Learn to Code Video Games: Complete Guide to Construct 2 & 3

I will take you through the process of downloading and installing Construct 2. We'll also take a quick review of the Scirra website, so you know where to find the official manual, store, and arcade.

If you already have Construct 2 installed, you can skip this video. Let's get started on our journey to build video games.

This lecture will cover launching Construct 2 and a brief walkthrough of the entire interface. Construct 2 is a Windows program and used standard features like the ribbon, properties panel, and menu system, which will be familiar to most users.

Take this quick tour to become familiar with the program that we will use for the next several hours during this course.

Construct 2 has two main sections -- layouts and events. We will learn the basics of each in this lecture and will walk through the main navigation.

Layouts are where your video game graphics get built, and this is where your characters, enemies, foreground, and background come to life. Using a simple drag-and-drop interface, you can set up your entire game without righting any code.

Events are where your game comes alive! Instead of writing complex scripts or code, Construct 2 has developed an events based engine where you simply build the rules that you want to trigger based on events -- like when two objects collide with each other.

This lecture will only cover the navigation and basics of both sections, but we'll dive into them in greater detail soon enough. Are you excited about building a game!

Objects make up the components of your video game. This lecture will teach you the basics of creating objects; we'll also tour the primary objects that will be used throughout the course. Most games are built with just a few base objects, like the sprite, tiled background, and keyboard.

You will be surprised at how easy Construct 2 will get you up and running with your video game. We'll also cover a few of the less-common objects because you never know when you might have an idea for a crazy video.

Sprites are probably the most commonly used object for building a video game. Sprite is a fancy name for your game's components, like your player, enemy, obstacles, and bullets. The animation is very important for any video game so that your character will actually look like they walking, running, jumping, flying or swimming.

This lecture covers how to create a new sprite, import image files, and setup basic animation. Now you're on the right track, let's make that zombie mouse run.

What is your score? How many lives do you have left? Which level are you on? Without the Text object, there is no way to know. Text can be static, like a title screen, or completely dynamic, as your score.

This lecture will introduce you to the basics for creating a text object and initialize its text values. During the variable lecture, we'll show you how to dynamically adjust the values of a text object.

Buttons, buttons, buttons. What's a game without a few buttons to push? Buttons are easy to create, customize, and add actions. We'll cover a few of the basics with this lecture. Buttons can be used to navigate around your game or be used as controls.

This lecture explains how to create a button and assign basic actions to your button.

There is nothing more satisfying than blowing up a sprite, or a few hundred sprites. Particles are an amazing object that allows you to show an explosion very quickly and easily without writing any scripts at all. You'll want every operation to have some type of a particle in your game, like destroying an enemy, a brick, or even just landing on the platform.

Add those fantastic touches to your game with ease, This lecture will explain how to create, customize, and implement a particle object.

The Tiled Background will save you hours and hours of screen layout time. Does your game involve a simple ground for your character to run across? Are you concerned about creating thousands of small blocks to make up the ground? Fear not - Tiled Background to the rescue! Let Construct 2 automatically replicate your image over and over.

This lecture will show you how to create a ground, sky, ocean, building or pretty much anything that will replicate over and over again with only a few clicks.

Are you nervous about creating a hundred enemies by importing the same image over and over again? No worries, just copy your enemy, and it will automatically inherit ALL of the properties. Change your mind, about a property after making fifty copies, no worries. Changing one will automatically be replicated to the other forty-nine!

That's right, Construct 2 has thought of everything and this lecture will explain how it all works. You can even clone an object to make a brand-new object with its own events.

Now you can build that horde of zombies that will take over the world in no time at all.

Behaviors give your video game actions. Who wants to write scripts or code? That sounds boring and riddled with things like math or physics. Behaviors have all the complicated logic built-in automatically; you just need to click the "Add" button.

This lecture will introduce you to what behaviors are, which ones are the commonly used behaviors and how they work -- and we don't need to know the speed of gravity on the moon.