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The Games Factory 2 Step-by-step Tutorial

Welcome to the step-by-step tutorial!

Follow this tutorial, and in less than one hour, you will have created a complete game from scratch.
This game is called ChocoBreak, and is a clone of the classic Breakout game.

Follow this tutorial, and you will understand the basics of The Games Factory 2, the interface, the
events, the frame editor. All of it. And you will discover the power of this tool. This tool will enable you
to create any kind of 2D game, presentation, educational software, CD-ROM without programming, and
with ease.

So please stay with us, proceed with the tutorial, and create your first game!

Important note : this tutorial is automatically launched the first time you run The Games Factory 2. The
following times, you will have to start it manually, by selecting the option "Multimedia Tutorial" in the
Help menu.

Graphics by Olivier Behr

olivierbehr@hotmail.com

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Before we start - Setting up the screen

The Games Factory 2 is a software tool that lets you create your own software. That means that the
interface you see will have two parts to it: the application you are creating, and the interface with tools
you will use to create it with. As you can see, you will need more space on your screen to work with
then you might for a typical game, word processor, or other software.

So, prior to starting this tutorial, I will ask you to check your screen resolution. Screen resolution is the
overall size, in pixels, of what you see on your screen. The larger that size, the more room you will have
to work in. You can easily change your screen resolution in one of two ways, depending on your
graphics card and the version of Windows you use.

1) On the task bar, you may see an icon for your graphics card that allows you to change the settings by
right-clicking and selecting a menu option.

2) You can also right-click on an empty area of your desktop, (not over an icon or link) to bring up a
menu. On that menu, you will see an option called "properties". On the dialog box that pops up, you
should then choose the "Settings" tab. It is there that you will find the options and settings you need.

Note: the wording on the menus depends on what language version of Windows you are using.

Select "Properties"

Select the "Settings" tab, it should look like:

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In the Settings, you will see a "Screen area" slider, Simply drag the slider until you see "1024 x 768"
appear, as illustrated below:

Then, simply click "Apply" and/or "OK". Your resolution may change immediately, or you may be
required to reboot your computer, depending on your graphics card. Depending no the size of your
monitor, you can experiment with even higher screen resolution settings if you like.

Note : if your monitor does not support such a high resolution, then no problem : you will still be able to
follow this tutorial and use The Games Factory 2, but it will be a little less practical...

Step 1 - Our first application

You should already have The Games Factory 2 installed, on your computer. Launch The Games Factory
2. You will see this screen :

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The area on the left of the window is divided in two : the workspace area, where the content of your
game will be displayed, and the properties toolbar. The bottom of the screen shows the content of the
graphic libraries.
If you do not see any one of these windows, do not panic, it is very simple to bring them into the
display : open the View menu, and go in the Toolbars submenu. Now select the proper option,
Workspace, Properties or Library Window depending on the toolbar you are missing.

We are now going to create our first application. Click on the "New" Icon in the tool bar.

You can see in the Workspace toolbar that The Games Factory 2 has created a new application. You can
also see that The Games Factory 2 has automatically created a "Frame" in the application : this frame
will contain the first level of our game.
The Games Factory 2 has also opened automatically a new window in the work area.

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This window is called the Storyboard editor, one of the several editors contained in The Games
Factory 2. We won't be exploring them all right now.. For the moment we are simply going to enlarge
the Storyboard editor so that it takes the whole available space in the main window. To do so, simply
double click on the title of the window (you do not need to do this if the window takes all the available
space already ) :

Now the whole display should look like this :

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Step 2 - The frame editor

As was said before, the window you see on the screen is called the Storyboard editor. It displays a
thumbnail of the frames in your application. Frames can be thought of as "playfields", parts or as the
levels of you game. You could also say it shows the different slides of your presentation, if that is
what you were creating. You will understand how it works at the end of this tutorial. For the moment, I
want you to click one button:

Locate you mouse on the big "1" button in the Storyboard window. And click.

This will open the Frame Editor, for editing the first frame of your application. Remember, your game
is your "application". This is the first "level" of your game.

Now you see the frame editor. The white area in the middle is the place where we are going to drop the
different elements of the game. This is the playfield where all the actions will take place when the game
is run.

Step 3 - Dropping the first objects

OK, what we want to create is a breakout-style game. In a breakout game, you typically have a ball, a
bat, and some bricks. In this tutorial, we want to create a super breakout game, with impressive
graphics, made in 3D.

First, we need to find the graphics for our game. You will not have to draw the graphics on the screen, as

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we have already done that for you : all the graphics of the game we are going to create are contained in a
"library". Libraries are sets of objects ready to be used in The Games Factory 2.

How do we locate the graphics library for our game?. As you might have guessed, the library can be
found in the "Library" window, on the bottom-left of your display. There, you will see a tree, with
folders in it. Click on the "Tutorial" folder, this should display a set of names in the main display of the
library toolbar. Locate the "Chocobreak Tutorial" line and double click on it to open it.

