Learning

Easy Level Progression

This tutorial will introduce you to the basics of Machinations while you will build a simple level progression.

The basic action the player performs is to Kill Enemies. For each Enemy killed, they earn 50 XP points.

△ Sources generate an infinite amount of resources and can be triggered in different ways. For this example we will use an Automatic* source to do exactly that.

1. Click the △ Source icon in the components panel or use the keyboard shortcut “s”.
   Notice that the source is now attached to your mouse cursor.
2. Click on the canvas to place the source.
   No worries, you can always select components and reposition them.

Once you have added a component to the canvas, the Properties Panel on the right-hand side will display the available properties for the selected component(s). Let’s give the source a name and change its color.

3. Click inside the Label text field and type “Kill enemy”.
4. Hit Enter to confirm the new name. Labels are displayed below the component by default. You can select a label with your mouse and move it around.

5. Locate the Style area in the properties panel and change the stroke color of the source to red.

Now that your source is in place, you need to store the XP a player will receive by killing an enemy. ◯ Pools collect resources and are ideal for this job.

6. Select the ◯ Pool icon (p) from the components bar with your mouse and place it onto the canvas.
7. Click inside the Label text field, type “XP points” and hit Enter to confirm.
8. Choose the stroke color green in the Style area.

You need to connect the source and the pool, so that the resources (XP points) can flow from the source into the pool.

9. Select the → Resource connection (c) from the components bar.
10. Click on the source to start your connection.
    You will notice that the source will be highlighted in yellow as soon as you hover over it to indicate it is ready to receive a connection.
11. Click on the pool to establish the connection between the two components. 

With the resource connection still selected, you should label it and also adjust the amount of resources (XP) that will flow into the pool in the properties panel.

12. Type “Get XP” inside the Label and hit Enter to confirm.
13. Click into the Formula field and change the value from “1” to “50”. This will increase the amount of resources flowing from the source into the pool during each step from 1 to 50 points.

Take a look at the Navigation bar at the top. You will notice that the name is still “Untitled” but all your changes have been saved. Diagrams are saved automatically, so there is no need to do this manually. However, you should always give them a proper name.

14. Click on the filename to open the File Management dialog.
15. Type the new name of your diagram into the first text field. 
16. Click save to confirm your changes.