Your First Microgame
Hello! Thank you for choosing Little Warioware for all your microgame-creating needs. Whether you're a seasoned dev or a total newbie, I'm hoping that you'll find this guide equally welcoming and easy to follow. If not, let me know so I can fix it!
For the purposes of this guide, I'm going to assume you're somewhat familiar with Nintendo's WarioWare series and the basic concept of a microgame. If you're not, I recommend checking out some longplay videos on YouTube or reading up on the finer details via MarioWiki.
Before we can do much of anything, we'll need to download Godot Engine. This project uses the LTS (Long-Term Service) version 3.5.2, which you can get here: https://godotengine.org/download/3.x/
All code for this project (including individual microgames and their related assets) is stored in a "repository" on GitHub. In order to make your own microgame, you'll want to "clone" this repository to your computer, creating a local copy for you to tinker with as much as you'd like.
I recommend GitHub Desktop as an easy way of managing the project on your local computer. Once you've got it installed, you can simply click here and GH Desktop will prompt you to start the cloning process.
Once the clone is complete, it's time to open the project!
Once you have successfully installed Godot v3.5.2 and made a local copy of the GitHub repo, you're ready to start making a microgame!
Open Godot and you'll see the Project Manager window. Click the "Import" button and navigate to the project.godot file at the root of the repo folder you cloned in the last step. Hit "Open", then "Import & Edit", and you're in!
The quickest way to get started from here is Project > Tools > Create New Microgame. This will copy the included example microgame folder into res://microgames/my_cool_microgame/, open microgame.tscn (which is the "scene" that will load when your microgame starts), and metadata.tres (which contains some important context about your microgame - make sure this is up-to-date before submitting!) in the Inspector panel.
The example is a very simple microgame in which the player is asked to press the "action" button a number of times (which increases depending on difficulty level). All of the relevant logic is included in the my_cool_microgame.gd script, which has plenty of comments to provide additional context and tips.
Want to try out the microgame? Just click the "Play Scene" button in the top right corner of the editor and it'll loop for as long as you can survive!