As you can see, the library contains a collection of named items : the objects. You might even guess the
future use of the objects from their names. For example, "BallGolden" will be the ball we use in our
breakout game.

OK, let's drop our first objects. First of all, locate in the library the object named "SugarVertical1".
Click on it, and hold the mouse button down, then drag it onto the white area of the frame and release
the mouse. You should now see a large object. Click on the object, and drag it to the left of the frame
area. This object is the border for the left of our play area.

Proceed with the same method for the object called "SugarHorizontal", and place it at the top of the
frame area. Do the same with the object called "SugarVertical2" and drop on the right side. A the end,
your display should look like this :

The objects you have just dropped contain more than meets the eye : they are animated. To see the
animation, you have to launch the application. To do so, locate the "Run Frame" icon in the icon bar
near the top of your display, and click on it.

If you are using the demo version, click on the "Continue" button in the shareware reminder box (this

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box does not appear in the full product). A window then appears and "runs" the frame you were working
on. Notice that only the white area of the frame is visible. You should now see the three spirals
animating. They look pretty good, don't they?

When you are done viewing the animation, close the window by clicking on its close button : you are
now back in the frame editor.

Step 4 - The ball

Every breakout game needs a ball. Now that we know how to add objects, lets drop one on our playfield.

Locate the object called "BallGolden" in the library. Then, using the method described in the previous
chapter, drag it and drop it in the middle of the frame.

If you click "Run Frame" now, you will see that the ball does not move. It is static. Why doesn't it
move? It won't move until teach our ball how to move, in other words, we are going to assign the ball
movement property to our ball and define how that movement will work in our game.

Each object has a number of properties that define its behavior during the game. That is, how it moves,
how it is displayed, its animations etc. To access the properties of an object, you just need to open its
properties in the property window. This is done by simply clicking on the object in the frame : do it,
and you will see the properties in the property toolbar.
The properties are sorted by genre, with little tabs in the top of the window. Locate the one called
"Movement" and click on it.

Locate the line "Type", and click on it. This opens a combo box displaying all the different genres of
movement. Select the "Bouncing ball" entry.

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We have chosen to affect a "Bouncing ball" movement to our object. As you can see, other types of
movements are available: we will come back on them later.
Once the movement is selected, its properties are available in the property toolbar :

If you explore all the different properties, you will notice some that are obvious, like the speed property.
Here the speed is set at 60, which is correct for our game. Click the "Try movement" button to see the
speed of the ball on the screen.
Deceleration makes the ball slow down progressively, like in a football game. For our break out we do
not want the ball to stop : leave this property at zero.
Moving at start should be checked : we want the ball to move when the game begins.
Number of angles indicates how many angle the ball can have. The different settings are 8, 16 and 32.
Leave it to 32, it will make the game more interesting.
The Randomizer property, adds some randomness to the bounces : sometimes the ball will not bounce
in the correct direction(s) if you set this too high. For this game, you may want to reduce this parameter
a little.
The Security property is used to prevent a ball from getting stuck in a bouncing pattern loop, ( going
back and forth the same way) it defines the number of times the ball will bounce before quitting the
loop.

Note: After the tutorial, you can learn a lot and have some fun by experimenting with these settings and
noting the effects they have.

Now click on the Initial direction property. As its name indicates, it defines the direction the ball will
take when the game begins. As a default, the ball goes on the right of the screen. Of course we must
modify this as we want the ball to come toward us, or better toward the bricks so that it bounces before
coming to us. With your mouse select the arrows as below :

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When more than one direction are selected, The Games Factory 2 chooses a direction at random within
the selected direction.

Congratulations! Great job. You have now taught your ball object how to move and it is ready to be a
part of an enjoyable game. Now, let's move on to some more exciting aspects of our creation.

Step 5 - Making the ball bounce

We have just defined the ball movement of the ball object : you can run the frame again, by clicking on
the "Run Frame" button, as before. You should see the ball move and vanish out of the playfield. It
works, but we need the ball to stick around for the game! What is the problem? We can see that the ball
does not bounce on the "sugar" object as it should. We have to instruct The Games Factory 2 to make
the ball bounce off of objects. To do that, we will now discover the Events editor.

Locate the "Events editor" button in the tool bar, and click on it.

The display should look like this :

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Let's think about what we want to achieve. We want the ball to bounce when it collides with the vertical
and horizontal bars. If we use the name of the objects as we saw them in the frame editor, the sentence
becomes : "when the object BallGolden collides with object SugarVertical1, then the Object
BallGolden should bounce".

This sentence is in two parts, the first part can be called the condition. A condition is simply a way to
determine when something has happened. Here, our condition is "when the object BallGolden collides
with object SugarVertical1". The second part is the action to take place when the condition occurs. We
call that the action. In life, you see conditions and actions all the time. For instance, if the condition
was, "Is it my Birthday?" Then, when your Birthday came, the action might be to "Celebrate!" Here our
action is "Object BallGolden bounce". An identical condition/action sentence could be constructed for
the other objects SugarVertical2 and SugarHorizontal.

