About the Games Factory 2

This is the GamesFactory 2 software used to make side scrolling games. If you are an absolute beginner to making video games this might be a great place to start because you will learn many of the concepts of making video games. The company that makes this software is called Clickteam and they have a free trial version that you can download and try. Clickteam Game software making

The Games Factory 2

Product Description
Have you ever thought about creating video games but were bored by the learning curve required by the traditional programming languages? Now with Multimedia Fusion 2 from Clickteam you can make your ideas come alive. Multimedia Fusion 2 is a very powerful all visual programming environment. All visual is perfect for the developer who likes to concentrate on the important parts of the creations: the design and game play. You won't get bogged down by the things that should be simple -- Like coding for hours to move a sprite on the screen.

About the Software

Clickteam offers a demo package of the software for free and you get a 30 day trial. You will not be able to make stand alone video games but you will be able to see what the software is like and how you like it. - And play them yourself. I recommend that if you are a beginner to all this video game making stuff you hop on over to their website and try it out.

An introduction to the game making Workspace

This is something called the workspace for the Games Factory software and "A Workspace" is something that you will get very familiar with as you learn to make video games. It is the place where you build your video game. It has all the tools you need to put together a game. Think of it as the garage where a car is made.

Introduction to some of the basic concepts of video games

The games factory software will introduce you to many of the concepts of making a video game including storyboarding, libraries,collison detection, and event handling.

This is all wrapped in an easy to use interface with a lot of drag and drop ability. You just choose the image you want and drop it right into the game then assign properties to it. It really is quite easy and you can get really good and really creative with this software.

This image is an example of how you work with the software. The pictures show collision betwee say a ball and the player. You select what you want to happen. In this case we would say bounce the ball back and play a sound.

You can design your own game from scratch and create all kinds of events like keep score, bounce, start a timer, destroy, explode, move, play music, play sounds and well there are thousands of things you can do. With the visual interface its pretty easy.

I downloaded the free trial software and checked out the tutorial that comes with it and it is perfect. The tutorial gives you everything you need to make your first game. It is a Breakout style game where you the player have to keep the bouncing ball in play and destroy all the blocks. The game keeps score, keeps track of high scorers, has music, sound effects and a start up screen.

It is pretty much a perfect first introduction to video game making and it's free. If you like the software you can of course buy it.

This is a screenshot of the video game tutorial that comes with the free software. This is a shot of the game I made.

So you can make this game too. This game took me, including download and install time one and a half hours to make from start to finish. And in this time I also took a break for lunch. So you should be able to do this in about one hour.

Here's the link to the company website if you want to give it a try: Clickteam Game software making

A tutorial is coming soon