Start the Creation !

Start a new Stencyl game

After you've properly installed the Nuggeta Extension we can actually Start a new Stencyl game.

I'll start by creating a new blank game, with the name Gijutsu. I'll leave the width and height at 640x480 px.

The first Scene that we will create will be the Intro scene. We will use this scene to present our players with the title of our game, the ability to play as a guest or login using the 3 available choices (Fb, G+ or Nuggeta), and maybe we'll add a mute sound/music button as well.

Without loosing too much time you can safely create a new scene with the name Intro and the rest of the options should remain at their default values, and since we won't use the scene editor just yet you can close the Intro tab for now.

Let's first add a button with the title of our game, and a button for our Guest login button. And since I already mentioned my impressive artistic skills in the first page of this blog series I will just embarrass myself by posting all the pictures here. First the Title button:

Let's add it inside Stencyl by going into Actor Types and creating a new Actor type. I'll just name it Title, and I'll add an animation to it. So let's add the first and only frame of this title, and since I originally made this button too big I'll choose the following when importing it into Stencyl:

You can safely use 1X as your scale if you have the correct dimensions in your buttons and you are positive that you will not need the rescale option later on.

Since our title won't have any use in the game we will edit it's physics tab to a Cannot Move Actor Type and in the Advanced tab we can select Simple for the Actor Mode. We can also disable Continuous Collisions as they are not needed.

Then we can import the Play as Guest button using the same values as above (I changed the scale to 1.5 thou):

Having a title button is pretty sweet, but if it's not actually placed in the scene it's pretty much a waste of space.

Let us create our first scene behavior for our game. We will use it to create a title, the buttons we need to play as guest or to login to a social network and we will also use this behavior to listen to the messages from the Nuggeta Servers.
For now we'll just place the Title and a Play as Guest button so we must create a new Scene Behavior. I named mine IntroBehavior.

In a Created event I will place the title in the top center and the guest button somewhere below that. Since I know the width of the actor I will just place it in the scene like this:

Connect to the outside world:

Next we can actually connect to the Nuggeta address to be able to have a 2 players game. We can actually do it in this scene when the game loads. If you want to do it after you press the Play as Guest button you can also do that.

So go to the developer's page, login and copy the GAME ID I mentioned that you will need in the previous post. Armed with the GAME ID we can actually use the first Block in the Nuggeta Extension: Connect to address (I will use it inside a custom event called "Connect" and inside it I will add the GAME ID ) as the address.

Whenever we send a message to the server it will give us a reply notifying us if the call was successful or not, and in this case when we try to connect we will get a StartStatus message. If that server replies with StartStatus.READY we can move on to the next step:

Connect players together

There are several ways to make more players play against each other. The logical steps would be to Create a game with the first client, and Join a game with the second player. Nuggeta (and the nuggeta extension) offers the ability to do so, however there are some steps missing from the above logic. First, the first player Creates a game, and he must actually join such game to make that step complete. The second player will actually have to request a list of games from the servers and pick a random one from a list of created games.

In case you think that those are the correct steps...You're Wrong.  What if there is already a connected player with a created game awaiting for someone? If you create the game first you won't see the player that is sitting there waiting for someone to play with. And how will you know which one is the second player in the above steps? Both could be connecting at the same time. So what are the correct steps?

Search for a created game first. If one is found Join it. If none is found Create one and wait for a second player. Now, we could actually use those steps for our game, but the Nuggeta API and the extension provides all the above steps inside a single call/block: searchImmediateGames, so as soon as our connection to the Nuggeta servers is ready we can actually search for a random game and join it. But we'll search for a game after we press on the Play as guest button, and since we are checking the Start Response in a scene behavior I'll just create a game attribute boolean and set it to true when StartStatus is READY:

Now that we have a connection ready we can allow 2 players to play together after we press the Play as Guest button. 

So we'll create an Actor behavior and we'll call it PlayAsGuest and we'll attach it to the Play as Guest button. Inside that behavior, inside an If mouse was Pressed on self event we'll check if our game attribute is true and we'll use the searchImmediateGames block in it:

Now we have a problem. What if the player presses the button again? Remember that you're only supposed to call searchImmediateGames ONCE! To get around that issue we could set the game attribute to false and it would fix our problem, but we could actually just kill the button and notify the player that we are waiting for a second player.

