Stencyl: Free and cross-platform software for creating video games
A few days ago, we shared with you a great post about application TurboWarp, which we describe as a useful and fun educational and training application, which is distributed as a cross-platform, online desktop tool that allows you to create games, animations, and stories with the latest and greatest version of Scratch. But, with the difference that it has the added bonus of additional features, such as a dark mode, extra addons, a compiler, and much more. And since, in it, we mentioned an interesting and useful list of similar apps, today we will dedicate this post to another similar software called «Stencyl» to learn and teach programming, and create video games with Flash quickly and easily.
Furthermore, and before going into details, it is important to highlight that said free software, which also has more robust paid versions, that is, with more features, it has its engine written in Haxe and is based on OpenFL. 2 open source projects which are also very useful and worth knowing and spreading, both for educational and professional purposes. So, without further ado, we invite you to continue reading about these 3 developments to find out what they are about and learn more about their scope.
TurboWarp: App to teach and learn programming and robotics
But, before we start to delve deeper into the app «Stencyl» and others associated with it (Haxe and OpenFL), we recommend you explore a previous related post, at the end of it:
Stencyl: Free and cross-platform software for creating video games
What is Stencyl?
According to Official website from «Stencyl», its developers promote it briefly as follows:
Stencyl is a software that allows you to quickly and easily create video games for mobile devices, the web, and desktop computers without coding. Therefore, it is ideal for creating amazing video games without a lot of code or the need to be an expert in programming for different platforms.
However, and given that, they offer a lot documentation and support On this subject, we will highlight some points (Features/functionalities) important and useful information about this software in the following list:
- More than just your average game creation software, it's a wonderful and intuitive toolset that speeds up your workflow without any hassle.
- The technology used to create the Stencyl engine is Haxe and it is based on OpenFL, an open source project that mirrors the full Flash API in Haxe and provides all the hooks needed to publish games to all major existing platforms.
- It allows you to create video games with broad platform support to achieve a product with the largest possible number of players from various devices, regardless of their operating system: iOS (iPhone/iPad), Android, Windows, Mac, Linux and the Internet (HTML5).
- This software has been used to produce video games that have become famous, reaching the top positions, for example in the App Store and Google Play. These have been produced for important publishers, such as: ArmorGames, Kongregate and Newgrounds.
- It offers a friendly interface for IT Teachers, Students and non-expert programming users, such as Children and adolescents of school age and the IT education process (programming), or adult beginners and newbies in Software Development. And much of this is due to the fact that it offers a drag-and-drop design process in the purest Scratch style, but with the addition of new functions and hundreds of ready-to-use blocks. Although, it also offers the possibility of writing code in the natural or traditional way.
Screenshots of the application
Furthermore, it is important to note that this software is currently available for download through a single portable and multiplatform installer (executable) under the latest stable version with the number 4.1.4 released on July 1, 2024. And taking advantage of the fact that we have downloaded and tested it, below we show you the following screenshots of it:
About Haxe and OpenFL
And since, as we mentioned at the beginning, this program is generated using Haxe and OpenFL, below we will briefly comment on these 2 open source projects and technologies:
leg
Haxe is an open source, high-level, strictly typed programming language with a fast optimizing cross-compiler. It allows you to create cross-platform applications targeting JavaScript, C++, C#, Java, JVM, Python, Lua, PHP, Flash; and thus gain access to the native capabilities of each platform. It also offers its own virtual machines (HashLink and NekoVM), but can also run in interpreted mode. About Haxe
OpenFL
OpenFL is a library for creative expression on the web, desktop, and mobile that can publish to native C++, JS, WebGL, and runtimes like HashLink and Adobe AIR using an integrated toolset. OpenFL developers write code in Haxe, a powerful language that can be compiled into other programming languages. This unique (and proven) capability is the cornerstone of OpenFL's cross-platform nature. Depending on the project, the arguments used, and the target platform, command-line tools use Haxe to compile Haxe source files into SWF bytecode, Neko bytecode, C++, or JavaScript. Furthermore, OpenFL implements the Flash Player API, but reaches all the places that browser plugins can't. About OpenFL
Other recommended apps and platforms to learn and teach programming and robotics
Programme
- Alice
- Basic 256
- Blockly
- Bluej
- Code Blocks
- greenfoot
- Processing
- PseudoFlow
- PSeInt
- MyCompiler
- Scratch
- scratux
- Snap!
- Stencyl
- tinker
- Tinkercad
- TurboWarp
- Turtlic
- waterbear
Collaborative
Summary
In short, we hope «Stencyl» is a cool free and cross-platform application made with useful open source projects from the Linuxverse, such as Haxe and OpenFL. And without a doubt, it is a great and versatile application aimed at creating fun and beautiful video games quickly and easily. Therefore, it is often used by many teachers and IT professionals, both to learn and teach programming and to develop small or large projects for different devices or platforms. And soon, we hope to offer you another post, about another similar app in this field of educational programming and robotics applications. But, in case you know of any other similar app not mentioned by us, that is worth knowing and using for this same purpose or objective, We invite you to mention it via comments and argue why to include it, for the knowledge and usefulness of all.
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