Week1 – Getting Started

* What is Godot?
* Why use a game engine?
* Organization (nodes, resources, scenes)
* The Big Four game objects
* Three tiers of a game architecture
* Local and Global coordinates

Concepts covered:

* Static bodies
* Rigid bodies
* Character bodies
* Areas (Triggers)
* Signals
* Basic forces

Exercise: Create a basic game scene using the four main types of game objects – static body, rigid body, character body, and area.

By doing this exercise, you’ll learn some of the most important core concepts about creating a game.

Week2 – Deeper in Code and Bullets

* How does code work?
* Variables, Functions
* Operators, Conditionals

Concepts covered:

* Forces and Impulses
* Dynamic Instantiation
* Object Pooling
* Code based animation
* Groups
* Raycasts

Exercise:

Add melee attacks to the character by applying forces. Additionally add a ranged attack by firing a bullet. Learn to detect what objects are being attacked, and advance your knowledge of signals.

Week3 – Graphics and Animation, Player Enhancement

* Three ways to animate graphics
* How to add images and style our graphics
* Animating the player character
* Creating levels, walls, platforms

Concepts covered:

* Sprites
* Animated Sprites
* Tilesets, Tilemap Layers, Terrains
* Cameras
* Scaling and Viewport

Exercise:

Create animation states for your player character, add graphics for the bullets. Learn to paint terrains for your world level.

Week4 – Graphics and Animation 2, Environment Enhancement

* Enhancing our world
* Enhancing player animation
* Using more graphics tools
* Creating traps

Concepts covered:

* Animatable objects
* Animation player
* Parallax background
* Scene controller

Exercise:

Enhance your level by learning to use terrains for painting graphics into your game world. Learn to use layers in terrains. And learn to trigger traps or effects based on player interaction.

OPTIONAL: OPEN GAMES MEETUP

Current students and alumni are invited for an evening of fun and to work together on enhancing the graphics and animation of their games!

Week5 – Collectibles and Enemies

* Introducing enemies and obstacles
* Providing objectives and collectibles
* Simple AI
* Player death

Concepts covered:

* Unique names (scene singletons)
* Scene loading
* Enhanced Scene Manager

Exercise:

Introduce enemies to the game, along with objectives and items to collect. Allow the enemies to attack, and for the player character to be harmed. Learn to restart the game.

Week6 – UI and Game Saving

* Enhance the player death
* Add a way to keep track of player and enemy health
* Keep track of collectibles
* Create a simple user interface

Concepts covered:

* Custom resources
* Game manager
* Class names
* Canvas layers
* Controls

Exercise: Enhance