In this tutorial we are going to look at creating a flickable, scrolling image gallery as you might find in many games played on mobile devices. This means that the gallery will not only scroll as we drag our finger / mouse across the screen, but that we should be able to flick across the screen and have the gallery scroll quickly in the intended direction. The basic scroll is easy to implement, but getting a decent feeling flick scroll requires a lot more thought. We need to think about how long a flick is, how far on screen was that flick, and then determine how far to scroll as a result. Let’s get to it then! (more…)

 

In this tutorial we are going to look at building a system to slice up an image into pieces, shuffle them around, swap the pieces and finally, solve the puzzle. While this may sound quite complex, the system doesn’t need very much code and is very expandable. The general premise to create each piece dynamically is to use a mask shape to determine the size of the piece and then draw a specific section of the total image. As for shuffling and solving the puzzle, we will utilize a couple of data structures to do all the hard work for us. Let’s dive right in! (more…)

Are you interested in learning how to make HTML5 games, but don’t know where to start? Have you just picked up GameMaker: Studio and want to understand how to code your own games? Are you wanting a reference manual, but can’t afford it on your indie / student / hobbyist budget? Well here is a chance for you to win a free digital copy of my book, HTML5 Game Development with GameMaker. Packt Publishing has generously donated several digital copies for me to give away and we want you to help spread the word. It’s really easy to enter and we are giving everyone up to three chances for this draw!

How to Enter

There are three separate ways you can enter this contest. Each method will give you an opportunity to win, though you can only win once. The contest runs until June 30, 2013 and we will announce the winners on July 1, 2013.

Ticket #1

Leave a comment on this post describing your passion for GameMaker:Studio and HTML5 games.

Ticket #2

Follow me on Twitter @jasonleeelliott and then retweet this tweet.

Ticket #3 

Follow me on Google+ Jason Lee Elliott and then publicly share this post.

 This Contest is now over!

I would like to thank everybody who entered the contest to win a copy of my book. There were quite a few entries but only a few could win. It was a completely random draw, though for the people who entered all three ways, they couldn’t win multiple times

Congratulations to the winners:
Seth Paxton, Stephan Mangold, Morten Schouenborg, Gael Cardenas, Corey Koltz, Di Wu,  Oscar Scorp, Regner Blok-Andersen, Michael Nicanor and Robert Cassidy!