The Story Tellers Kit 2 – Built for iOS and tvOS with Swift 5 Key features… Telling stories is just the tip of the iceberg… Don’t let the name fool you, the Story Tellers Kit 2 isn’t just about telling fantastic stories. You can create endless levels right within Xcode, then using simple properties define the dynamics of an unlimited number of different games. Make arcade classics, puzzle games, maze games, etc. We’ve recorded a new video tutorial that shows how to create an Angry Birds style physics game using the kit. You’ll see how to setup the level visually, add point values for collisions and then make it so if the player exceeds a certain score they can advance to the next level. Otherwise, they restart the same level. And coolest of all, the demo video shows how to setup the game for the new Apple TV! Oh the places your readers can go…. Include your readers in the story!… Our latest feature allows readers to pick a photo or take a new one to add themselves into the story! The image can be masked (so only a portion of the image shows), and edited within the mask by changing the position, rotation, zoom, squash and stretch. Once set, the image and mask settings stay saved throughout the life of the app, or until a new image and settings replace the current one. So readers could dress themselves up in the book and go off on an adventure as a knight, princess, goblin, whatever, and then return to the app months or years later, and their image will still be there!  This is a great feature to combine with some of the text features that let readers add their name to the story (or even change the story itself). Click the image to the left to find out how easy this option is to integrate. And like all our cool features, your purchase of the kit includes a page that demonstrates this in action. Design and animate pages directly within Xcode… Xcode allows you to visually compose Actions on a timeline. You can do this in the Scene for your page OR you can create a separate file specifically for Actions to reuse later (either from the Property list or by dragging them into your page scene). From there, you’ll simply drag and drop Actions into the timeline. You can change their duration and other settings from the Attributes editor . You can even select multiple Actions and make them loop infinitely. Actions make it easy to compose a series of sounds, or sequences of animations all without writing code or setting properties in the kit’s Property List. None of the moving elements in the example video on the right were set using properties in the kit’s Property List. They are all physics based or composed using timeline Actions. Save Characters and Collect Items / Inventory Some of the coolest features of the kit have to do with saving a reader’s experience and preferences. This could be a favorite dress for their princess, or a favorite vehicle to navigate the world. The kit also makes it incredibly easy to save values for whatever you want. Via the property list you get to choose the name and value of anything worth saving. For example, it could be as simple as Vehicle is Car. So pages can load up with variations based on these saved values. For example you can set textures, run animations, or do unlimited events based on whether or not Vehicle equals Car. You could even jump to other pages, open secret doors, show buttons meant only for cars. These saved values persist throughout the lifespan of the app too!  So even if the user closes it, their favorite option will be back next time they open the book app. The demo video to the right demonstrates this and also shows some inventory features, how the camera can track nodes, and how you can define paths for the character or any node to move along. Add Physics to make your tale feel real! Is there anything more fun than seeing things unexpectedly fall?  Or slide, or roll, or bounce around? The kit fully supports all the amazing physics properties available as of Xcode 7. And we’ve enhanced them by including easy-to-trigger events to turn on or off things like gravity and physics-based movement whenever you want. And you can create buttons to force physics-based images to move around. For example, you could create multi-directional buttons (Up, Down, Left and Right) to push things around, perhaps in a maze. Plus you can listen for contacts between specific bodies and do an unlimited number of events when they collide. So not only could you simply enhance a story book with these features, you can create entire mini-games. Angry Birds for example, is nothing more than pushing one thing toward a bunch of other things and counting up what happens afterwards. No Coding Needed. Ever. Seriously. So you’ve got a great idea for a children’s book app. You’ve got the illustrations yourself, or maybe you’ve hired someone for that part. But you can’t code and you can’t hire a developer for 20k to do the project for you. That’s where this kit comes in. We don’t expect our buyers to know anything about programming with Swift (or any language). And we don’t expect you to learn either.  