Now, let's create our conditions and actions in The Games Factory 2. With you mouse, click on the
"New condition" line on the screen :

The New Condition dialog box opens immediately.

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The content of this dialog box is simple : it shows the objects we are using in the game and some
standard objects that are always available. Among the objects you see displayed, you will find the
objects that you have already dropped on the frame under the frame editor, and some new objects that
we will talk more about later. Right now, we will concentrate on the BallGolden object, our game ball.

Now click with the right mouse button on the ball : this opens a new popup menu, the conditions
menu.

Explore this menu, and you will discover many entries : this menu contains all the available conditions
for the object BallGolden. For example, you can test the position of the object on the screen, its
direction, count the number of balls on the screen, etc. Remember that we wanted to test the collision of
our ball with the SugarVertical1 object. So, open the "Collisions" submenu, and select the option
"Another object". It immediately opens another dialog box :

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We test the collision of the object BallGolden with another object : The Games Factory 2 is asking us to
choose which object to detect. If you remember our sentence, we want to test the SugarVertical1
object : double click on the object.
The dialog box should immediately vanish, and the event editor should now display a new event line :

We have just defined a new condition! As you can see above, that condition will be true every time
BallGolden collides with SugarVertical1.We now have to enter the action that will happen when this
condition is met.. Carefully inspect the top bar of the event editor : it contains the objects we have seen
in the condition dialog box. Some new objects, and the objects we have dropped in the game.

OK, what we want to do, is to have the BallGolden object bounce. This is our desired action. The first
thing to do, is to locate the BallGolden object in the bar, then move the mouse in the empty square
under the BallGolden object, and click with the right mouse button. This instantly opens the actions
menu of the object BallGolden.

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Inspect this menu. It contains a list of possible actions for the object : we can stop it, start it, set its
speed, change its position, hide it, show it etc. All these actions are at our disposal when creating a
game. But, we want the ball to bounce, remember? Locate the "Bounce" option in the "Movement"
submenu, and select this option. The menu will disappear, and now the empty square is filled with a
check mark, indicating that an action is now defined. Move your mouse over the checkmark and a
popup window will appear stating the action.

You have defined your first event : one condition plus one action. Bravo!

We still need to define the same type of event for when the ball collides with the SugarHorizontal
object, and the SugarVertical2 object. Let's do that.

Click on the "New condition" line, and open the "New condition" dialog box. Locate the BallGolden
object, and right click on it to open the Conditions menu. In this menu locate the "Collision" /
"Another object" entry and select it. In the next dialog, select the SugarHorizontal object (which is the
one we want to test). Press OK. A new line appears in the event editor.
Now for the action : locate the BallGolden object in the top bar, and get your mouse down in the empty
square located at the same level than the new condition we have just entered.

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Right click on the square to open the action menu, and select the "Bounce" action. You have just
defined your second event! Its easy, isn't it?

Now for the third object, do exactly as before, but instead of choosing SugarHorizontal, choose
SugarVertical2. With a little practice, you will find that creating events that have conditions and
actions is intuitive. Most of your creation in The Games Factory 2 will consist of simple steps like this.
Once all the events are defined, the event editor should look like this :

You now can launch the game : When runs, you will see the ball magically bounce on the objects. It
will eventually disappear in the bottom of the screen. Does this give you a hint of the next task we want
accomplish in creating this game?

Step 6 - The player

To complete our game, we now have add the bat, which will be controlled by the mouse. Lets go back
to the frame editor. Click on the "Frame Editor" icon in the toolbar :

Inspect the "ChocoBreak Tutorial" library, in the bottom of your screen, and find the object named
"Player". Drag and drop it in the bottom of the play area, just in the middle, between the two vertical
sugar objects.

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Just as for the ball, we have to define the movement property of this object. Click on it, to make the
properties appear in the property toolbar. As for the ball, locate the "Movement" tab, and click on it.
Open the "Type" combo box. We want out player to be controlled by the mouse. Select the "Mouse
controlled" option in the list.

Now click on the "Edit movement" button. A flashing zone can be seen on the screen. Using the
handles of this zone, restrict the movement of the object by dragging the small black boxes until the
zone looks like a thin rectangle, from one of the sugar objects to the other, like so:

Do not forget that you can test the movement at any time by clicking on the "Try movement" button.
Once the movement satisfies you, click on the OK button to come back to the frame editor.

If you test your game right now, you will see that the player actually moves on the screen, but does not
affect the ball at all : the reason is obvious, we have yet to define an event to do so in the Events
editor. What we want to test is : "When the BallGolden object collides with the Player object, bounce
BallObject".

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Note : Since the movement of the "Player" object is now controlled by the mouse, the mouse pointer
will vanish when you launch your game. For now, the only way to close your game in that case, is to
press at the keys Alternate-F4. In the next chapter, you will discover that you can define a keypress,
like the escape key, as a way to end your game.

