Tutorial 2 ~ Management Field

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Introduction[edit | edit source]

1908 1.png
1908 2.png

To start, I'll begin explaining a bit on how things are structured inside the editor.

After you download it, extract it, go to the editor folder and open LuaSTG Editor.wx.wlua file. For more instructions, check the main page on this wiki. Once you open it, a blank space is shown and you can see some tabs, some nodes, and an empty "project" folder.
Now, now, first of all, we need to create a new project on the program so that we can start doing some things. You have three options to create a new project: go to the "File" bar and click on "New...", the other option is to click the blank page with a plus symbol (New.png), or press Ctrl+N.
Next, you will see a dialog box pop-up with the following options:

Template Usage
Empty This will create a blank/empty project
Single Stage This will create a base for a single stage-only (no boss) project
Single Spell Card This will create a base for a single spell card to be created and a stage that skips directly into it
TouHou This will create a project complete with a base for every stage in every difficulty
File path Choose the destination the project will be saved on. If you only write a name, it will be saved on the same folder as the editor

I will be using the Single Spell Card template to begin with. So choose that and create the project.

1908 3.png


As you can see on the left, in the Management Field, many nodes were added. (if you aren't understanding what these terms are, check the general concepts page).
To start, at the top of it, inside the project folder, the first thing that appears is the project settings (Setting2.png). Selecting it, you can see some options at the left side, those are the node parameters. You can change the game name, the author, and if the game will allow stage and spell card practice.

However, our focus here is something else. Select the spell card node (Bossspellcard.png) and click on debug spell card (or Shift+F6) (Debugsc.png).

1908 4.png

You should be seeing now a Nue-like spirit floating around, doing nothing. This is the default sprite LuaSTG adopts when your boss doesn't have any image linked to it. Anyway, you can also see LuaSTG also comes with 3 defaults players — Reimu, Marisa and Shalimar. Reimu and Marisa is your usual shot type, while Shalimar features 3 types, that you can alter by pressing Shift and Z at the same time. Anyway, once you shoot for a while, the spell card ends (or if you time it out).
You have probably seen that the spell card node has some parameters that you can change, but we will see that later.
Proceeding, let's try spawning some bullets!
Close the game. Next, go back to the management field and select the pre-set create task (Task.png) node inside of the spell card node. Then, go to the "Task" tab and insert the repeat node (Repeat.png) as a child node (Child.png) of the create task one.

1908 7.png

The process I just described was that the spell card divides itself in "tasks". Currently, there is only one task, that has a repeat node inside of it, which means that the first (and only) task it'll perform is the one that has contents inside of it. You can also alter the interval of frames it'll take to repeat the action, and how many times, but I'll let it as infinite for now. Now, select the repeat node you just inserted, go to the "Bullet" tab, and insert as a child the create simple bullets node (Bulletcreatestraightex.png). On the left side of the editor, once again in the node parameters screen, you'll see a list of options you can choose inside of the node. I'll describe what each thing does for you:

Parameters
Style Bullet type
Color Color of the bullet
Position Where the bullet will spawn (in this case, self.x and self.y are the boss' coordinates)
Number How many bullets
Interval Interval in frames on how much time it'll take for bullets to spawn
Velocity start First bullet velocity
Velocity end Last bullet velocity
Angle Angle that the bullet will be shot
Angle spread Space between each bullet (angle spread)
Aim to player If the bullet will be aimed at the player
Rotation velocity Determines the bullet rotation (spin)
Stay on create Exist when created
Destroyable If the bullet can be destroyed (e.g. by bombs)
Time Frames the bullet will stay still before movement or doing the determined action
Rebound If the bullet will ricochet in the game's frame/hud (only left, right and upwards)

Try changing some values, trying some things, then debug the spell card again.
For now, this is it. See ya in the next one!

Overlook[edit | edit source]

We've seen the basics and the structure on how the editor works, made a simple and crude pattern, and understood some things on the engine itself in this tutorial. Try doing some changes to the things you made and see what happens!