This helps me understand

GDevelop general
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Hi everyone in community! These are my notes I took when reading almost everything. Anyone new to this stuff should read through this: wiki.gdevelop. io/gdevelop5/objects/

These are notes I made to help me understand this guide on the site. If this summary helps anyone new, that’s good also. I don’t understand all of it right now but learning.

This is to help me understand. There are also a few questions also in here. I’ll update this when I understand and learn more. In progress:

if you want to use graphics in all scenes
graphics can be used by all scenes – if those graphics are made into “global objects”
double click on graphics > then find “object panel” somewhere >
click set as global obj

when graphics are “global”, it cant be reversed

1 so there are things in this game
2 you add things in this app to make a game (call graphics
3 these things can do things (can do actions)
4 code (“events”) can also do things
5 these graphics have “variables” in them…
6 variables = are basically information that changes

I think right now talking a little about a “thing” like a person or artwork, and then going on to talk about variables (information) is a the best thing to do. Not sure yet

Step 1 - there are graphicsc you can see and graphics you cannot see…
So… I think the first thing you need to understand about what a game needs – is artwork. A game needs artwork in it. In games, they call this “graphics”

Let’s take a popular game like minecraft or fornite or… I don’t know whats very popular right now, let’s just go with animal crossing and stardew valley

So everything on the screen is call an artwork. In coding, they seem to be call “objects”, but we’ll go with artwork since that is much more easy to understand

Step 2 – graphics have actions
So the next thing is how to make them move. How to make the artwork moves? They’re just still artwork. Like a still painting or a still table. But they don’t move and they can’t do anything

camera stuff
objects have X and Y coordinates
y increases when you go down
top-left corner of your game’s screen starts at X=0 and Y=0

move or rotate objects =
Angles can be negative too. For example, -90 degrees is equal to 270 degrees.

Step 3 code (“events” (conditions/causes + effects/outcomes)
In the real world, there’s a sky. It’s usually said to be blue. The sky is an artwork also. Remember that anything you see is an artwork (or “object” thing)

But why is the sky blue?

Let’s think cause and effects. So in life, in the world, and in society, there are causes and there effects.

Like some people in animal crossing turns out to be really great people, and some people do not turn out that way. There are causes to this, that leads to different outcomes (effects)

So people are the way they are because of certain causes just like the sky is blue for probably many complicated causes - that only very very smart can explain to us people that do know or understand anything much about anything

Let’s call this whole “cause” and “effect” an “event” for now

Example:
In sims 5 or 10, a person (an artwork), can wear different hairstyles

So when you go to the hair salon, you can a new hair style

So the cause is going to the hair salon,
And the effect is = new hairstyle

So there are many many different causes of things happening
And many many different effects that comes from that causes
I guess maybe that is why coding or related is so complicated and hard

An event without any conditions will always perform the actions.

Ok… so what that means is that some “events” do not have any causes (or premade conditions, aka: history of humanity)
They just only have an effect…

That is very hard to give any real world or real life examples of. That might be why coding is so hard to understand for almost anyone but this summary helps me

Steps 4 - how code works
events (code) run from top to bottom
events run 60x per sec
each run is call ’ frame, tick, or game loop.’

Step 5 - graphics have actions - actions
"behavior "
do these kinds of things
deletes objects
when its not on screen

moves objects
when hotkey press
or dragging

makes object move based on physics

Ok… let’s think rpg, an rpg has different classes, and each class has different skills and abilities

That’s basically it it sounds like. That artworks (“object”) has different abilities

Step 6-
You can create your own abilities in code

behaviors have their own variables

events that are specific to that behavior. can also change beviaors

can create own behvaior for objects
recommend this as your game grows. It allows you to put logic about what your objects are doing in the custom behaviors, rather than bloating the scene’s events sheet.

Step 7 - “variable” - so all “things” (like an artwork) has “variables”, aka: information)

Variables are used to store data in the format of a number or text.

This data can represent almost anything in your game.
For example,
it could be used to record the
number of lives remaining, a player’s name, a high score
, the number of bullets left,
or the number of enemies killed.

Variables are useful because
they allow you to set the
value in one place
and then read that
value in multiple places in your game.

