11DTG Learning Godot and Piskel

Part 1: Develop Understanding

You are going to start off learning Godot by making two simple 2D games. Then there is a Quickfire Introduction to some of the art tools you could use. You will do a simple learning reflection at the end of each episode to help consolidate your learning.

Complete Beginners Platform Game Series

Make a platform game as you learn the absolute basic of the Godot Game Engine. Aimed at complete beginners, this vide series contains a series of lessons with lots of explanation about how and why we do things so that you can get ready to design and make your own game in Godot.

Complete 2D Space Shooter Tutorial

This playlist covers another common game genre- the shooter. This a complete beginner focussed tutorial so it goes pretty slowly. You'll learn how to import assets, spawn objects like lasers and enemies, detect collisions, using signals and display the score with some basic UI.

Apply and Extend

Chose one of your game projects that you have made already now is your opportunity to juice it up! Below are some suggestions for things to add and some links to get you started. Take your pick and spend 2 weeks customizing one of your games. How much have you understood?

Path Following Enemies 2D Path

Parralax Backgrounds

Double Jump

Dash

Tips for Platformer Movement

Audio Manager - useful for adding sound effects for your mob/coin/etc.
User Interfaces
Moving Platforms

Piskel

Piskel is a free online sprite editor. A simple web-based tool for Pixel art. It allows you to ,create pixel art, game sprites and animated GIFs.

Setting up a Pallet

One of the most important decisions to make is the colours you will use in your game.

An excellent resource for finding colour pallets is https://lospec.com/palette-list.

Chose a pallet that you like and downloads it as a .GPL file.

In Piskel click the New Pallet button

Then click Import from file and select the .gpl file you downloaded

Your new pallet is not ready to be used in the Palette menu!

Learning the Basics

You are ready to now learn the Basics of Piskel. Follow this tutorial series through to learn the basics and then practice making some art of your own. Try making one of each of the following categories of game assets. Some ideas are given for you but you can imagine your own.

Try making your pixel art in different sizes, typical sizes are 8, 16, 24, 32, 48, 64px. If you make a background use instead 480x270px. You can change the size of your canvas by clicking the Resize button on the right hand side of the editor.

Jack.likes.carrots

Character Sprites

A dinosaur
Mario
Knight
Sheep
Rubber Duck
Wizard

Environment

Trees
Rocks
Bushes
Grass tiles
Water tiles
Buildings
Fences
Signs

Jonty Uren

Items

- Weapons
- Potions
- Coins
- Keys
- Chests
- Treasure
- Food items

Vehicles

- Cars
- Bicycles
- Boats
- Airplanes
- Spaceships

Xander Hales

Animations

- Opening/closing doors
- Moving platforms
- Water ripples
- Swinging pendulums
- Moving conveyor belts

Backgrounds

- Daytime sky
- Night sky
- Sunrise/sunset
- Interior scenes
- Outdoor scenes

Isaac Latimer

Tilesets

- Grassland
- Desert
- Snowy landscape
- Dungeon
- Urban cityscape
- Underwater world

Johnny Creighton

NPCs (Non-Playable Characters)

- Villagers
- Enemies
- Animals
- Monsters
- Quest givers