*Disclaimer: This tutorial is assuming that you have some basic knowledge of computers, programming and programming lingo. If you do, but something is still unclear, shoot me an email and I will be happy to help you out.

If you followed the instructions in the previous part of the tutorial you should have Monkey-X installed and be able to open up the default IDE that comes with it, TED. Which should look something like this.

Today, we are going to go through a few handy things to know about using TED and some of the basic structure of a Monkey-X game and the files associated with it.

Create a File

First thing we need to do is create a new file so we can start writing some code. We are going to create a file called main.monkey because it is going to hold our Main function. You can do create this file however you want, and to do it in TED you simply go to the “File” option on the menu and click “New”. You will want to put this file in a new folder by itself. We will use this as our project folder, I have called my folder “game_one”, and will use it in the following examples.

Open Your Folder As a Project

One of the handy things that TED allows you to do is open a Project view of the folder. This allows you to easily navigate and open files and folders as your game gets larger. You can do this by selecting the “Build” option from the main menu bar and clicking “Open Project”, then select the folder that you put your main.monkey file in.

When your games get more complex and you add multiple files, this view becomes very handy.

Mojo

The first thing we are going to do is add Mojo to the game. Mojo is an application framework provided with Monkey-X that gives you several useful tools for making games. It is specifically targeted at 2D games. Go ahead and add this to the top of your main.monkey file.

Import mojo

This will import all of Mojo’s components (graphic, audio, and app).

The Game

Now that we have mojo, we can create a class that is a Mojo app and will be what the rest of our game is built on. Lets do that now.

Import mojo

Class Game Extends App

End

Using Extends allows us to say that our Game is an App and it now has access to a lot of special functions and methods that Mojo gives us.

Quick note about the Monkey-X language. The End keyword is used to close Classes, Functions, Loops, Conditionals, and other code blocks. No need for ‘{ }’ everywhere in your code. Also lines do not use anything on the end to say they are done, so no ‘;’ are needed on the end of lines. There are a few other quirks about the language that it gets from Basic (from which it was derived) that we will discuss later.

Special Mojo Methods

The first special method that we will need to override that Mojo gives us is OnCreate. This method is called one time whenever you create a new instance of the Game class in your code. This is where you want to do things like load images and audio as well as set certain game values like screen width and height.

Import mojo

Class Game Extends App

  Method OnCreate()

  End

End

After OnCreate we have OnUpdate. The OnUpdate method is called a certain number of times per second (which you set in your OnCreate method). This is where your main game loop goes. This is where you will check for input and handle movement and changing game values. OnUpdate will only be called if you have set the update rate with a special method called SetUpdateRate. We call this in OnCreate and give it a number to tell it how many times per second to update. We will use 60 for now.

Import mojo

Class Game Extends App

  Method OnCreate()
    SetUpdateRate(60)
  End

  Method OnUpdate()

  End

End

Next is OnRender. This is where all of your drawing code will go. If you want to display something to the player, it should happen in this method. Mojo tries to call it immediately after every OnUpdate so the update rate that you set also applies to how many times you draw to the screen.

Import mojo

Class Game Extends App

  Method OnCreate()
    SetUpdateRate(60)
  End

  Method OnUpdate()

  End

  Method OnRender()

  End

End

Other Special Methods

There are several other special methods in Mojo (OnLoading, OnSuspend, OnResume, OnClose, OnBack) that we will discuss in a later step of the tutorial. For now it is just good to now about them. If you are curious about them now, you can go read about what they do in the Monkey-X Documentation.

Final Step

In order to have something that actually builds and runs (even though it only displays a blank screen) you will need to add a Main function creates a new instance of your Game class.

Import mojo

Class Game Extends App

  Method OnCreate()
    SetUpdateRate(60)
  End

  Method OnUpdate()

  End

  Method OnRender()

  End

End

Function Main()
  New Game()
End

Now if you build and run by hitting the little rocket ship with flames coming out the back (or by hitting the F5 key) TED should open your default web browser with an instance of the game running. Right now since we are not drawing anything in our OnRender function, it is just a blank screen. But it will soon get more interesting.

Tutorial Part 1
Tutorial Part 3

If you have been reading any of the previous posts in this blog, you know that I have been creating games over the last couple years using a programming language called Monkey-X. It is a nice straightforward language based on Basic. Today we will go through some of the strengths Monkey-X offers and how to get Monkey-X setup on your computer so you can start creating games with it too.

Why Use Monkey-X

One of the main reasons I use Monkey-X is that I have found that for some reason I am a little extra productive in it. I don’t know if it is the simple language syntax or the ease of creating a build of the game and testing it for fast feedback. It’s probably a combination of the two and a few other things.

Additionally there is a great little community built around what is referred to as the Blitz Basic family of programming languages (the language Monkey-X came from). Guides, how to’s, a forum, and at least 1 Youtube playlist to help you get started and help you when you get stuck.

This community has also developed plugins and libraries to help you take care of some of the more routine functions and tasks that you will be performing as you create games. We will discuss these later on.

One of the more powerful reasons I even looked into using Monkey-X at all is that it builds to tons of platforms. All the major desktops (Windows, OSX, Linux), HTML5 for web, mobile (Android and iOS), even XNA so it can run on an XBox, as well as PSM for the Playstation Vita.

The final reason it is good to get started making games with Monkey-X is the cost. It is completely free to download and make games for the HTML5 target which is perfect for a beginner. And when you are ready to upgrade to build to more platforms, the Pro version is fairly inexpensive (~$40 USD at the time of this writing). If you want a little more, there is a fancier IDE and some other addons you can purchase as well.

Installing Monkey-X

Monkey-X runs on pretty much any desktop OS. Whether you are using Windows, OSX, or Linux you should be able to install Monkey-X and start making games.

Installing Monkey-X On Windows

1. Visit the Monkey-X website and create a free account. You will need this to get the download.
2. Sign in and visit the Monkey-X download page and download the free version of Monkey-X (or the pro version if you have purchased it). Hint: the free download is at the bottom of the page.
3. Unzip the downloaded folder and put the files wherever you want.
4. (Optional) Right-click the Monkey-X executable file and create a shortcut to your desktop to make accessing it easier

Installing Monkey-X On OSX/Mac

1. Visit the Monkey-X website and create a free account. You will need this to get the download.
2. Sign in and visit the Monkey-X download page and download the free version of Monkey-X (or the pro version if you have purchased it). Hint: the free download is at the bottom of the page.
3. When the file has finished downloading, open in Finder and drag it to the Application folder. NOTE: You may need to change your systems security settings to allow apps from anywhere to be installed in order for it to work.

Installing Monkey-X On Ubuntu

For now I am just going to leave a link to this post someone in the Monkey-X community created for installing on Linux. If I get enough requests, I will do a walkthrough myself on setting up Monkey-X on a fresh Ubuntu install. If you would like that, shoot me an email.

Where To Look If You Get Stuck

If you have any trouble a few good places to look for help are the Monkey-X forums and sites like Stack Overflow. Also, you can email me and I will try to help you get up and running with Monkey-X.

Tutorial Part 2