How to Program Computer Games

Making a Game with 2D Graphics

1. Choose a library. Making graphics is very complicated, and most programming languages (including Python, C++, C, JavaScript) provide only minimal or even no support for graphics in the core or the standard libraries. So you'll have to use an external library to be able to make graphics, for example Pygame for Python.

   1. Even with a graphics library, you'll have to worry a lot about low-level things like how to display a menu, how to check whether the user clicked on it, how to display the tiles, and so on. If you prefer to focus on developing the actual game, and especially if the game you want to make is complex, you should use a game engine library, which implements such things.

   This article will use Python with Cocos2D to show how to make a simple 2D platformer. Some of the mentioned concepts may not exist in other game engines. Refer to their documentation for more information.

2. Install the library you chose. Cocos2D for Python is simply installed with sudo pip3 install cocos2d.
3. Make a new directory. You will use things like images and sounds in your game. You should keep these things in the same directory as the program, and the directory shouldn't contain anything else so that you can easily see what assets you have in the game.
4. Change into the new directory and create a new code file. It should be named main, with the file extension of your programming language. If you write a large and complex program where it makes sense to have multiple program files, this will show which one is the main one.

   1. In this example, this file, which should be called main.py, will contain all your code. But the directory you created will still be useful for other media files.
5. Make a window. This is the basic prerequisite for a game with graphics. You can add the simplest content now, like for example a background colour.

   1. Import the necessary cocos2d sub-modules: cocos.director, cocos.scene and cocos.layer. This is done with from subModuleName import *, where subModuleName is the submodule you want to import. The difference between from ... import * and import ... is that you don't have to put the module name in front of everything you use from that module with the former.
   2. Define a subclass MainMenuBgr of the ColorLayer. This basically means that any main menu background you create will behave like a color layer with some changes you make.
   3. Initialize the cocos director. This will give you a new window. If you don't set some caption, the window will have the same caption as the file name (main.py), which doesn't look very professional. Allow the window to be resized with by setting resizable to True.
   4. Define a function showMainMenu. You should put the code for showing the main menu into a function because this will allow you to easily return to the main menu by calling the function again.
   5. Create a scene. The scene consists of one layer for now, which is an object of the MainMenuBgr class you defined.
   6. Run this scene in the window.

   from cocos.director import * from cocos.scene import * from cocos.layer import * class MainMenuBgr(ColorLayer): def __init__(self): super(MainMenu, self).__init__(0,200,255,255) def showMainMenu(): menuSc = Scene(MainMenuBgr()) director.run(menuSc) director.init(caption="IcyPlat - a simple platformer", resizable=True) showMainMenu() 

6. Create a main menu. Besides the actual game, you should have an option to close the game. You'll also add credits later, but ignore them for now. A main menu will avoid making entering the game too unexpected.

   1. Import necessary modules. You need to import cocos.menu (again with the from instruction) and pyglet.app (this time with import).
   2. Define MainMenu as a subclass of Menu.
   3. Set the alignment of the main menu. You have to set the vertical and horizontal alignment separately.
   4. Create a list of menu items and add create the actual menu. You should have the menu items "Start Game" and "Quit". Make sure to put every created menu item inside of brackets. A menu item has a label and a callback function for when it's clicked. For the "Start Game" item, use the startGame function (you'll write it soon), for the "Quit" item, use "pyglet.app.exit" (already exists). Create the actual menu by calling self.create_menu(menuItems).
   5. Define startGame(). Just put pass into the definition for now, you'll replace that when you write the actual game.
   6. Go to the place in your code where you created the menuSc scene, and add a MainMenu object to it.
   7. Your entire code should now look as follows:

      from cocos.director import * from cocos.menu import * from cocos.scene import * from cocos.layer import * import pyglet.app class MainMenuBgr(ColorLayer): def __init__(self): super(MainMenuBgr, self).__init__(0,200,255,255) class MainMenu(Menu): def __init__(self): super(MainMenu, self).__init__("") self.menu_valign = CENTER self.menu_halign = CENTER menuItems = [(MenuItem("Start Game", startGame)), (MenuItem("Quit", pyglet.app.exit))] self.create_menu(menuItems) def startGame(): pass def showMainMenu(): menuSc = Scene(MainMenuBgr()) menuSc.add(MainMenu()) director.run(menuSc) director.init(caption="IcyPlat - a simple platformer", resizable=True) showMainMenu() 

7. Test your code. It is important to test you code at such an early stage, while it is still short and relatively simple: this way you will know any mistakes in the basic structure, and can fix them before they cause more problems.

