Have a go with the orbit box level creator!

For my new game, which hasn’t been released, called orbit box, i have created a level creator where you can design the levels for my game. It is simple to you with a drag and drop interface. Simply drag the objects from the bar on the right onto the game screen. As soon as you have both a cannon and an exit than you can press the test button to see your level in action. If you complete your level you will be given the option to submit the level to me so that it can be used (if i choose it) in the game, or a sequel.

I suggest playing the test version first to get a hang of the game before making some levels.

This is the first time i’ve done something like this so you will help me determine if its a success.

You can play the game here

Here are some screen shots of the level creator.

These are some shots of some of the simple levels that can be made with the creator. Please try it out and give feedback!

Just to let you know that i have successfully moved all my tutorials across from my old site and they are all working perfectly. I also had the time to create a getting started with APE tutorial for those interested!

More to come soon!

APE, or the Actionscript Physics Engine is a free as3 physics engine built by Alex Cove. It is really easy to use once you get the hang of it and it has detailed documentation to read if you get stuck.

In this tutorial i will show you how to make a simple ball example with gravity.

Firstly you will need to download the latest version of APE. There is a stable release on Alex Cove’s website but i am using the ‘bleeding edge’ one from the google code repository. You can download the whole package from my site here.

Unzip the folder and save it in a place so that you know where it is for example mine is located in my documents folder on my computer.

Now load up flash and create a new actionscript 3 file like normal and save this file however you want. To load the APE classes into the flash authoring environment so that we can use them we first need to change the root classpath of the .swf that will be created. The next step is the most important to get APE running in flash. Follow exactly as i say!

Go to file>publish settings then a screen should pop up that looks like this one below. Click on the flash tab in the centre, that is highlighted in the picture below. Now look to the picture on the right.

Click on actionscript 3 settings, where the mouse curser is on the screenshot. A screen like the one below should show.

Click on the browse to path button that is above the large ‘classpath’ box at the bottom of the window, where the mouse curser is pointing.

This will send you to a browsing screen where you have to select the classpath.

h of your .swf. You need to choose the ape_a045 folder that you downloaded earlier and select the source folder inside that. This is where your classpath needs to be. Take a look at this picture. The folder should only have a folder called org inside it like shown.

Click choose and then the white box at the bottom of the publish settings should have the direct path to the source folder inside the ape_a045 folder on it.

If the class path is correct click OK and then click OK again to return to the flash authoring environment.

Next we can start to code and use the engine.