So let's go! We are ready to make our game playable now! Click on the Events editor button in the tool
bar, to open the editor. You can notice that a new icon, the "Player" object has been added to the top
bar. You should now be able to enter this event by yourself. Please try to do so, and if you do not
succeed, then read the following text that will guide you through the task.

Click on the New condition line to open the New condition dialog box, here too, you will see the new
"Player" object (do not confuse it with the "Player 1" object!). Right click on the "BallGolden" object
to open the Condition menu. In the menu choose the option "Collision" and then choose "Another
object". In the next dialog, double click on the "Player" object. A new line is added to the list of events
in the event editor.

Now locate the ball object in the top bar, and move your mouse down until you reach the empty square
in front of the new condition we have just entered. Then, click with the right mouse button to open the
Actions menu. Choose the option "Bounce". A new checkmark will appear in the editor : you new
action is defined!

Now click on the "Run Frame" icon in the tool bar : you should be able to play your game. The ball
bounces off of the player!

Step 7 - The extra objects

Being obliged to press Alt+F4 to quit the game is not very practical. It would be nice, and much easier,
if the game would end when we press one key, like ESCAPE. Well, this is very simple to do in The
Games Factory 2. We can make an event with a condition and an action, which we are now familiar
with, to accomplish this.

The event we want to define is "When the user presses ESCAPE then Quit the game". First of all, lets
enter the condition. As usual, click on the "New condition" line in the events editor. This opens the
New condition dialog. Do you remember that we mentioned we would talk about the extra objects
contained in the dialog box? Now is the time. Let's discover what these powerful objects are about.

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By moving your mouse over the objects, locate the "The mouse pointer and Keyboard" object.

As its name indicates, this object tests everything that touches the mouse and the keyboard. Right click
on the object to open the Conditions menu. If you inspect the options, you can see that you have at your
disposal many options to test the keyboard and the mouse. Select the option "Keyboard" / "Upon
pressing a key".

This should open a small dialog box, asking you to press a key. We want to test a press of the ESCAPE
key, so press the ESCAPE key when you are prompted.

You should now see a new line in the event editor with your condition.

Our new condition to test the ESCAPE key is now defined. We have to define the action that will

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happen when the key is pressed. We want the action to end the game. Inspect the object bar in the top of
the events editor, and find the "Storyboard controls" object

The "Storyboard controls" object allow you to control the flow of the application. Locate the empty
square below the "Storyboard controls" object in front of our new condition, and click with the right
mouse button. This opens the Actions menu for this object. You can see many options to control the
flow of the application, but the one you want to choose right now is: "End the application".

Once the action is defined, launch your game, and press ESCAPE : the game quits automatically.

Here is the list of the system objects, and their functions :

The "Special" object. This object contains many actions and conditions to perform complex tasks
in The Games Factory 2. It will be more important to you as you become an advanced user.

The "Speaker" object. Contains actions to play sounds and music, and conditions to know
whether this or that sound, or music, is playing.

The "Storyboard controls" object contains actions and conditions to regulate the flow of the
application. Going from one frame to the other, quitting the application, etc.

The "Timer" object contains conditions to perform actions at specific moments in the application.

The "New objects" object allows you to create new objects, (duplicates) of objects already in your
application, while your application is running. A single monster could become ten or more this way.

The "Mouse pointer and Keyboard" object contains all the necessary conditions to test the mouse

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and the keys pressed.

The "Player 1" object contains actions to change the score and the number of lives of the player. It
is used in games.

Step 8 - Some sound

Our game is slowly coming into shape, but it still lacks one thing : sound! Sound adds excitement and
feeling to your game. Let's make some sound when the ball bounces.

The events editor should be displayed on your screen. We are going to add new actions to the events we
have previously created. First of all, let's make a sound when the ball collides with the player.

Locate the event line "Collision between BallGolden and Player", and move your mouse horizontally to
the right until it reaches the position of the Sound object (speaker icon). You mouse should lay on an
empty square at the intersection between that condition line, and the Sound object's column. Click with
the right mouse button to open the Actions menu for the Sound.

Choose the "Play sample" action. This opens the sound selector.

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Click on the button "From a file / Browse" , this opens a file selector. With this file selector, locate the
directory where your version of The Games Factory 2 is installed, and open the
"Tutorials\ChocoBreak" folder. Several WAV files should be listed, choose the file "POP04.WAV".
You can press "Play" to hear the sound. Click on OK.

We now have a new action added to the event. The event will now display like this :

You can see that when the collision condition is true, TWO actions will take place: first bouncing the
ball, then playing the sound. But due to the speed of the computer, the actions will be performed
simultaneously. You can now start the game. If your volume is turned up and your speakers are
connected, you should now "hear" the ball bounce when it hits the player. Sound good?

Lets add some more sound, since it makes the game so much better. Since the ball also collides with
the sugar objects, it makes sense to hear that happen, too. We are first going to enter the action for the
first object, "SugarVertical1". Locate your mouse at the intersection between the collision condition
with "SugarVertical1", and the speaker object. Right click on the empty square, and click browse in
the sound selector. Now select the sound "POP1.WAV". A new action is defined for the first line.