Create another actor(I named mine Waiting) with the same physics settings as the rest of our buttons and we'll use this as our actor (I used a scale of 2 to make it smaller):

After we created it just kill the PlayAsGuest button after we press it and create our Waiting actor in it's place:

That will prevent us from searching for a game more than once and it will notify the player that they need to wait for another player.Note that I also created another Text game attribute to show us that we pressed the Guest button. We'll need it in the scene behavior later on.

When 2 players actually join our game the Nuggeta will reply with a GameRunningState.RUNNING message, and we can actually let our 2 players play the game. But first we should notify each players who is Player 1 and who is Player 2. 

I'll choose the easy route here and just notify them that they are Player1 and Player2 respectively. For that I will create 2 more actors:

In Stencyl I created 2 actor types named Player1 and Player2 with the same physics settings as the title, but the Scale was left at 1x this time. 

So now all that's left to do is show the corresponding actors to each player before they can play against each other. Note that we do this when the server replies with GameRunningState.RUNNING and we'll use a custom event to do so, because we will need to modify it when we add social login buttons:

Based on the button that we press we'll perform different actions in the Clear event. For now we'll just check if our text attribute is Guest  and code inside that check. The code is simple. Since 2 players are already connected we don't need the Waiting actor and we can create the Player1 or Player2 actors for each actors, then we'll change to a different scene (I created a new Scene named PlayingScene to change to) where the game can be played:

If you try to Test the game and open the game again (easiest way is to test in browser and open another tab with the same game) you will see our Player 1 and Player 2 buttons, each shown in a different tab. After a few seconds the scene will change.

This was a huge post and it's time to end it here. In the next one we'll start making the game board and we'll let our players actually play the game.

Quick overview of the Nuggeta Game Definition page

Find your way around:

This is the third post in this series, so please be sure to check the other posts first prior to this one.

In this post I will explain what we we use from under those 5 tabs that are presented to us in the game definition page we get after we create our game.

The first one is Definition. When we click it we will see the Game Configuration page. 

We are now inside the Game configuration page, and it's the first thing we will use to configure our game. We are presented with a GAME ID text output, a Server Logic check box and a Game Mode dropdown menu.

The  GAME ID was generated for us and the Nuggeta Extension will need it to start the connection to the Nuggeta server, so remember how to get to it because we will need to copy it later on. Try not to reveal the GAME ID to anyone.

The Server Logic check box will only be needed if you wish to add server code to your games. For our game we will not use it as the game will be created using client-side code. If you want to use server logic in your games you will be offered a link to download the environment needed to add your code on the server.

The Game Mode dropdown menu offers 2 choices: Connected and Disconnected. The text description bellow the menu can cause confusion, as we'll be making a turn based game, but we will not use the Disconnected option. For our game I'll leave the Connected mode selected.

Next is the Manifest window. When you open it you will be presented with the following:

From the Manifest window we can set the behavior of our game. We can select how many players will be needed by the game to start, the maximum number of players allowed to join our game, if the game auto starts and auto stops. For now we will not need to modify any values, as we want to have a game with only 2 players, and we also want to have the game auto start when 2 players are connected. 

Note that the use of the word "game" here does not refer to the game we will create in Stencyl, but instead refers to the game session available on the server.

We can also modify these values from within the game we are creating should there be the need to do so for other types of games.

The rest of the pages under the Definition tab are meant for advanced usage and I will not cover them in this post.

The next tab is the Social tab. Click it and you will be presented with the following:

Things are pretty self explanatory here. We are presented with the ability to add a Leaderboard, Achievements and Items.

We will create a Leaderboard and some achievements in our game when time comes and I'll explain how to use the options presented to us in a later post.

The Items page could be used for creating Upgrades for your games or selling virtual goods. Since we won't use them in our game I'll skip them for now.

The Data tab is also for advanced users, and if you think you need them then please try to read the Documentation pages present on the Nuggeta website.

In the Admin tab you can see in real-time the number of connected players and the amount of game sessions that are active on the server.

The Publication tab will allow you to upload your game on the Nuggeta webpage so that it can be played directly from their site.

