This tutorial will guide you through creating your very first game step by step. Don’t worry if you’re new to game development — we’ll take it nice and easy.

In this tutorial, we’ll be creating a simple Pong game using the Lua programming language and Tiny.

Pong is a classic 2D arcade game where two players control paddles on opposite sides of the screen, and try to hit a ball back and forth without letting it pass their paddle. The game ends when one player misses the ball, and the other player scores a point.

Our implementation of Pong will have a fixed screen size of 256 pixels for width and height, and we’ll use the ctrl.pressing() function to check for key presses. Check the Tiny API to know more about the Tiny Engine API.

We’ll cover four main steps: initializing the game state with the _init() function, updating the game state with the _update() function and drawing the game with the _draw() function.

By the end of this tutorial, you should have a basic Pong game that you can customize and build upon.

Step 1: Initialize the Game State

First, we need to initialize the game state. We’ll define the position and size of the paddles, the position and size of the ball, and the initial velocity of the ball.

function _init()
    paddle_width = 4
    paddle_height = 32
    ball_radius = 4
    ball_speed = 2
    ball_velocity = { x = ball_speed, y = ball_speed }
    player1_pos = { x = 8, y = 96 - paddle_height / 2 }
    player2_pos = { x = 244, y = 96 - paddle_height / 2 }
    ball_pos = { x = 128, y = 96 }
end

Step 2: Draw the Game

In the _draw() callback, we’ll draw the paddles and the ball using the shape.rectf() and shape.circlef() functions.

function _draw()
  -- Draw game
  gfx.cls()
  shape.rectf(player1_pos.x, player1_pos.y, paddle_width, paddle_height, 7)
  shape.rectf(player2_pos.x, player2_pos.y, paddle_width, paddle_height, 7)
  shape.circlef(ball_pos.x, ball_pos.y, ball_radius, 7)
end

Step 3: Update the Game State

In the _update() callback, we’ll update the game state by moving the paddles and the ball. We’ll also check for collisions between the ball and the paddles, and update the ball’s velocity accordingly.

-- convert bool to number
function num(var)
    return var and 1 or 0
end

function _update()
    -- Update game state
    player1_pos.y = player1_pos.y - 4 * num(ctrl.pressing(keys.z)) --azerty keyboard
    player1_pos.y = player1_pos.y - 4 * num(ctrl.pressing(keys.w)) -- qwerty keyboard
    player1_pos.y = player1_pos.y + 4 * num(ctrl.pressing(keys.s))

    player2_pos.y = player2_pos.y - 4 * num(ctrl.pressing(keys.up))
    player2_pos.y = player2_pos.y + 4 * num(ctrl.pressing(keys.down))

    ball_pos.x = ball_pos.x + ball_velocity.x
    ball_pos.y = ball_pos.y + ball_velocity.y

    -- Check for collisions with walls
    if ball_pos.y < ball_radius or ball_pos.y > 256 - ball_radius then
        ball_velocity.y = -ball_velocity.y
    end

    -- Check for collisions with paddles
    if ball_pos.x < player1_pos.x + paddle_width and
            ball_pos.y > player1_pos.y and
            ball_pos.y < player1_pos.y + paddle_height then
        ball_velocity.x = -ball_velocity.x
    end

    if ball_pos.x > player2_pos.x - ball_radius and
            ball_pos.y > player2_pos.y and
            ball_pos.y < player2_pos.y + paddle_height then
        ball_velocity.x = -ball_velocity.x
    end

    -- Check if the ball is inside the screen
    if ball_pos.x ~= math.clamp(0, ball_pos.x, 256) or ball_pos.y ~= math.clamp(0, ball_pos.y, 256) then
        _init()
    end
end

And that’s it! With these three steps, you should have a basic Pong game up and running in Lua. Feel free to experiment with the game state, update function, and drawing function to customize the game to your liking.

What’s next?

Ready to share your game with the world? Check out the Exporting Your Game for the Web tutorial to learn how to publish your creation online.

Build Your First Game: Pong

Step 1: Initialize the Game State

Step 2: Draw the Game

Step 3: Update the Game State

What’s next?