LBaP! Lesson 7 & 8 Update

Having put the question to those who are learning from the LBaP! course thus far, I have decided its best to give you the option to access lessons as I complete them rather than waiting to complete the entire paid version of the course in full. It's now up to you whether you pay now for early access or hold off until the course is completed, or pay somewhere in between when you feel its worth it.

Lessons 1 to 6 of the Let's Build a Platformer! course will remain free. However, from Lesson 7 onwards the course requires a one-time payment. This will give you access to all lessons that come out in the future so consider this an early access course for GB Studio for now. I'll do my best to keep releasing lessons as often as I can. 

And remember, for those people that donated, I will generate some keys of the course so you won't have to pay for it. In case I'm having difficulty tracking you down out there in the digital world, DM me via Discord if you don't hear from me soon and I'll get a key sorted for you.

So, what's out now?

Lesson 7: Implementing a HUD and Lesson 8: Updating the HUD are now available to download. You can also check out the state of the game as of end of Lesson 8 by playing the browser version of the game here on itch.io. Lesson overviews are now found within each lessons .zip file as a PDF. Here is a summary of whats in the newly released lessons 7 and 8:

Lesson 7: Implementing a HUD

• Storing the Player Location Throughout a Game
• A Note on Continuity Between Scenes (or Paying Attention to Design Details)
• Updating Variables to Suit Checkpoints
• Displaying a HUD Using the 'Set Submap' Method
• Displaying the Player's Current Location in the HUD
• Displaying Icons and Other Static Information in the HUD
• Displaying Number Strings in a HUD
• The 'Modulus' Operator
• Replacing Tiles According to Tileset Values
• Conditional HUDs
• GBVM Scripts
• GBVM & Variable Value Ranges (or What's INT8 & INT16?)
• HUD Positioning, Top or Bottom?
• Why the ‘P+ States’ Custom Script Needs To Be In All Scene ‘On Inits’

Additional concepts covered in the Lesson 7 Overview Document (see Lesson 7 Project Directory):

• Color Modes
• How to Set Palettes to “True Color” when Exporting to Web

Lesson 8: Collectibles and Updating the HUD

• Updating and Displaying a Value in the HUD
• Implementing Collectibles Using the “Trigger System”
• Coding Collectibles, ‘One Time Collection’ or ‘Refresh On Init Collection’
• A Note on Clearing and Adding Variable Flags (or Flag Values)
• Trigger Prefabs
• Avoiding Value Display Overflows in the HUD (or Using the min() and max() Maths Functions)
• Optimizing HUD Updates
• Muting Audio Channels
• A Note on Collectible Hitbox Sizes
• Pausing Gameplay for Cutscenes (or Other Events)
• The 'Script Lock' and 'Script Unlock’ Events
• Using Projectiles to Reduce Actor Use in a Scene
• Expanding the Player Move-set in a “Gated Exploration” Game

I have also created a LBaP! Course Overview, which will be updated as I release lessons. The course overview acts as a summary of the topics covered in each lesson. You can also use it as a course index by searching for specific words within the document, then following the lesson overviews directions to find comments regarding a topic within the GB Studio project file. A link to the LBaP! Course Overview Doc can also be found on the LBaP! itch page for future reference.

What's to come?

Currently, there are 6 additional lessons planned, but going beyond the current plan is almost certainly going to happen. I'm sure I'll want to explore more topics based on my own wishes for the courses outcome and on general requests I have recieved. Additional topics of interest include multiple enemy and obstacle types, projectiles, moving platforms and more.

But I want to stress...  While I will be doing my best to work on lessons in between my other work and pushing myself to release them in a timely manner, I still can't say for certain when this course will be finished. So with that in mind, consider whether you want to purchase the course in it's early access form before you do so.

Again, I'd like to thank all of you who said this was well worth putting a price tag on in order to support the time I have been putting into it. I am so glad to hear so many of you have been getting so much out of the LBaP! course so far!

Thanks and happy coding!

- Tom (Gumpy Function)