Your first game

In this tutorial you will make a spaceship game from scratch: you control the ship, shoot the enemies that fall, score points and lose lives. When the lives run out, the game over screen shows up.

What you will learn

• Create a project and import images and sounds.
• Create objects, give each one a sprite and place them in a room.
• Write the behavior of an object in C++: move, shoot, collide.
• Create variables and actions in the editor and use them in the code.
• Create enemies from time to time and count points.
• Show text on screen and switch rooms.

The parts

1. Project and sprites: create the project and import the images.
2. The ship: the ship appears and moves with the arrow keys or the gamepad.
3. Shots: the space bar shoots.
4. Enemies: enemies fall and explode when shot.
5. Score and lives: scoreboard, lives and damage.
6. Sound: sounds for shooting, explosion and damage.
7. Game over: the Game Over screen and playing again.

Each part takes some 10 to 15 minutes and ends with the game running.

Before you start

• Install Brasa: see Installation.
• Have a code editor. We recommend VS Code with Microsoft’s C/C++ extension: Brasa already sets up the project so autocomplete works.
• Download the images and sounds of the game: primeiro-jogo-recursos.zip. Unzip it into any folder.

Names in Portuguese

The files of the game (nave.png is the ship, tiro.png the shot, inimigo.png the enemy) and the texts the game draws on screen (PONTOS, VIDAS, FIM DE JOGO) are in Portuguese, so that your project matches the screenshots and the Primeiro Jogo template. Feel free to change the texts in your own code.

Would you rather see it finished?

When you create a project, choose the template Primeiro Jogo: it already comes with the complete game from this tutorial. It’s a good place to look when something doesn’t work.