Create Android & iPhone Apps with App Inventor 2, No Coding!

This video will set up our Dino Game. The Dino Game will consist of a picture of a dinosaur that moves around the screen, controlled by four buttons (up, down, left, and right). The point will be to get the ‘coin’ that appears on the screen. Doing so will increase your score and cause the ‘coin’ to randomly appear in a new location. Collecting a coin will also increase the speed of the dinosaur slightly. If the dinosaur ever touches an edge, the game will be over.

This video will walk you through creating the code to make our game. It will use a variable to keep track of the dino’s speed. It will use multiple screens. It will allow you to set the heading (direction) of the dinosaur’s movement. We will, for the first time, incorporate collision detection so we can have a reaction when the dinosaur collides with the ‘coin’.

This video will set up the game. We will add a picture for the background as well as two image sprites (Giraffe and Lion). The Giraffe will slowly fall and tapping on it will cause it to raise higher on the screen. The lion will move across towards the Giraffe and your objective will be to avoid colliding with it. This game will incorporate the Clock to control the falling movement of the Giraffe.

In this section, we will write the code to complete the game. The Clock will control the slow fall of the Giraffe. We will use the ‘touched’ command to increase the Giraffe’s height when it is tapped on. The lion will move from right to left. If it touches the left edge of the screen, it will be reset to the right and begin moving again.

This video walks you through creating a pedometer. In prior apps, we have use the VerticalArrangement (allows you to add items in a column) and HorizontalArrangement (allows you to add items side by side). In this app, we are going to use the TableArrangement which allows you to have multiple rows and columns for adding objects. A TableArrangement gives you more control over how you want multiple items to display on the screen.

This video demonstrates how a ListPicker works. Whenever you have a finite list of items that you will allow the user to choose from (zip codes, cloth sizes, shoe sizes, type of car, year, etc) you can use the ListPicker to make it easier for you to control. In games, you often have a choice to select what type of character (Wizard, Fighter, Archer, Healer) or a skill level (Brand New, Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, Professional) or any number of other things that a ListPicker could be useful for.

This video introduces several concepts. The first is the Slider which is a bar that allows you to move the indicator to the desired value. For example, the Speed slider in this program has a min value of 1 and a max value of 10. So, if the indicator is all the way to the left, the result is the number 1 being used as the multiplier for the speed. If it is all the way to the right, the result is the speed being multiplied by 10. The middle, in this case, would be 5.

This video uses some new techniques as well. We use the clock to move the mole to random locations around the screen. We also use the “Touched” method to add a point every time you tap on the mole before it disappears. Tapping on the mole once also triggers it to immediately move so you cannot double tap on it and get multiple points before it moves. We also add the vibration alert so your phone vibrates every time you catch the mole.

This video takes the Pong game, from video 12 and adds a lot of new functionality. A series of 10 image sprites are added near the top to be used as “bricks” which must be hit repeatedly by the ball in order to make them vanish. In the code, we create a “List” of all 10 bricks so we can use a FOR loop to cycle through the list and set each one’s color and visibility. We also introduce the “any ImageSprite” tool which allows us to apply actions to any or all of the image sprites. We add a series of IF statements to eliminate the sprites that we do not want the action to apply to. We also add a series of different sounds to indicate when the ball hits a wall or brick, when it hits the paddle and when it hits the bottom edge to end the game.

This video is going to walk you through setting up the screen for creating a game similar to Space Invaders. You will have a spaceship near the bottom of the screen and fire lasers at the alien ship that moves across the top of the screen.

This video walks you through the code for the game. You can move the spaceship with your finger or with the mouse. Releasing it causes a laser shot to be fired upward, towards the alien spacecraft. Initially, clicking on the spacecraft again causes the laser to reset and fire instead of continuing towards the top. We correct this and add several more lasers to make the game a little more like the original.

Fruit Ninja is a game where your main character (a ninja) tries to catch fruit that is randomly falling from the sky. They fall at different speeds and you must try to catch them before they reach the ground. You have three lives to start and missing a fruit causes one life to be lost. Each successful catch causes the fruit to randomly appear at the top of the screen and begin falling slight faster than it was previously falling. Loss of all three lives causes the game to end. This video covers all of the setup for the game.

In this section, you will create the code for the Fruit Ninja game. We will use a separate variable for each fruit’s speed (3 total) and another for the amount of lives that remain. Pressing the left or right buttons causes the ninja to move in the corresponding direction. When a fruit is caught or when it hits the ground, it is repositioned at the top of the screen at a random position and begins falling again.

This video is the first Animation video that we will be working on. Animations in video games, such as a character walking, work by showing a series of images in quick succession, one after another. We will start with a ‘Birds’ animation. We will use 4 images to make it look like a bird is flapping its wings. Then, we will add motion to make it look like it’s flying around the screen while still flapping its wings. Then, we remove the motion and change the video target to Fred so it looks like he is standing in place and walking to the left.

In this App, we build upon 16a. Fred already has the appearance of walking to the left so we add the ability to have him turn and walk to the right, switch back to the left and so forth. Then, we add the ability for him to Jump. The image of him jumping depends on the direct that he’s facing. He goes up a certain distance and then back down to the ground.

In this short animation, we take one of the "bad guys" similar to the old Super Mario Bros game, the Turtle, and have him walk from left to right. Only instead of the turtle, we create our own LadyBug animation. We switch between two images to have him appear to be walking. If Fred Jumps and lands on the LadyBug, it turns into a shell and gets “kicked” back to the left side of the screen before returning to the original LadyBugand walking again. If the LadyBug hits Fred when he’s not jumping, Fred shrinks to the smaller size and continues to be able to run to the left or right.

This video walks you through setting up the ground so it can move and appear continuous. This is done by expanding the size of the canvas and using several segments of ground. As one segment of ground is moving off the screen, another is moving onto it. This is looped to give the appearance of a huge ground.

This video takes the ground code that you just perfected and adds it into the Fred app with the LadyBug and other activities. We also fix it so when Fred starts walking to the right, the ground movement reverses to be more realistic (moving right to left). When he turns back to the left, the ground movement reverses again (moving left to right). You are shown the benefit of creating a ‘backup’ for a project, in case things go wrong and you need to undo the changes. We introduce the ‘BackPack” which lets us take code blocks from one project and move them to another project.