Fledgling Videogame Developer

By default the back button of Android device sends the active application to back. However, in many mobile games back button is used e.g. to return to the menu (or any equivalent action). This is possible in Stencyl also, but you have to configure the behavior first to match your needs. Here are simple steps to do it: Go  Settings -> Mobile -> User Input Activate " Override Back Button ". This makes back button to act like escape key Go Settings -> Controls . Check escape key bindings (name: Escape, Key:Escape) Open your game scene and go to "events" tab (or edit behavior) Create keyboard event for escape key, as shown in Figure1 below ( Add Event -> Input -> Keyboard ). Set control as "escape". Add transition block and fill in your menu scene name + other required information Figure1: Keyboard event for escape key That's it! Now you can exit from your play scene to menu screen.  But wait, did you forgot...

Yes, I am still alive and kicking, although no blog postings or games released for a while. Sometimes it is a good idea to have a little break and take a closer look what you have done recently. After releasing  Explopool , I have mostly been planning and creating different game prototypes. I've also explored various game development environments and engines to get an idea what kind of tools are available. There are plenty of choices, but I have not yet decided which one to try next for releasing a game. Haxeflixel might be a good candidate, but first I have to get better understanding on it. Stencyl 3.0 came available couple of months ago, and I've been gradually migrating to it. Android support has been the main driver for that, because I really want to go mobile at some point and Stencyl is the most familiar development environment for me currently. Since I am running my game development activities over Linux, it's not always so straightforward to switch to a new t...

Many things must be taken into account when starting new game project from the scratch. First of all, you have to decide what kind of a game you are planning and what would be the feasible target platform (or platforms) for that. You must understand the limitations of each platform, e.g. available screen resolutions, computing power, input devices, etc. When target platform is decided, it is time to think about what development tools can be used for this project. There are plenty of tools available for hobby game developer and each of them has pros and cons. So it is sometimes bit hard to make selection, and in case of hobby developer the "zero budget" drives to use free (or very cheap) software. I have tried at least following game engines or frameworks: - Unity3D - Blender Game Engine (BGE) - GameMaker - Adobe Flash (CS6) - Löve2D - Stencyl Personnally, I want to promote the usage of open-source software. So my favorites from the list above are Blender and Löve2...