Ok so in life, there’s a person.
And a person (artwork) has different information about them, like if they’re nice or not nice
If they’re kind or not kind

So a “variable” is any information about a person, like what they like or dont like, their interests, etc

Step 7 - “variable” can be checked
So you can check if a person is good or not good before you are friends with them
You check by using “conditions” (or causes)

Step 8 - “variable” can be changed
A person can change the information about them - like if they’re nice or not nice, etc, or any other aspects of their personality,
Or really just anything that they want
By choice

Artwork (like a person)
after create object
its not added to screen
You need to add the object to the scene via the Objects panel.

Each “thing” can have copies of that thing
For example, a person
Can have babies
Those babies are copies
Of that person

each copy call ’ instance’

All copies of a “thing” like a person have the same abilities
For example, a baby
has Eyes
That can See
Just like the original person

But each copy can change their information

Step 9-

events do this
events to manipulate an object during the game (change its position, rotate it, change its animation, add an effect, etc…).

different objects do different things

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Sadly the machine says can’t update and edit my post/summary until a day have passed since there is a max # of updates/edits per time

I think right now talking a little about a “thing” like a person or artwork, and then going on to talk about variables (information) is a the best thing to do. Not sure yet

So this the rest of my notes that I need to update and reorganize in future:

graphics (artwork) has actions
you can create your own actions…

code (“events”) cannot be re used

actions (abilities, “behaviors”)
can be added to graphics (artwork)

seems like code (“events”) for some reason has to be “re created”

actions (abilities, “behaviors”)

They can move object,
change its variables,
change animations
(for Art objects),
change text
(for text objects)

can do anything you
" usually do with code."

re usable graphics (aka: artwork you can use and copy again)

“Custom objects” are also called “Prefabs” or “Templates”
more modular by having an object
that can be reused a
nd customized in different scenes.

graphics can be used again in diffrent scneces
and can be changed in those diff scenes

user interface graphics can be made by combining
different graphics…

graphics you create contain other graphics

“vairables stuff”

can use global var = in all scenes

For instance, they can be used to store the player’s score across different levels/scenes.

  • Scene variables
    are only accessible from the scene they are created in
    . They can be used for data that only concerns one scene.

scene var = used

would be able to access
the time remaining to
complete the level/scene.

graphics var = only affect that graphic (artwork)

When you add variables to an object,
any copy of object
put on scene
or created
during game
will have those variables
attached to it.

which are:

  • stored in memory for as long as a specific copy of an object exists,
  • is different for each copy of object.

They’re useful for storing data associated
with individual copies of an object,
such as amount of health an enemy has,
ammo, etc…

They’re deleted from memory
when copy is removed from scene.

For a variable of an object, you write object name
first followed by a dot and variable name. For example:

“player points are” + Player.Points

saves
By default,
nothing is persisted between game sessions.
(but seems like it’d be better if it did)

every game is basically a site that either runs directly
in a browser (Web export)
or inside a stripped–
down browser container “Electron”
(Windows, macOS, Linux) / “Apache Cordova” (Android, iOS).

can also save to os windows
using extensions

more grpahics stuff
dont you specify objects when you put in the first place?
https://wiki.gdevelop.io/gdevelop5/events/object-picking/

code
When adding “conditions/actions”
OnLy SOME of them can add “expressions” things via some icon

code or actions ??
movment
forces

The speed of movement on both the X (horizontal) and Y (vertical) axis, in pixels per second
The angle to move towards and the speed, in pixels per second
An instant force will only move the object for one frame
A permanent force will move the object every frame until it is stopped

moving objects
Some “behaviors”, like the Physics engine or Pathfinding, may move the objects by themselves. In this case, it is better not to use the built-in forces system and instead rely only on actions provided by these behaviors.

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Nice and interesting notes. Nice to see that people are learning GDevelop and are interested in game making.

4

Nice stuff but be careful not to become too much “learnaholic”. Trying to understand the deep meaning of everything can slow down your learning and game making. Sometimes, just learning “how to do” instead of “why this works in this way?” (just like children do) can be more fructiferous.

1 Like
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updated, understand a bit more now