First battles with Stencyl

The first day of the year was heralded in by firework displays occuring on the hour in a sweep from the first dateline in the Pacific until reaching us here in the UK. Judging from an earlier walk, many could not wait until the allotted hour of midnight, with fireworks going off sporadically in and around Milton and Cambridge. Still, not a patch yet on the explosive mayhem seen in Germany on “Sylvester”.

We took the day gently and I resumed battle with Stencyl – a freely available flash game design software I had heard about on the BBC's Click program. The demonstration/tutorial of designing a simple walking and jumping flash game seemed straightforward enough.

Encouraged, I designed some simple PNG versions of a walking and jumping figure plus an enemy in CorelDraw and then attempted to import them into a new program. What I had not realised, was that for each new game, you had to access a resource that gave you the basic functions. Also, whenever features were changed within the program you were designing, you needed to update the game regularly. My first over ambitious attempt therefore failed in a combination of malfunctioning downloaded elements and lack of regular updating.

Going back to using one of the “kits” with most functionality included finally lead to the first signs of success. By the end of the afternoon, I was more confident of beginning to start a simple game that worked.

This was only the start, and I have to see whether I want to persist.

My Triops is now about 4mm long at the carapace and because of the potential hermaphrodite or even parthenogenic nature has been named “Hermione”.