How To Set Image To Background Makecode Arcade

MakeCode Arcade 1st Birthday Update!

Posted on January 22nd, 2021 past Jaqster

New year, New Release! At this time last twelvemonth we released the first official version of MakeCode Arcade, so nosotros idea we'd celebrate our first altogether past doing another release update!

Most of the work in this release went into fixing bugs that had accumulated. By the way, Thank you if you've filed a bug in GitHub - this is super helpful for us!

Nosotros've likewise added a few new features likewise, here's a rundown:

Flip and Rotate

We all spend a keen deal of time in the Image Editor creating the perfect movie for our Sprites and Tiles. There are many times that we all wished we could flip or rotate our images. Now yous can! We've added 4 new buttons to the Image Editor:

Flip vertical
Flip horizontal
Rotate clockwise
Rotate counter-clockwise

Sprite editor flip tool

Animations are now mainstream!

We've finally moved the animations blocks into the built-in editor nether the Advanced tab in the Toolbox. Animations have become so popular that it only made sense to pull them out of an extension and always show these blocks in an Animation Toolbox category. Nosotros still accept an animation extension available for the older, state-based animation blocks too.

The Animation blocks category

Sound Upshot Enhancements

Sound effects and music are some of the nigh memorable features of many retro videogames, and our support has been improved thanks to contributions from Klaus West over 4 fantastic PRs:

Adding new noise waveforms #1177
Saving space and improving sine approximation #1178
Brand melodies stop correctly when stop all sounds is called #1196
Update sound documentation with description of new waveforms #3002
New default melodies for the play sound block #1226

The new sounds in the play sound blocks

Klaus made a post on the forum with details on how to apply this, including a sample game with a ton of custom noises - including drums+bass, modems, crashes, and zaps! You can examination some of these out at https://arcade.makecode.com/91960-59425-02296-62940, and fifty-fifty re-create some into your new game! For more than detailed information on creating sound in MakeCode Arcade, you tin can also check out the developer documentation.

Thanks you lot Klaus!

New Array Cake

This has been i of the most requested blocks. In general, randomization is an important aspect of game development, and ofttimes times when writing an Arcade game, people want to select a random value from an array. Y'all can of course do this with the "Option Random" number block for the array indices, but this block makes it so much easier!

Get random from list block

New Sprite Flags

Some other request from folks has been to provide more than granularity in how Sprites interact with their environment. Currently, we take a sprite property called "Ghost" which causes the sprite not to overlap with other sprites or collide with obstacles/walls - basically care for it every bit a ghost sprite that can't collaborate with other sprites, tiles or walls. But sometimes, you want a sprite to be able to pass through walls and also overlap with other sprites. And then, we've cleaved down the ghost property down into three more granular properties:

Ghost through Sprites - Sprite doesn't interact with other sprites (will not trigger Sprite Overlap events)
Ghost through Tiles - Sprite doesn't interact with tiles in a Tile Map (will not trigger Tile Overlap events)
Ghost through Walls - Sprite can laissez passer through walls in a Tile Map

The number of different flags you lot can assail a Sprite are also getting pretty long! And so we decided to pull out the two well-nigh common backdrop - "Stay in Screen" and "Bounce on Wall" as separate blocks to ensure that people tin find them.

Nugget Editor

The side by side time y'all open a game, you may observe a new button on the elevation of the Arcade editor screen chosen "Assets":

This is a view that volition allow you to see all the assets in your game.

Asset selection view

An "Asset" can exist:

An image – for a Sprite, Projectile, Background, Dialog Frame

Image asset

A tile – denoted by the stacked boxes icon

Tile asset

An animation – denoted by the moving-picture show icon (animates when you hover your mouse over it)

Annimation asset

A tile map – denoted by the map icon

Tilemap asset

Why did nosotros create this view? For a couple reasons:

Easier Asset Direction - as people were creating bigger and bigger games with a lot of different avails, it was getting difficult for them to navigate through the code to find specific assets to edit or copy.
No-code Modding - for our very newbie students who are just getting into coding and game evolution, we wanted to provide an option for them to take an existing game and mod it, without having to parse through lots of lawmaking blocks which can be overwhelming.

In the Asset Editor view, you tin:

Create a new asset by clicking on the green plus (+) icon and selecting the type of asset you desire to create.

Create new asset buttons

Edit an existing nugget by clicking on the asset and selecting the Edit push.

Edit the asset button

Indistinguishable an existing asset which will make a copy of the nugget and put in your Avails view.

Duplicate the asset button

Re-create an existing asset to your clipboard which will actually copy the image, concord it in your computer's retentiveness, and then permit yous to paste it into a blank epitome editor sheet.

Copy the asset button

Delete an existing nugget - notation that this push is disabled if the asset is existence used in your program.

Delete the asset button

As well every bit the "Avails" push button at the top of the screen, you lot tin also become into the Asset Editor view from whatever of the image editors. You lot'll notice that in that location'southward a new "My Assets" tab at the top of the image editor which allows you to select assets from your asset library. And there's also a field for y'all to proper noun your assets.

Image editor

There's one thing to note about the new Asset Editor feature for those who program in JavaScript and Python. Named avails are treated differently in code. The ascii representation is no longer embedded in the code, but rather part of the assets namespace and stored in a dissever project file.

Sprite data in JavaScript

Gallery in Tile Editor

Another ofttimes requested characteristic was to bring the Gallery view into the Tile Editor so when you are creating your own custom tiles, you can get-go with one of the existing tiles and simply tweak it, rather than having to create your ain tiles from scratch.

Tile gallery

Support for GitHub Extensions in subfolders

For all of you extension authors out there, nosotros've hopefully made your lives a bit easier! Earlier, you could only author 1 extension or set of tutorials from an individual repo. Now you can publish multiple extensions and tutorials all from one GitHub repo. This is handy if you lot want to publish a set of custom blocks and a fix of related tutorials that become with it. You can see our documentation about writing custom extensions and tutorials.

New Tutorial Format

For those of you paying close attending, y'all may have noticed a new "Game Maker Guide" card appear on the Arcade Home page in December.

Game maker guide

Nosotros are experimenting with a new format for tutorials where there are a series of tutorial activities which build upon each other through progressive levels of difficulty. This helps provide a bit more than guidance to students on a recommended progression path Information technology also helps keep individual tutorials shorter.

Skills map

Right now we have 2 learning paths available in the Game Maker Guide – Design a Space Explorer game, and Learn to Make a Platformer. Students must complete a sequence of tutorials in order – once they complete a tutorial, the side by side tutorial in the serial unlocks.

Tutorial sequence

In add-on to a progression path, we're too experimenting with gamification elements. When a student completes a learning path, they receive confetti and a document.

Confetti celebration