Memory Card Game Tutorial (Classic Concentration)

LEO Media Team

Hello all,

I've been searching around the site, google, and youtube and I cannot find a detailed beginning to end creation of a memory card game. I am looking to have a card game that can only be played once. With a total of 16 cards labeled from 1 - 16. I already have the art and it's all placed nicely on my board but I need the coding (attributes/rules) to tell the cards to flip over and to disappear when they get a match or to flip back over when they are not matched. I have only been playing with GameSalad for 3 days so I am still extremely new. Please point me in the right direction of a tutorial that is already made or if you do not mind walking me through how to create a functioning game that would be great!

Thanks so much!

Braydon_SFX

I'm not sure that anyone would walk you through creating an entire game step by step - that's a lot to ask!

However, we'd be more than happy to assist when you need help.

The first thing I do when I begin a new project is take 10-15 mins and write down what I think I'll need.

For a matching game, it may look something like this:

• You need to have x amount of cards
• You need to know when two cards have been selected
• When they have been selected, you need to evaluate them
• In order to evaluate them, you need to have some kind of identifier (either a number contained in an attribute or maybe a table)
• If the numbers match, you know the user has found a pair
• If a pair has been found, destroy those actors so the user can't select them again
• Restart cycle

LEO Media Team

Hello Braydon,

Thank you for the reply! Yes that is a lot to ask, I guess the main steps that I need that I cannot find are how do the following steps you listed below:

1. When the cards have been selected, you need to evaluate them
2. In order to evaluate them, you need to have some kind of identifier (either a number contained in an attribute or maybe a table)
3. If the numbers match, you know the user has found a pair
4. If a pair has been found, destroy those actors so the user can't select them again

So far, I completely built the game out, I have what the card looks like when the game starts, and I have the card that will appear when the player selects the card. I just need to figure out how to set up the attributes and rules.

Braydon_SFX

Right, I remember when I first started GS and I tried to create my first game. It was a HUGE project for a beginner and I became frustrated because I couldn't figure it out. I'd suggest that you start out with a smaller project and learn how the engine works before taking on a task like this.

There are over 200 video tutorials over at the GSHelper.com YouTube channel. I'd recommend watching those videos and following along. There is a mix of beginner tutorials as well as some more advanced tutorials listed there, so watching them would benefit you greatly. Here's the YouTube channel.

I'd also recommend @Lost_Oasis_Games and his YouTube channel. He has great content on there as well.

@jamie_c also has fabulous tutorials on his Youtube channel.

As you can see, there are plenty of resources to get you going. While there are hundreds of videos and it may seem a bit daunting, going through these will get you familiar with how GameSalad works and you'd have much more success dealing with the match game.

LEO Media Team

Thank you for the resources Uptimistik and Braydon.

Unfortunately a have a project that is due Friday. I was given the task to code it from scratch with HTML5 (not knowing any to begin with) and I researched software that would help a graphic designer create a game without knowing HTML5 and CSS. If I can get approval from the company to purchase the template I will do that since this is such a fast turnaround time, I will also watch as many videos as I can. To bad there isn't a tutorial on how to make one from scratch, I've only found videos advertising templates.

Thanks again guys!

tatiang

Learning any game design engine or programming language is going to take you longer than a week. So buying a template or paying someone to make it for you is really your only option here.

GameSalad allows you take a lot of shortcuts but making a game is still an endeavor. Even "simple" games like memory can take dozens of hours to code. And that's after you know how to use GameSalad fairly well.