The sound should be identical when the ball collides with any of the sugar objects. Instead of manually
defining the Play Sound action for each of the lines, we are going to use drag & drop! This makes our
creation much easier and faster. Move your mouse over the "Play sample POP1" action, click and hold
the mouse key down to drag it. Now move the mouse to the square just below the first one : you are
dragging the action with your mouse to another event line.

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Now release the mouse, the action is now copied into the next line.

Repeat the same procedure and copy the action on the "Collision between BallGolden and
SugarVertical2". You can "mouse over" those actions and you will see that they are identical to the
original. The will play the same sound.

Now you can launch your game and enjoy the sounds. You are doing great, and look how far you have
come. Take a moment to revel in what you have just created, and then we will move on to the next step.

Step 9 - Adding the bricks

In a breakout game, one usually has bricks to that have be destroyed. We now have to add the bricks to
our game, of course! We need a score getting goal for the game, and that is to destroy the bricks with
the ball.

Lets go back to the frame editor : click on the "Frame editor" icon in the tool bar.
Once we are in the frame editor, have will want to refer to the library window : locate the object named
"Milk" : this is a chocolate brick for our ChocoBreak game! Drag it with the mouse onto the playfield,
and drop it somewhere in the top area of the frame. Drag and drop another "Milk" object from the
library, and place it just under the last one you dropped.

Repeat the same procedure until you have created a column of seven objects. When you finally have
seven of them stacked neatly, proceed to the next step.

Tip : once you have selected an object, you can use the keyboard arrows to move, (nudge) the object
pixel by pixel.

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Now we want to duplicate the column to the right, in order to create a realistic looking chocolate bar.
Click on the top-left of the bricks, and drag a selection frame around the bricks :

This action will select all the bricks within the area, as indicated below.

Now open the "Edit" menu in the main menu bar, and select the option "Copy". All the bricks are now
copied into the clipboard. Open the "Edit" menu again and choose the option "Paste" : the mouse
pointer will indicates that it is "carrying" something. Click in the playfield beside the selected bricks : a
new set of bricks then appears, already selected. Now grab the selected bricks with your mouse pointer
by clicking and holding. Then position them at the correct position, (see illustration below) so that the
new set is nicely lined up with the prvious ones. Remember that you can use the arrow keys for fine
positioning, (nudging).

Once your new set of bricks is neatly positioned, you are then ready to paste, once again, and add
another column to you growing set of chocolate bricks. At the end you should end up a complete group
of bricks that looks just like this :

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If the bricks on your screen look like that, it means that they are now setup properly for our game. As
we said, the bricks are important to our game because the player's goal is to direct the ball skillfully
enough to destroy them in order to earn points.

Note : As you can see, The Games Factory 2 is similar to most editing tasks you will come across on
your computer : you can cut. (or copy) and paste. Cutting, copying, and pasting, saves a lot of time and
repetition, so use it whenever you can. What you have not learned yet is that you could have used a
special function of the editor to create the entire group of remaining brick objects : by right clicking on
the first brick and then selecting Duplicate, the entire grid of bricks could have been created instantly!
Be sure to explore this time-saving capability after we finish the tutorial. I think you will find it
indispensable in the long-run. The Games Factory 2 provides many ways to save time and reduce your
effort.

We now have to go on to define the events that take of or each brick as the ball collides with them. From
you experience with this tutorial, you probably realise by now that we have to go to the Event editor.
So, go ahead, click on the Event editor icon in the toolbar to begin this task..

You will now notice the new object in the object bar on the top of the event editor : the "Milk" object.
Now, we will create another condition. With your current skills, you should now know how to do this
on your own. If you need some re-enforcement, then feel free to review the previous chapters before
continuing. Here is the condition we need to add:

First, we will want to make the ball bounce when it hits a brick. You probably already know how to
accomplish this : locate your mouse under the ball on the condition line, and click with the right mouse
button. Select the "Bounce" option in the popup menu. Or if you prefer you can drag & drop one of the
bounce actions previously entered.

What should happen to the bricks when the ball hits them? When you create your own games, the entire
process will often be about asking questions like that and finding the best solution. The Games Factory 2
is full of perfect solutions for your games! As you learn more about how The Games Factory 2 works
with you and for you, you will quickly become more professional when it comes to solving every
game's unique problems. The Games Factory 2 was designed to help you in every way as you develop
game ideas.

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So, what we want to do next is to destroy the "Milk" object when the ball collides with it. When we
destroy an object, it is gone for good for that part of the game, or at least, until the game starts again, or
we create a new instance of that object. Locate the empty square on the same line of the new
condition, under the "Milk" object. Right click to open the Actions menu. Then select the "Destroy"
option.

