PPD Builder Help - Basics

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Builder Guide
1 - Basics
2 - Chapter Editor
3 - Actor Editor
4 - Interactions
5 - Flags and Conditionals
6 - Graphics

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This guide will hopefully get you started with Project PD. If you have any suggestions or find any bugs, you can email me at tinfoiltank@gmail.com. Project PD is still a work in progress, so suggestions of any kind are always appreciated.

Let's get started!

Note: I used Firefox for this tutorial (and development of the project), but Project PD should work with any Flash-enabled browser.

Part 1 - Basic Usage

Before we get into the nuts and bolts of making a game, let's go over a few basic concepts that carry over throughout the builder.

1a - The Workspace
After you start up the builder (located here) and start a new game, you'll see a screen that looks a bit like this:

This is the Project PD workspace.

The workspace is designed to mimic a desktop environment, and a lot of the same principles apply.  Each menu is it's on window, and they work a lot like windows on a Windows, OSX, or Linux environment.

Dragging: Click and drag a window's title bar to drag it around and arrange your workspace how you like.

Resizing: Click and drag the bottom right corner (the little triangle) to resize a window.  The contents will attempt to resize accordingly.

Closing: Click the "X" in the top right corner to close a window.  Don't worry, every window will remember it's state when closed, so you won't lose anything.

If you close the "Chapter List" window, you can open it again by clicking the "Chapters" button on the topbar (see image).  Don't worry about what all the buttons do for now.  We'll get to that soon.



1b - Editor Concepts
There are a few user interface elements that are used throughout the PPD Builder.  It's a good idea to understand how they work so you'll know what to expect when you click something.

Let's open up the Chapter List again and take a look:

This is the basic structure for a list window.  There are several others that work pretty much exactly the same way.  You can move it around, resize it, close, and open it, just like any other window.

Right now, our list is empty, because it says "No chapters have been added."  Let's fix that and add a chapter.

Just click the "+" button to add a chapter.







Now your chapter list will look like this:





Pretty simple, really.

Now your list window has one element, a single chapter.  If you open and close the Chapter List, you'll still see your one Untitled Chapter.

Now let's take a look at the "Edit" and "Delete" buttons.  These are pretty standard throughout the Builder.

There are two buttons on each line (each line represents a Chapter).  The first button ("E") allows you to edit the Chapter.  On a list, clicking "E" will open up whatever editor is associated with the element you clicked on.  So clicking "E" on a Chapter will open up that Chapter's editor.

The second button, "X", is the delete button.  This is the only way to get rid of an element after adding it with the "+" button.  You'll notice that there's no confirmation window if you delete a Chapter here.  Don't worry, once you start editing your Chapter, if you try to delete it after adding content to it, you'll be asked if you really mean it.

So let's open up the Chapter editor and see what's there.

This is the what an empty Chapter looks like.

One essential concept to keep in mind when using PPD Builder is that each game element (such as a Chapter, Actor, or whatever -- don't worry, we'll get into what those terms mean soon) has a single window associated with them.  What this means is that you can only have one view of an element at a time.  You can think of closing a window as just hiding it.

For example, clicking the "E" (edit) button on the Chapter list for the Chapter you just opened will not open another window.  It will just give focus to the window you already have open.

So let's take a look at the Chapter editor.

The first thing you should note is the Chapter's name is displayed in the top left of the window contents:

That isn't just a display though, it's an editor itself.  To change the Chapter's name, just hover over the name.  You'll notice the text get's highlighted, similar to a button.  If you click...

You can now change the Chapter's name.  After you set it to what you want, just click "Set" and your changes will be saved to the workspace.  You'll also notice the title bar for the Chapter editor change to reflect the new name.

This sort of editor is fairly common in PPD Builder.  In fact, you can click the game's title in the main workspace topbar in a similar way:

To open the game settings window (where you can rename your game).

Later on we'll get into what everything in the Chapter editor (and game settings window) actually does. For now, let's move on and take a look at how to save and load your game.

1c - Saving and Loading a Game

This is skipping ahead a little bit, but to make saving and loading actually do something, I've put together the most basic game possible.

Here's what my workspace looks like:

Now, if I close my browser, I'll lose all my hard work.  So I'll go ahead and save my game.

The Save button is in the top left corner of the workspace:

When you click the Save button, your game get's packaged up into a .pd file, which you can save to your computer.  A .pd file is the main file type for Project PD.  You can edit a .pd with the Builder, and you can run a .pd with the Player.

To open a .pd file with the Builder, just click the Open button in the top right of the workspace.  You can also open a .pd directly when you start up the Builder by clicking "Open Game" in the launcher screen.

You can run a .pd with the Project PD Player (located here).  If you want to learn more about the Player, you can read the guide on this site.

Now let's get in to building a game worth saving!