mebo, your helper in Creator Studio
He knows about blocks. He tells you what to change — and you make the change.
mebo is the little blue robot in Creator Studio. He's there for two moments: when you're staring at an empty workspace with an idea in your head, and when something isn't working and you don't know why.
Starting a game with mebo
On the Creator Studio start screen, pick Build With mebo.
First, one tap: who is this game for? Just you, or two players on one mebobox with a controller each. It comes first because it changes everything after it — you can't play bat and ball on your own.
Then tell him your game, in your own words. That's the whole of it. Up to 300 characters, in the box:
a dog running around catching pizza slices before they hit the floor
You can name it too, if you've already got a name. Leave that blank and mebo will think of one.
What makes a good one
The box tells you the three things worth putting in, and they're worth knowing:
- What you do — run, jump, shoot, collect
- What's in it — a dog, pizza, robots
- How you win — get to the end, collect them all
The example underneath shows the same thing done properly. Copy it and change it if that's easier — that's what it's there for.
Say what you DO, not just what's in it. "A game about a dragon in a castle" is a picture; "a dragon flying round a castle collecting treasure" is a game. If you only describe a picture, mebo will say so before it costs you anything.
He might ask you one thing back if your idea could be two different games. Tap an answer, or type a few words. Most of the time he won't need to.
Before anything is made
He shows you, in plain words, exactly what he's about to build — what you'll be, what else is in it, and how you win. Read it. If he couldn't manage a bit of what you asked for, it says so there, in a list, including if he had to pick a different ending from the one you described. Nothing exists until you press Build it.
What you get is a starting point, not a finished game — a player you can move, some things to collect or avoid, a score, and an ending. Every single block is yours to change, and that's the whole idea. Move things around. Change the numbers. Delete the bits you don't want.
Then he shows you everything in your game: each thing, its little coloured square, and what it's for. That list is worth ten seconds, because a screen of coloured boxes makes a lot more sense once you know which one is the dog.
Don't fancy it? Skip — start empty gives you the blank workspace, same as always.
The coloured squares are yours to draw over
mebo doesn't pick pictures for your game. Everything starts as a flat coloured square — the player one colour, the things you're after another — and the preview tells you which square is which before you build.
Every one of those squares is a real picture in your Assets panel. Open Assets, click the square, and pick your own picture instead — or one from the gallery. Your blocks don't change at all, because the block was already saying draw this sprite; you've only changed what the sprite looks like.
That's the bit worth knowing: a coloured square is already a sprite. It just happens to be a plain one.
That's on purpose. A game full of art mebo chose is a game you'd have to undo before it felt like yours.
Getting unstuck
Press Ask mebo at the top of the editor whenever you're stuck.
He opens down the right-hand side, next to your blocks rather than on top of them — so you can drag the block he's talking about while he's still saying it.
The first thing he does is show you what the automatic checks already found — a block that isn't joined on, a dropdown nobody picked. That's usually the answer, and it's instant. If it isn't, press That's not it and tell him what's up:
- Something's broken — it runs, but not the way you wanted.
- I don't know how — you know what you want to make, not which blocks do it.
- Could it be better? — it works. What next?
Pick I don't know how and he'll show you the questions people ask most — make something move, add a score, play a sound, make two things bump into each other. Those are answered from the help centre without troubling mebo at all, so they come back instantly and they don't use up one of your goes. If yours isn't in the list, press Something else and type it.
When his answer rests on a real idea — what a variable is, how a game knows two things are touching — there's a learn more fold under it. It's shut to start with. Open it if you're curious; ignore it if you just want your player to move.
One question at a time. There's no "ask something else" button: change the thing he told you about, press Run, and see what happens. That's the bit where you learn something. If it's still wrong, ask him again — with a game that's one step further on.
Once you're writing the code
Turn on Edit and the blocks go away — so mebo stops talking about blocks. Same button, same three questions, but now he's read your files.
The free first look is different too: instead of the block checks it's the editor's own warnings, the red squiggles, gathered up in one place and in plainer words. Still instant, still free.
When he answers, you get the explanation first and then the code — the smallest piece that does the job, not your game rewritten. Above it he says which file it goes in and whether it's new code or a replacement; underneath, where — "inside your onFrame callback, just after the player moves". Copy takes the code. Show me where opens that file and lights up the lines.
He usually shows a line or two of the code you've already got, so you can see where the new bit lands. Those lines are greyed out. The ones with a blue bar down the side are the ones you're actually adding.
He only knows what your game really has. He won't send you to a function that isn't in the runtime or the SDK, and he won't reach for a picture that isn't in your Assets panel — if the fix needs one you haven't got, he'll say that first, because no amount of code will make a missing picture appear. And he won't suggest fetching anything or installing a library: a mebobox game runs with no network at all, so there's nothing to install from.
What mebo will and won't do
He tells you what to change. He never changes it himself. When he means a particular block, he puts a little ! on it so you can find it — then you drag it. In code he shows you the lines and where they go; putting them in, making them fit the names you've used and running it is yours. That's on purpose: doing it for you would mean you'd learnt nothing except how to ask again.
He also only helps with games. He isn't a homework machine and he isn't someone to chat to. Ask him about anything else and he'll say so, kindly.
There are a few things he won't help you build, and they're the same house rules every mebobox game follows — nothing scary, nasty, rude or unkind. If you ask for one of those he'll say no. That's not him telling you off.
Two more things worth knowing
A grown-up can see what you ask him. Everything you type to mebo, and everything he says back, is kept for 30 days so a parent or someone from mebobox can look if they need to. After that it's deleted. So don't type anything you wouldn't want them to read — and never put anyone's name, address, email or phone number in.
He can only help so many times a day. mebo isn't free to run, so there's a limit — and the number you've got left is written at the top of the panel every time you open him, so it's never a surprise. If you reach it he'll say "that's all for today". Everything else keeps working exactly as before: the automatic checks, the common questions, all of it.