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Scenes

A scene is a single screen of your game, it can contain multiple actors and triggers. A game is typically made-up of many scenes connected together with triggers using the Change Scene event.

Adding a Scene​

Click the + button in the Editor Tools and select Scene from the menu. Click on any empty space in the Project Viewport to place the new scene.

You can use the Editor Sidebar to give your scene a name and a background from your project's assets. See the documentation for Backgrounds for more information on adding background images.

Scene Properties​

  • Name - Names your scene. Useful for locating your scene with the search bar.
  • Type - Lets you choose from the list of game modes such as Top Down 2D or Platformer.
  • Background - Lets you choose a background from the assets/backgrounds folder.
  • Background Palettes (Color Mode Only) - The eight palettes that will be used when colorizing the scene.
  • Sprite Palettes (Color Mode Only) - The eight palettes that will be used for sprites in your scene.
  • Player Sprite Sheet - Used to set a custom player sprite for this scene. By default the scene will use the default player sprite for the selected scene type.

Parallax Mode​

Clicking the Parallax Toggle Button to the right of the Background Selector allows you to turn on parallax mode for the scene. When parallax mode is enabled you can split the background into up to three slices which can be modified to scroll at different speeds as the camera moves in game.

Scripting​

Scenes can contain an On Init script that will be called as soon as the scene is loaded in game. You can use this to do things like playing music as the scene loads, configuring events to happen on button presses, initialise actors based on the values of variables, and much more.

You can also define scripts to call when the player collides with Actors that have a Collision Group set by clicking the On Hit tab and choose a collision group.

To start building a script, select a scene, click the script type you want to edit and click the Add Event button in the Editor Sidebar to open the event menu. Select an event to add it to the script.

For more information see the documentation for Scripting.

Adding Collision to a Scene​

Select the Collision Tool from the Editor Tools. There are 6 default collision types that can be added.

  • Solid Stops colliding actors from entering the tile on any side.
  • Top/Bottom/Left/Right Stops colliding actors from entering the tile from that specific side. This is useful for one-way collision and semi-solid platforms.
  • Ladder (Platformer only) Allows moving up and down in Platformer scenes.

Each tile can hold a maximum of 1 ladder and 3 collision sides. Adding 4 collision sides will replace the sides with a single solid block. Ladders will not replace existing collision when placed on top of another collision.

Additionally there is a dropdown menu allowing you view additional tiles:

  • Slope Tiles - These tiles can be used to add slopes to your scene (Platformer only), you might find it easier to use the Slope Brush instead rather than placing these tiles manually
  • Extra Tiles - These tiles are currently unused by GB Studio and may be given a purpose at some point in the future, you may place them now and modify your game engine to use them but this may prevent you from moving your project to newer GB Studio versions.

Drawing Slopes​

The Slope Brush is a quick way to add slope collisions to your scenes (Platformer only). With the brush selected click on the starting tile and drag to one tile after where you want the slope to be placed. When placing a shallow slope you can hold Shift while dragging to offset the slope vertically.

It's also possible to use this tool to draw horizontal and vertical collisions by holding Ctrl while dragging. When dragging left to right you will create a Top collision, right to left creates a Bottom collision, top to bottom creates a Left collision and bottom to top creates a Right collision. Holding Ctrl + Shift will flip the collision direction (Top will become Bottom etc).

Colorizing a Scene​

Select the Colorizer Tool from the Editor Tools. There are 8 palettes types that can be added to a scene with Color Mode enabled. Palettes can be adjusted in Settings. Note that the 8th palette in a scene will also be used for Dialogue Windows and menus.

The palettes used in the Colorizer Tool can be swapped out for existing palettes (such as the UI palette) by long-clicking on a palette.

For more information about the drawing mode used for the Colorize Tool and the Collision Tool, see Keyboard Shortcuts.

Tile Priority​

When colorizing a scene you can use the <!> button to set priority tiles, these tiles will appear in front of actors (on GB Color games only) allowing you to create depth in your scenes. Note that the first color in the tile's palette will be transparent and drawn behind the actors.

Magic Brush​

The Magic Brush is available when adding collisions or colorizing a scene and can be used to paint every tile in the scene that matches the one you clicked instantly.

Scene Limits​

There are several limits that GB Studio has put in place to keep game performance consistent, and to minimize visual issues.

Each scene can have a maxmimum of 20 actors, and 30 triggers, and between 96 and 64 sprite tiles depending on the complexity of the background used. You can check this information by selecting a scene and looking for the gray bar under your scene that reads: A: 0/20 S: 0/96 T: 0/30. The letters on this bar represent the following:

  • A: represents the number of actors that the scene is using.
  • S: represents the number of unique sprite tiles that each actor is using in their sprite sheet.
  • T: represents the number of triggers that the scene is using.

Actor Limits​

Each scene can have a maximum of 20 actors. Ideally, there should never be more than 10 actors within a 20 x 18 tile boundary, equivalent to 160px x 144px. Clustering more than 10 actors together in a scene will cause some actors to become invisible in-game. GB Studio will warn you if it thinks this will be the case for a scene:

You can address this message by moving or deleting actors so no more than 10 will be seen in a 20 x 18 tile boundary. You can use the Eraser Tool to delete actors. Actors will still become invisible if more than 10 actors move into the screenspace after the scene starts.

Sprite Tile Limits​

The exact number of sprite tiles available in a scene depends on the amount of tiles used in the selected background image as some memory is shared between sprite and background tiles. If the selected background uses less than 128 unique tiles, you can use 96 sprite tiles, each background tile above 128 takes away from sprite tiles available until a minimum of 64 tiles are available.

Trigger Limits​

Each scene can have a maximum of 30 triggers. You can use the Eraser Tool to delete triggers.