As with the rest of our game, we will want to make a sound when the "Milk" object is destroyed..
Sound can be just as important as the visual aspects that the player sees. The Games Factory 2 is a
multimedia tool, so we can use sound to re-enforce the excitement of the game, and add more realism
and emotion. Hold your mouse under the Sound object on the same line as before and click with the
right mouse button. Choose "Play Sample" and locate the sound directory as before. Select the sound
"IMPACT02.WAV".

Good job! Now you have a truly worthy set of bricks to challenge your player with. Along with
previous chapters, you have accomplished much in a very short time. You have taught your ball to
bounce off the bricks that it hits. You have assured that each brick that is hit by the ball will be
destroyed on contact. You have also added some "special effects" by having the appropriate sound play
when the ball hits a brick.

If you have followed the tutorial closely, and payed careful attention, you have already mastered many
important aspects of game creation! You are well on your way to bigger and better things. With that in
mind, let's add some more great features to our game. I think you are ready now to add some more
common game features, and to learn about more of the great, The Games Factory 2 tools at your
disposal.

Step 10 - Score, lives and other objects

The score is an important part of any game : it tells how good a player is. Its a reward and a sign of

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accomplishment. Our breakout-style game should have a score so that the player can earn points for
destroying blocks. This is part of making a game fun and challenging.

We also need to display the number of lives the player has. Without limited lives, the game would be far
too easy and our player would get bored. In breakout games, the player usually loses a life when they
miss the ball. So, that will be our condition for taking away one life.

Part of the fun of creating a game is making decisions. We have to decide how many points to award
the player and how many lives the player should start with. Let's add some more fun and challenges to
the game now:

Lets go back to the frame editor (click on the icon in the tool bar).

We are going to discover some more new objects. The objects we have been using so far (the ball, the
bricks, the sugar bars) are called Active Objects. Active objects are the most used objects in a game :
they can move, collide, and they can be animated. There are many more objects available in The Games
Factory 2, and they have different properties. The Games Factory 2 is easy, but that does not mean it's
not flexible and powerful. So, let's discover a few new objects and see what they can help us
accomplish!

The Quick backdrop object

In the library, locate the object call "Sky". Drag and drop it onto the frame. As you can see, this object is
a gradient of blue and looks very nice on our playfield. You also notice that this object goes in the
background , behind all other objects automatically : it is called a Quick Backdrop object. Quick
backdrop objects are simple colored backgrounds. They do not have many properties, they cannot be
moved, and they do not interfere at all with the active objects. They are just here as a backdrop, to
enhance the display. They can be set to an ellipse shape or a line, and you can define a colored border
for them.

Click on the sky object to select it, immediately its properties appear in the property toolbar. As you can
see, there are many properties for you to change : do not hesitate to have a go. If you mess up your sky
object, you'll only have to destroy it, and retake one from the library.

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The Score object

We need an object to display the score. The Games Factory 2 provides one object dedicated to do this :
the score object.
We will not find the score object in the library (it could reside there, we simply did not insert it), but we
are going to create a score object from scratch.

Open the "Insert" menu in the top menu bar, and choose the option "Insert an object".

It opens a dialog box with a list of objects. These are all the available objects in The Games Factory 2 :
as you can see, there are many, and they are what give The Games Factory 2 the power to do what you
want.. In the left pane of the window, click on the name "Game" : this will display only the game
objects in the right pane.Locate the Score object in the list, and double click on it.

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This closes the box. Your mouse pointer, displayed as a cross, is now carrying the object, click
somewhere in the bottom of the play area. Your object is now dropped. If you look in the property
toolbar, you can see that the player affected to this score object is player 1.
Now drag the number to a convenient location in the bottom left of the play area : this will display our
score.

The lives objects

We need to display the number of lives for the player during the game. For that we will use a Lives
object. As before, we are going to create this object from scratch as it does not exist in the library.

As for the score object, choose the "Insert" / "New object" option in the main menu. Click on "Games"
and locate the Lives object in the list. Double click on it in the box, and then click somewhere in the
play area. Then dispose your Lives object in the bottom right corner of the play area.

The other objects

As you have seen in the Insert object dialog box, The Games Factory 2 contains loads of objects for you
to use. Lets describe some of them :

The Quick Backdrop object : we have used the sky object which is a quick backdrop
object. Useful objects to create a color zone that does not interfere with the game. Quick backdrop
objects have very little properties, they cannot move.

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The Backdrop object : a simple image in the background, that does not interfere with the
action. Just like the quick backdrop object, it don't move, and it lies behind all other objects. The
difference is that this object can display a picture of your choosing, rather than a simple color or
gradient.

The Active object : certainly the most widely used of all the objects - and very powerful! It can
contain pictures, animations, and directions, it can be moved, and reacts to, and interacts with, the other
objects. This is the object of choice for your games!

The Counter object : as its name indicates, this object holds numerical values and, at your
option, displays it on the frame. The value can be displayed as a number, or as a percentage bar, either
horizontal or vertical. This object is very useful for complex applications where you need to store data.
You can add to, subtract from, and set a counter.

