are getting all excited about making computer games and I am telling you about boring stuff like the file structure – what directories you should have and what should be in them. Trust me, you will run into all kinds of problems if you DON’T have these files , so just take a minute and see that you do.

When you purchase impact, you should have the following files:

index.html

weltmeister.html

Top level directories

You should also have three directories

  • lib , which contains three directories, game, impact and weltmeister
  • media , which only comes with a font file to start, but where you will end up putting all of your art and music
  • tools – which we will ignore until our game is finished. Just know that file should be there and contain 4 files, three of which have ‘bake’ in the name

The Game Directory

The game directory is where you will be working most of the time. It has two directories,

entities – comes pre-loaded with delay.js , levelchange.js, trigger.js and void.js . Additional entities you create will be saved here, for example, in my game there is a hunter (that the player controls), a buffalo that roams back and forth, a rabbit that runs all over, a snake that kills you if you step on it – these are all entities

levels – this is empty when you download impact.js but your levels you create will be saved here.

There should also be a file in this directory named main.js  As the name implies, this will be the main JavaScript file for your game and you will be editing it a lot.

Start screen with deer, buffalo and wigwam

You need some artwork!

Before you can open up the weltmeister and start creating some levels, you need artwork.  To start with, I recommend:

  1. An opening screen- tell the player what they need to do to get the game to start and also how to move, earn points and die. My start screen is above.
  2. Sprite sheets for the entities like buffalo, hunter, etc.
  3. Tile sheets for the background objects like grass, sky and trees.
  4. A death screen – my death screen is shown below
  5. A win screen

dead guy with buffalo

You can use impact to write and position the text on the image, but since I was only using each image once in this game, I just put the text on the image when I created it. I’ll explain how to use impact to position text in another post.

Want to buy the game that includes this ‘intermission game’ ? Check out Fish Lake

 

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