Challenge #185: Santa's Mission
Dec 12, 2017
This was a fun one! I lucked out with this challenge, because I'd already begun working on a fun game for our employees, as a sort of interactive holiday card from the training department.
Goal: Create a fun, interactive quiz game that could be used in a blended learning scenario to reinforce knowledge, to be emailed to learners a few days after a longer e-learning or classroom session.
I only had to modify it a bit to fit the challenge, but it still works as a little quiz game about winter holiday traditions from around the world... although it is fairly difficult without the pre-learning!
This is the first game I've ever tried to make, so I wanted to focus on the backend rather than graphics editing. I used the following resources for graphics:
Game Background: I used this awesome Photoshop plugin, which is very user friendly, to create a custom background in minutes.
Game Assets: Ververver on graphicriver is my new favourite asset find; they make great, affordable asset packs. I bought this Christmas-themed set that was intended for Match 3 games, and very easily re-purposed it.
Unfortunately, because of these purchased assets, I can't share my file, but to be honest it's a bit of a mess! I'd be happy to share my techniques for any fellow newbies who want to know how I did it, and I'd love some veteran feedback!
8 Replies
This is super cool! Nice work, LJ. :)
Thanks!
Very slick, well done. Thanks for the link to Graphicriver, that is super helpful. Cheers F
Ok yeah I really need to know how you did it! Would it be possible to share screenshots at all? Like of your overall story, and to show how you did some of the variables or triggers? I'm drawing out some of it and compiling variables and triggers in my head because I can think of some really cool uses for this style and want to try building something similar. But Im wondering if I'm overcomplicating elements or not thinking through other aspects.
How did you keep the Christmas Tree from giving you a star every time you clicked on it?
Thanks Frances!
Hi Ashley! Almost everything is controlled by variables and states.
To make sure the star is only awarded if it hasn't already been awarded for that bonus item, I created an "X Visited" variable for each bonus popup. I add these triggers to the base layer of my project:
Then, using the Christmas tree bonus as an example (LightsVisited), I attached the following triggers to the Close button of the bonus popup, so that they would be executed in order as the popup was closed:
The first trigger is to tell my star count to increment by one (I have a state on that image which changes according to the count), but ONLY IF LightsVisited is False.
The second shows the animation of a star being added, again only if LightsVisited is False.
The third changes my LightsVisited variable to True.
And finally, the fourth trigger obviously closes the popup layer... important to put this last, otherwise the other triggers won't execute!
What that means is that after you visit the popup once, the first two triggers will never again fire, since LightsVisited will remain true for the rest of gameplay.
Hope that helps :)
Hi Ashley, I'd be happy to share screenshots of my process! Is there anything specific you wanted to know about?
(To be honest, even if I was able to share my source file, there are so many "loose" triggers attached to the base layer that it would probably be hard to decipher without a guide. Articulate has yet to devise a way to visually organize mass numbers of triggers!)
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