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Tutorials · Ship Evader · Chapter 1

What you’ll build

10 minutes

By the end

  • What Ship Evader is, screen by screen
  • The seven free downloads its pictures, sounds and font come from, downloaded, with the five packs unzipped
  • How the sixteen chapters go, and about how long each takes
On this page

The game

This is the game you will have at the end: an arcade shooter in a tall window, 540 pixels wide and 960 high. It opens on its title. PLAY starts a game, and the keys and the mouse both work every button.

The title screen in the game’s tall window: SHIP EVADER in large white letters over a starfield, BEST 0 under it, and five buttons, PLAY, HOW TO PLAY, SETTINGS, CREDITS and QUIT, with PLAY lit white and the others greyed

In the game, W, A, S and D or the arrow keys fly the ship, and Space fires. Rocks tumble down and can only be dodged. Orange divers dive straight down, and grey gunners weave and fire red shots aimed at you. Three hits and the game is over. Along the top are your score, your best, and a small ship for each life left.

The game playing: the ship near the bottom firing a column of blue lasers up the field, rocks and orange enemies coming down among drifting stars, and SCORE, BEST and the lives as small ship icons along the top

It gets harder every 20 seconds: STAGE 2, STAGE 3, and on up to 10, each bringing enemies and rocks sooner and faster, and more of the enemies gunners.

Its screens

A game is more than its field. Ship Evader has the screens a finished game has, each built in a later chapter:

  • Game over shows your score and your best, and a pulsing NEW BEST! when you beat it, then RETRY and TITLE (chapter 14).
  • How to play shows the keys, and what each thing in the sky does (chapter 13).
  • Settings has a slider for the music and one for the sound effects, kept between launches (chapter 15).
  • Credits names every download the game is made from (chapter 13).
  • Esc pauses the game under a small menu (chapter 15).
The game-over screen: GAME OVER, the score and the best, NEW BEST! under them, and RETRY and TITLE buttons, RETRY lit
How to play: the heading, the controls FLY: W A S D OR ARROWS, FIRE: SPACE and PAUSE: ESC, then the diver, the gunner, a rock and an enemy shot, each beside its rule, the warning that anything that hits you costs a life, and a lit BACK button with ESC at its right edge
Settings: the heading, a MUSIC slider and an EFFECTS slider, each filled to 0.8 and the MUSIC one, which has the focus, lifted toward white, and a greyed BACK button with ESC at its right edge
Credits: A Rengy tutorial game, then the five Kenney packs, the two music tracks with their authors and the font, each marked CC0, and a lit BACK button with ESC at its right edge

The project you will have

All of it is one project in the editor: six scenes, thirty short scripts in Rengy Script, ten saved pieces called artifacts that the game makes copies of while it runs, and the pictures and sounds you download. Nothing is compiled. The game runs in the editor’s Play as you build it, and in a window of its own once you export it.

The finished project in the editor: the Hierarchy lists the game scene’s nodes, Game, camera, background, the ship with its thruster, sky, the hud with its labels and pause menu, director and the star planes; the Viewport shows the tall field through the game camera, with the score, the lives, the stars and the ship; and the Inspector shows the ship

Every chapter shows every click and every value, with a sentence of why. Where a chapter touches something the guides cover in depth, it links them rather than saying it all again.

Download the packs

The pictures, sounds, music and font come from seven free downloads. All seven are CC0: you may use them in anything, and nobody has to be credited.

DownloadByWhat the game takes from itLicence
Space Shooter RemasteredKenneyThe ship, the enemies, the lasers, the rocks, the flame, the stars, the background, the lives, the buttons, the font, and the hit and gunner soundsCC0
Smoke ParticlesKenneyThe explosions’ fireballCC0
Sci-fi SoundsKenneyThe laser, the two explosions and the spark’s tapCC0
Interface SoundsKenneyThe menus’ tick, press and backCC0
Music JinglesKenneyThe game-over and new-best jinglesCC0
8-bit Epic Space Shooter MusicHydroGeneThe music while you playCC0
Menu MusicwipicsThe music on the title and its screensCC0
  1. Make a folder for the downloads, outside any project: ship-evader-downloads, say.
  2. Open each page in the table, download the pack or the track, and save it in that folder.
  3. Unzip each of the five Kenney packs into a folder of its own there. Each holds folders such as PNG, Bonus and Audio.
  4. Leave the two tracks as they are: 8bit-spaceshooter.mp3 and menu.ogg.

Nothing goes into a project yet. Chapter 3 takes the 32 files the game uses out of these folders, and says where each one goes.

How the chapters go

A chapter takes between ten minutes and an hour and a half; all sixteen, about ten hours. Each ends on Check it works: what to press, and what you should see. If you see something else, the chapter’s steps are where to look.

Check it works