Games programming tutorials using Lua with the Defold IDE

Defold is an IDE that is used by more than 40,000 developers worldwide including professional and indie studios. Using Defold students can make industry standard games for Windows, web browsers and even port their games to consoles such as the Nintendo Switch. It’s a great alternative to Pygame and is an excellent stepping stone to other industry standard game development tools including Unreal and Unity.

Code is written in the Lua programming language. Although game objects have boilerplate methods and built-in support for collision detection, particle effects and tile maps, all the code must be written to make use of these features making Defold ideal for A level projects and extra-curricular clubs.

This download contains:

• Tutorials
• Tutorial solutions

The tutorials include:

• Pong – the classic game of bat and ball for two players.
• Incoming – a very simple introduction to tower defence.
• Landers – a space invaders clone.
• Spotter – a spot the difference game.
• Worms – a snake clone for two to four players.

Each tutorial shows you how to build the game starting from a blank canvas. Detailed screen shots and code listings make the process easy to follow. The tutorials create a foundation for the game. At the end of each tutorial there are “snap”, “crackle” and “pop” challenges to extend the games into a finished product.

The mini website also includes:

• Information about installing Defold on a school network.
• Additional help pages.
• Assets for use in your own games.

We recommend introducing students to Defold using these tutorials in year 12 between January and Easter.

This resource will not work with Google Classroom or Windows SharePoint.