Tip: In the counter's properties, you can set the starting value, as well as the highest and lowest numbers
it will be able to work with. It is very important to use these settings for percentage bars or you may not
see them do anything at all when running your application.

The String object : this object holds text, also known as a string, and can display it on the screen.
You can choose the font, and align the text, (left, center, right) as you wish. But more than that, the
string object allow you to do some string manipulations and calculations. As you advance you will find
this easy to understand and very powerful.

The Score object : we have just created one score object in our game. Indispensable to display the
score of the player in a game. Like the counter, you can set, add, and subtract the score.

The Lives object : displays the number of lives remaining for the player. It can display it as
individual drawings, or as a number.

The High score object : automatically displays and manages a table of high scores for your
game.

The AVI object : this very powerful object allow you to display video files (.AVI files) in a The
Games Factory 2 application. No doubt that as well as the Quicktime object, the AVI object is the

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object of choice for multimedia presentations.

The Button object : this object displays a Windows' style button, a checkbox or a radio button.
Very useful when you have to create interfaces. Buttons let your user/player control things.

Etc. etc. The list of available objects is very long. Once you have completed this tutorial, we suggest that
you drop the objects you are interested in on an empty frame, edit them to discover their properties, and
go in the events editor to discover their conditions and actions. Objects open new worlds and new
objects are being created by Clickteam and third-party developers all the time.

Step 11 - Completing the game

If you run your game, you will see that the score and lives are now displayed, but they do not change :
we have to enter the actions that will modify them.

Go back to the Events editor.

The score.

We want to add points to the score when the ball destroys a brick. As you can imagine, we have to add a
new action on the line where the collision between the brick and the ball is handled. Locate this line, and
move your mouse horizontally under the Player 1 object. Right click on the empty square located at the
intersection. This opens the Player 1 object Actions menu. As you can see, this menu contains options
to change both the number of lives, and the score. Select the "Add to score" option.

A new dialog box appears : the expression editor. This dialog box allows us to perform calculations
(and even complex ones) in The Games Factory 2. For the moment, just enter the number 100 in the
white edit zone, and click on OK.

A new action is inserted. If you try your game you will see that the score now increases as the bricks are

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destroyed.

The lives.

The Lives object automatically starts with three lives, just the number we want!

Let's think a little. We want to subtract one life when the player misses the ball and it goes out the
bottom of the playfield. This gives us the following event : "When the ball leaves the area in the
bottom / Subtract one life from the player". So we need to enter a new line of event.

You certainly know the procedure by now : click on New condition, and right click on the ball in the
New condition dialog box. Now locate the "Test position of BallGolden" option, this is the one we
want to use. It immediately opens a new dialog box for you to choose which side of the frame to check.
Select the "Leaves in the bottom" only, and click on OK.

We now have our new line :

We can now enter the action to subtract one from the number of lives. You should be able to do it
yourself : locate the square below the "Player 1" object in front of our new condition, and right click.
Then choose "Subtract from number of lives", and enter 1 in the Expression editor.

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We could also make a "loosing" noise when the player looses one ball : open the Sound object Actions
menu, and choose Play sample. Locate the directory where we extracted the sounds before and select
the file : "DOWN01.WAV" . Before closing the sound picker, tick the small checkbox in the bottom
right of the box "Uninterruptable" : the sound will play fully and will not be interrupted by other
sounds.

If you launch your game, you can see that everything works very well, except for one thing : when the
ball leave the play area in the bottom, it is lost forever! We should program an action to bring it back!
Let's do it. Locate your mouse on the same line than before, under the ball object, and right click. In the
Action menu of the ball, locate the option "Position" / "Select position". This option automatically
displays the frame for you to point to the new position of the object. Position the flashing cross in the
middle of the frame, under the bricks, and click on OK.

We have now entered a new action that re-positions the ball automatically in the center of the screen
when it disappears at the bottom. Try your game : it works, but you immediately notice that it is very
difficult to grab the ball when it comes back in the play area : it goes toward the bottom at a high speed,
and most of the time the player misses it.

What we need to do, is just after repositionning the ball in the play area, is to change its direction to the
top. This can be done via a simple action : locate the checkmark with the position action, and right click
on it (nothing prevents us from having more than one action per checkmark). In the action menu, select
the option "Direction" / "Select direction". This opens a dialog box similar to the one we have found
when setting the movement property of the ball. Select only the directions that point upward : one
direction will be chosen for the ball to take at random during runtime.

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If you test your game, you notice that the gameplay is now very good! Looks like a game, ey? It is!

A little music!

Wouldn't it be nice if there was a little background music? We can add music easily. We are going to
add a new event that says : "At the start of the frame / Play music IMPACT.MID".

Click on New condition, and in the New condition dialog, right click on the Storyboard controls
object. Select the option "Start of frame". Then right click under the Speaker object and choose the
option "Play music". Click on Browse and locate the directory where we found the previous sounds.
You are going to select the file "IMPACT.MID" (this file is not a sample sound, it is MIDI music).

