Welcome to Gamestudio! If you have just bought this amazing piece of software, beware: you have got a powerful toy to play with. But why do we call it a Game Studio? Well... mainly because it is a complete game development studio. 3DGS comes with all the software that is needed in order to create a commercial quality game: it includes the powerful Acknex engine, a great level editor, a model builder and a script editor.
Maybe you want to create your models in 3D Studio Max or you would like to use a different level design tool. We respect that and we are happy to tell you that 3DGS can import and use many other file formats, like 3DS, ASE, OBJ, X, MAP, and MDL.
While it is possible to create a game without writing a single line of code, we encourage you to learn how to program at least a part of the game by yourself. This way you can be sure that your game will look and feel original. This manual will teach you C-Script, the programming language used by 3DGS. We call it C-Script because it looks like C but it is much easier to learn. Just read the first few workshops and you will see that for yourself.
Walk with me through 25 workshops and you will become an advanced 3DGS user. You will need about 20...40 hours to complete them, but trust me - you will be glad you did it. The good news is that every workshop includes fully functional code that can be used in all your future game projects. You can unpack all code samples from the cscript_samples.zip archive. It's contained in the zip archive of this tutorial and can also be downloaded from http://server.conitec.net/down/cscript_samples.zip.
This tutorial will provide basic information about 3DGS’ level editor named WED. It is a good idea to read the Game Design tutorial before starting to use this tutorial. One further hint: most screenshots in the following workshops were taken with Gamestudio version 6.31. As there are free updates every couple of months, chances are that the user interface of your current version looks slightly different. Don't worry, the basic functions won't change.
01. Getting to know the
engine
02. Variables
03. Functions
04. Bitmaps and panels
05. Digits and windows
06. Buttons and sliders
07. Strings, texts and
fonts
08. Position, angle and
scale
09. Entities
10. Actions
11. Pointers
12. If - Else branching
13. Using the keyboard
14. Using the mouse
15. Using the joystick
16. Using the debugging
tools
17. Advanced debugging
18. Entity movement
19. Using "time"
20. Sprites. Animated sprites
21. Models. Animated models
22. Advanced model animation. Bones
23. The bone collector
24. Global variables. Local variables
25. Entity skills. Flags
Finally, a few words about me: my name is George Pirvu and I am the CEO for Randombyte, a software development company - www.randombyte.com. I have started to use Acknex version A3 in 1997; it was a good engine but what you hold in your hands now - A6 - is way better, trust me! I am the editor of the Acknex User Magazine (AUM), a free magazine that presents a game template and a lot of C-Script tutorials and code every month.
If you think that 3DGS is a good tool only when it comes to game development, think again: AUM contains examples for synthesizers, alarm clocks, spreadsheet viewers, tools that generate C-Script code, model viewers, calculators and more! I have worked with several game engines but 3DGS is the best tool for its money: it is powerful, easy to use and has a great (not to mention huge) user community.