In the next post we will finally start to create our game in Stencyl :)

Create your game on the Nuggeta WebPage!

Step 1:

This is the second post in this series. Please read the first post before continuing.

Before actually working inside Stencyl we must declare our game on the Nuggeta WebPage so that we can download the API files needed for the Nuggeta Extension.

Head over to http://www.nuggeta.com and Sign Up for a developer account. The process is NOT automatic, so be patient for a few hours.

In the mean time I would like to mention some of the things that can be achieved using the Nuggeta API:

• Turn based synchronous or asynchronous games. Synchronous works for a single gaming session like the game we're making, while Asynchronous games can last for several gaming sessions like RPG's.
• Social networks integration. We can allow our players to play as guest users or log in using their Facebook, Google, Nuggeta and soon Twitter credentials. The ability to challenge a friend from either social network and posting on the wall for facebook or google users is now easier than ever.
• Works on all platforms, which means we can port our games without changing a single line of code.
• Chat system. We can send messages to all the connected players or to a specific one.
• Achievements. Encourage players to explore your game in new and interesting ways
• Leaderboards. You have to show them who's the boss in your game :)
• Virtual Store. You can create your goods on the Nuggeta webpage or even add new ones without having to create a new version of the game to include them.
• Cloud Data. We can save useful information in the Cloud like progress or preferences.
• Server Logic. While we won't be using it in our game, Nuggeta provides the ability to code your own server logic in Java.
• Earn money. You can earn money if you upload your game/s to play.nuggeta.com without adding a single line of code. 

NOTE: Not all these features are yet integrated in the Nuggeta Extension at the time of this writing and some features will only work if you customize the extension for your specific game.

There are many more things that could be accomplished using Nuggeta, and you can find more information on their website.

But let's get back to creating our game on the Nuggeta website:

After you've received confirmation on your created account head over to the Developer page and Sign IN. 

Click the Create Game button on the top left side. You should see something similar to this:

GAME ID is only used for the API files that we will download and can be any name we choose. Don't create another game using the same GAME ID. I decided to put "skill" in my GAME ID. Don't use Upper Case letters.

NAME is the commercial name of your game, so I put "Gijutsu" in the NAME field.

Hit CREATE after you've finished. Note that we can't delete a game after it was created.

After the creation process is completed you will be redirected to the Client API page where you can download the API files needed by the Nuggeta Extension, but first let's explain where and how we can add various parameters to our games. 

In the above picture we have 2 buttons and 5 tabs. 

The Download Libraries button will take us to the Client API page where we can download our API files, and the Deploy Sandbox button will activate our game on the Nuggeta servers. After we've downloaded the API files we must press it, and whenever there is a major change in our game definition the website will inform us that we need to press it again.

I'll provide a quick overview of the Nuggeta Game Definition page in the next post.

Create a Turn Based multiplayer game in Stencyl

Small presentation first !

In this series of blog posts I will show you how to make a turn based multiplayer game in Stencyl.
I will use Stencyl Version 3.0 for this series, the Nuggeta extension and Photon's 2D list extension.
I will also assume that the reader has acquired some basic knowledge on how things work in Stencyl, as this guide is aimed for Intermediate level users. I will NOT use any pre-made behaviors throughout this series of blog posts.

But, before actually starting I would like to point the following: The Nuggeta extension WAS MADE for Turn Based games, and, at the time of this writing, real-time multiplayer games CANNOT be created using this extension.

The GAME!

I would like to create a 2 player game, where the players are presented with an 8x8 grid of squares, each player takes his turn to click on a square to mark it as Claimed. We will change the color of the claimed square to show that it's been claimed, and we will also mark the danger squares in red to show the player that if they click on them, their opponent can win.

The player who connects 3 claimed squares in a row, column  or diagonal is declared the winner.

I decided to name the game Gijutsu, and from the screenshot below you will realize that my artistic skills are non existent (hopefully someone can help me with that aspect at some later point).

This is a pretty basic example of a multiplayer game, but it should allow you to understand the logic that you must apply to your own games, and it should teach you how to use the Nuggeta Extension.

Without wasting more time let's first start by Creating our game on the Nuggeta webpage so that we can download the API files needed for the extension.