Liberty BASIC Workshop Help

Game Workshop allows you to set up the framework for a sprite game with just a few clicks of the mouse.

The game window contains a graphicbox in which the game action takes place. You may designate the window style, handle, title and dimensions. You may also designate whether the window contains a score bar at the top, a status bar at the bottom, or both. You may also set up a list of background bitmaps that are loaded by the program for use in the game.

There are two possible window types. The first is "Plain Window" which includes a titlebar. The second is "Popup Window" which doesn't include a titlebar. Click the button for the desired window type for the current game.

Type the desired handle for the window into the "Window Handle" textbox. If you neglect to begin the handle with the # character, Game Workshop will add it for you when creating source code for the game. Remember that Liberty BASIC window handles should not include spaces and should not be reserved words. Reserved words are words that are used by Liberty BASIC, such as "print", "open", etc.

Type the desired title for the game into the "Window Title" textbox. It will appear on the titlebar if the game window is a Plain Window. It will also appear at the top of the source code that is produced by Game Workshop. Do not include double quotation marks in the title.

Type the desired width and height for the window into the appropriate text boxes. Game Workshop will check these dimensions and insure that the width and height are at least 100 pixels.

If you would like a statictext control at the top of the window to record game events such as the score, click the box:

If you would like a statictext control at the bottom of the window to record game events, click the box:

Of course, you may use these statictext controls to display any text you would like. Scores and Status are simply suggestions for their use.

You must have some way for users to interact with the game. The two ways that are used the most are keystrokes and mouse events.

Click the box for "Trap Keyboard Input" and Game Workshop will generate code in the program that will trap and evaluate user keystrokes during game play.

Click the box for "Trap Mouse Input" and Game Workshop will generate code in the program that will trap and evaluate mouse moves and mouse clicks.