Step 12 - A high score table

One final thing to do to put some finishing touches on our game : detect when the number of lives
equals zero, and when it is, end the game. This can be done very simply : click on New condition and
in the New condition dialog, right click on the Player 1 object. Choose the option "Compare to
player's number of lives".

This opens the expression editor : just click on OK, we want to compare to zero.

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Now the action : right click under the Storyboard controls object, and choose the option Next Frame.

You certainly understand that when the number of lives reaches zero, The Games Factory 2 will switch
automatically to the next frame. Next frame? But there is no next frame yet! Well, we are going to
create a new frame with a high score table.

A new frame

To do so, we need to display the Storyboard editor. You remember, the very first editor that we
encountered? Well this is it. Click on the Storyboard Editor icon in the tool bar.

The storyboard editor is the place where you can have a global view on your application : it shows all
the frames one after the other. For the moment we only have one frame. We are going to add a new
frame. Click on the "2" button :

You can immediately see that a new frame has been added to our application. We are now going to drop
some objects into the frame : click on the "2" button to go to the Frame editor...

First of all, we are going to drop a background object with a nice picture. Locate the object
ScreenHighScore in the library window and drag & drop it onto the frame. Position it properly so that it
covers the entire white, play area.

First of all, we are going to drop a background object with a nice picture. Locate the object
ScreenHighScore in the library window and drag & drop it onto the frame. Position it properly so that
it covers the entire white, play area.

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Now for the Hi score object. Select the option "Insert" and then "New object" in the main menu, and
choose the Hi-score object. Drop it in the middle of the frame. In the property toolbar, you can now see
all the properties of the object. Feel free to experiment. Do not forget to change the font of the object by
clicking on the "Text Options" tab in the property toolbar. Personally I chose a Arial Bold font, size 20.

We now have to program the events of our little high-score frame. Click on the Events editor button in
the tool bar. As you can see, the list of events is empty. What we want to do is simple : display the high-
score table for 10 seconds, and then, restart the game.

You might guess that we are going to use the Timer object to do this. Click on New condition and in
the New condition dialog box, right click on the timer object. Choose the option "Is the timer equal to
a certain value".

And in the following dialog, enter 10 seconds (you can drag the bar or type the number in).

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Now for the action. Move your mouse under the Storyboard Controls object, and click with the right
mouse button. In the Actions menu choose the option "Restart the application".

You can now play your game from the start. To do so, do not click on the Run Frame icon as you are
used to do, but click on the Run Application icon.

Step 13 - A title page

Our game is nearly complete. We seem to be missing a title page, though.

For the title page we will want to insert a new frame, so click on the Storyboard editor icon.

Then click on the "3" button, and as before choose to create a frame. A new frame is added at the end of
the application. Now click on the empty zone beside the number 3, hold down the mouse key, and drag
the frame over the first one.

Release the mouse, the new frame is now the first one in the application.

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Let's edit the frame : click on the "1" button to open the Frame editor.

Locate in the library, the object named : ScreenTitle and drop it in the frame. Position it so that it
completely covers the white area.

We are going to drop a Button object in this frame : to start the game, you will have to click on the
button. Select the option "Insert" and then "New objects" in the main menu, and click on "Interface" in
the left pane. Then choose the Button object in the list of objects displayed. Then drop this object on the
frame.
The properties of the new button object are displayed in the property toolbar. We need to change the text
of the button : click on the "Text" property, and enter "Play" in the edit zone.

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Then resize the button and position it to your heart's desire.

We now need to define the event for this frame. Click on the Event editor button. This event is simple :
when the user clicks on the button, we go to the next frame. You should be able to enter this event
yourself without explanation. Please give it a try before reading the following text.

If you forgot how, here is a reminder :

Click on New condition to open the New condition dialog box. Right click on the Button object, and
select the option "Button clicked?". This is our condition. Now for the action : right click in the empty
square under the Storyboard Controls and choose the option "Next Frame" in the menu.

Our game is now finished! After you play it a while, see if you can find someone to try it. That's half
the fun of making games. It's a good feeling when someone enjoys something you have created.

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Step 14 - What's next?

There are many ways to improve our game:

 Add some music to the title page

 Create new levels with different bricks
 Add new sound effects
 Have bonuses fly down at the player
 Make the player shoot bullets to destroy the bricks
 Have more than one ball at the same time
 Give bonus lives for certain scores
 Assign different score values for certain bricks or levels
 Etc.

Where to go next with The Games Factory 2?

We hope you had fun creating your first game! Of course, you should be proud of your new found
skills.

With this tutorial, we think that you now grasp many important basics of using The Games Factory 2.
But there is so much more to discover : discover all the objects, all the conditions, all the actions
available. Then let your imagination go wild and you will do amazing things.

Of course, The Games Factory 2 is not limited to games : you must understand now, that with all the
available objects, the thousands of conditions, actions and expressions, The Games Factory 2 can create
anything from presentation to educative CD-ROMs, and of course games.

Good luck, and we wish you many years of happy creation!

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