   1. The code from the instructions should open a window, captioned "IcyPlat - a simple platformer", that you can resize and that has a light blue background. It should have a menu with two items: when you click on "Start Game", nothing happens; when you click on "Quit", the program quits.

8. Display a sprite in the game. The sprite is like a "game object". In a platformer, for example, one should be the main figure that the player can control (in this step, it'll only be displayed however). Things like background decorations or object the player can interact with can also be sprites, but you should only add one first to understand the concept, then you can add whatever else you want.

   1. Import the cocos.sprite submodule with the from-import-expression.
   2. Find an image. You can't display a sprite if you don't have a picture for it. You can draw one, or you can get one from the internet (watch out for the license, though, if you're planning to publish your game), for example from here (crop the image so you only have one running penguin). Make sure to put your image into the same directory as the program.
   3. Create the sprite's layer and the sprite. Create the layer as a new object of the ScrollableLayer class. Create the sprite as a Sprite object and set its position to (8, 250). For reference, the point (0, 0) is in the bottom left corner. This is quite high, but it will make sure that the penguin doesn't get stuck in the ice.
   4. Add the sprite to the sprite's layer.
   5. Create a new scene out of the sprite's layer and run it.

   def startGame(): figLayer = ScrollableLayer() fig = Sprite('pingu.png') fig.position = (75, 100) figLayer.add(fig) # gameSc = Scene(figLayer) director.run(gameSc) 

   1. You can run your code now if you want. You will see a small penguin figure (or whatever you drew) on a black background after you click on "Start Game".
9. Decide what your landscape will consist of. In most games, your sprites shouldn't just float in the void. They should actually stand on some surface, with something around them. In 2D games, this is often done with a tile set and a tile map. The tile set basically says what kind of surface squares and background squares exist, and what they look like.

   1. Create a tile set. The tile set for this game will be very basic: one tile for ice and one tile for sky. The ice tile used in this example is from here, under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
   2. Create a tile set picture. That's a picture of all tiles, which have to all be of the same size (edit them if they aren't) and have the size you want to see in the game, next to each other. Save your picture as icyTiles.png.
   3. Create the tile set description. That's an XML file. The XML file contains information on how big the tiles are in the tile set picture, which picture to use, and where to find which tile there. Create an XML file named icyTiles.xml with the code below:

        size="16x16" file="icyTiles.png">  id="i-ice" offset="0,0" />  id="i-sky" offset="16,0" />  id="ice"> ref="i-ice" />  id="sky"> ref="i-sky" /> 

10. Make an actual structure out of the elements of your landscape. If you made a tile set, this should be done in the form of a tile map. A tile map is like a map that defines which tile is at which position in your level. In the example, you should define a function to generate tile maps because designing tile maps by hand is very tedious. A more advanced game would usually have some sort of level editor, but for becoming familiar with 2D game development, an algorithm can provide good enough levels.

    1. Find out how many rows and columns are needed. For this, divide the screen size by the tile size both horizontally (columns) and vertically (rows). Round the number upwards; you need a function of the math module for that, so add from math import ceil to the imports at the top of your code.
    2. Open a file for writing. This will erase all previous content of the file, so choose a name that no file in the directory has yet, like levelMap.xml.
    3. Write the opening tags into the file.
    4. Generate a tile map according to the algorithm. You use the one in the code below, or you can come up with one on your own. Make sure to import the randint function from the module random: it's required for the code below to work, and whatever you come up with will probably also need random integers. Also, make sure to put sky tiles and ice tiles in different layers: ice is solid, sky is not.
    5. Write the closing tags into the file and close the file.

    def generateTilemap(): colAmount = ceil(800 / 16)*3 # (screen width / tile size) * 3 rowAmount = ceil(600 / 16) # screen height / tile size tileFile = open("levelMap.xml","w") tileFile.write('nnn') iceHeight = randint(1,10) for i in range(0,colAmount): tileFile.write('') makeHole = False if randint(0,50) == 10 and i != 0: # don't allow holes at the spawnpoint makeHole = True for j in range(0,rowAmount): if makeHole: tileFile.write('n') else: if j <= iceHeight: tileFile.write('n') else: tileFile.write('n') iceHeight = randint(iceHeight-5, iceHeight+5) if iceHeight < 0: # limit tiles from going too low iceHeight = randint(1,5) if iceHeight > rowAmount: # limit tiles from going too high iceHeight = randint(int(rowAmount/2)-5,int(rowAmount/2)+5) tileFile.write('n') tileFile.write('nn') for i in range(0,colAmount): tileFile.write('') for j in range(0,rowAmount): tileFile.write('n') tileFile.write('n') tileFile.write('nn') tileFile.close() 

11. Display the tile map. Import everything from cocos.tiles and then go into the startGame function for that.

    1. At the beginning of your startGame function, generate a tile map using the function you defined for that.
    2. Create a new scrolling manager. Do this directly under the line where you add the sprite to its layer.
    3. Create a new layer containing the tiles, which will be loaded from the levelMap.xml tile map your generateTilemap function generated.
    4. Add the non-solid layer, the solid layer and the sprite layer to the scrolling manager, exactly in this order. You can add a z-position if you want.
    5. Instead of creating the scene from the sprite layer, create it from the scrolling manager.
    6. Your startGame function should now look like this:

       def startGame(): generateTilemap() # fig = Sprite('pingu.png') fig.position = (8, 500) figLayer = ScrollableLayer() figLayer.add(fig) # tileLayer = load('levelMap.xml') solidTiles = tileLayer['solid'] nsoliTiles = tileLayer['not_solid'] # scrMang = ScrollingManager() scrMang.add(nsoliTiles,z=-1) scrMang.add(solidTiles,z=0) scrMang.add(figLayer,z=1) # gameSc = Scene(scrMang) director.run(gameSc) 

12. Test your code. You should test your code often to make sure that the new features you implemented really work.

    1. The code in the example should now show some icy landscape behind the penguin. If the penguin looks like it is hovering far over the ice, you didn't do anything wrong, and it will be fixed in the next step.
13. Add the controls. The player has many more ways to interact with the program in a 2D game than in a text-based game. A common one includes moving their figure when the correct key is pressed.

    1. Import everything from cocos.mapcolliders and from cocos.actions. Also import key from pyglet.window.
    2. "Declare" some global variables. Global variables are shared between functions. You can't really declare variables in Python, but you have to say that a global variable exists in the main code before using it. You can assign 0 as the value because a function will take care of assigning the correct value later. So add under the import expressions:

       # "declaring" global variables keyboard = 0 scrMang = 0 

    3. Adjust your startGame function:
       1. Say that you use the global variables keyboard and scrMang. Do this by writing global keyboard, scrMang at the top of the function.
       2. Make the window listen to keyboard events.
       3. Tell the figure to act based on a PlatformerController. You'll implement that PlatformerController soon.
       4. Create a map collider to handle collisions between the solid tiles and the figure.

       def startGame(): global keyboard, scrMang generateTilemap() # fig = Sprite('pingu.png') fig.position = (8, 250) figLayer = ScrollableLayer() figLayer.add(fig) # tileLayer = load('levelMap.xml') solidTiles = tileLayer['solid'] nsoliTiles = tileLayer['not_solid'] # keyboard = key.KeyStateHandler() director.window.push_handlers(keyboard) # fig.do(PlatformerController()) mapcollider = RectMapCollider(velocity_on_bump='slide') fig.collision_handler = make_collision_handler(mapcollider, solidTiles) # scrMang = ScrollingManager() scrMang.add(nsoliTiles,z=-1) scrMang.add(solidTiles,z=0) scrMang.add(figLayer,z=1) # gameSc = Scene(scrMang) director.run(gameSc) 

    4. Create a platformer controller. This is what will move the figure according to your keypresses.
       1. Define the platformer controller as a subclass of Action.
       2. Define the move speed, the jump speed and the gravity.
       3. Define the start function. This function is called once, when the platformer controller is connected to the figure. It should set its speed to 0 both in x and in y direction.
       4. Define the step function. It will be repeated while the scene is running.
       5. Tell the step function to use the global variables keyboard and scrMang.
       6. Get and change the velocity. Save the x and the y velocity in separate variables. Set the x velocity to either 1 or -1 (depending on whether the left or right key was pressed) multiplied with the move speed. Add gravity to the y velocity. Multiply it with downtime so it works the same way on slower devices. If the space key is pressed and the figure is standing on the ground, jump by changing y velocity to jump speed.
       7. Calculate to where the figure should move. Then let the collision handler adjust that position if it is inside of a solid tile. Finally, move the figure to the new adjusted position.
       8. Set the focus of the scrolling manager on the figure. This causes the camera to move in a reasonable way when the figure moves.

       class PlatformerController(Action): global keyboard, scrMang on_ground = True MOVE_SPEED = 300 JUMP_SPEED = 500 GRAVITY = -1200 def start(self): self.target.velocity = (0, 0) def step(self, dt): global keyboard, scroller if dt 

       Update 05 March 2020

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