That’s our job. We’ve created a world where all you have to do is set simple properties that control or add functionality to the elements you’ve laid out in Xcode. Aside from adding properties to the images you’ve added to your scene, you can create properties that listen for particular things to happen (like intersections, or values equaling specific amounts), timers to do unlimited events at particular intervals, generators that clone elements (for example, a single star could create an entire night sky with random textures), tap and rotation gestures, and so much more! We wrote an entire iBook documenting the things we’ve made my possible! Timers, Generators, Listeners and an Arsenal of Events The Story Tellers iOS Starter Kit 2 can be used to create thousands of story book apps, but this also includes games. And we do, literally mean thousands. The kit includes over 100 events and various ways to trigger those events. Example events are moving an element along a path, opening a page, panning elements, reversing gravity, incrementing a variable (saved value), stopping all physics on an element, playing sounds, setting different textures, switching cameras, and the list goes on.  You can perform these events by simply setting properties (again, you never need to write code). Ways to trigger events include…. On top of the growing list of events we’ve added in the kit, events can also run actions which also give you countless ways to control elements / nodes in your scene. Actions can rotate, position, move, scale, hide, show, animate textures, play sounds, and more. Keep in mind, the starter kit is Swift and SpriteKit based, which is the bleeding edge of up-to-date iOS code. As such, you’ll never have to worry about the kit not being up to Apple’s standards or third-party frameworks “breaking” things down the road. That’s not something we want to worry about either, so we’re using Apple’s frameworks only. Plus although you don’t need to, you can alter the code or extend it using two Swift files meant for you to add code modifications (and not worry about us over-writing those particular files when we update the kit). Puzzles that breath fire! Physics-based stacking games, and more! Puzzles were a popular mini-game in our first Story Tellers Kit, so we’ve brought them back in full force for this kit. To make traditional puzzles even more spectacular, you can attach particle emitters to individual pieces, for example, a fire emitter could stick to the piece with a dragon’s mouth. But simple 2D puzzles are just the beginning. You can make elaborate physics-based puzzles. The kit includes a demo page with a stackable rock puzzle where pieces most be arranged in order. Lights, Cameras, Shadows! Oh what a lovely scene. Design with Different Scene Files for the iPhone and iPad In most cases, you can design your book’s pages (technically speaking, .sks Scene files)  using a single file for both the iPhone and iPad. Although there’s an obvious difference in size between the two devices, this can be solved by having two different cameras in your scene, one for each device family. And we’ve also added some properties that help fine-tune some differences between the devices. But if you choose to, you can create two different scene files, and layout elements in unique ways for each device.  You could even use different images, but name elements the same so your property list entries can be used for both scenes. If you really want to do things differently for both devices, you could have separate scene files and a separate property list page as well (we doubt you’ll ever need to do that though).  Point is, we’ve made the kit as easy as possible to support Universal apps, while also giving you the flexibility to design things completely separate for the iPhone and iPad. As hinted at in the images above, you can lock pages until the reader has done something in the book. For example, collecting items, reading other pages, etc. Particle Emitters, Lights, Physics Fields, Sound Emitters, and more… Unfortunately, we can’t take credit for giving you such cool options like, audio emitters, particle emitters, linear or radial gravity fields, spring fields, drag fields, turbulence fields, noise fields, lights (with shadows), because all that’s build right into Xcode. You can drag and drop these right into your scene and start seeing their effect (in some cases in the preview area without building your app). For example, in the image to the left, a Light node is added, then the Earth image has it’s Light Mask and Shadow Mask set to the same number as the Light node, and wah-lah! Moving the Earth around casts a different shadow in relation to the light node. We’ve added plenty of properties and events to interact with every kind of node. For example, you could attach any node to any other, and even set a parallax effect so the two move in relation to each other but not exactly at a 1 to 1 ratio. Lovingly Documented with Videos and Articles…. Featured App Made with the KitWelcome to a world of limitless possibilities! This kit can be used to create everything from simple straight-forward tales to interactive books that change with each reader. Images, animations, even the story text itself can be determined by the reader. And on top of that, you can add countless mini-games, puzzles, hidden interactions, alternate pathways, and so on. All without ever writing code!
Note: This is not a template. Every app created with the kit is as unique as the developer that uses it.
Swift and Sprite Kit Based
And yes you can lock pages….
Watch more how-to videos and get to know all the kit’s properties…
Keeping Sheep, by Matthew Martin
Keeping Sheep is an interactive story for kids, featuring 30 colorful pages complete with animations, sound, and touchable words. The story follows one curious sheep leaving the protection of his shepherd in search of greener pastures. With the allure of adventure, the sheep explores new surroundings and meets new creatures along the way, some of which do not have his best interests in mind. Although he thinks the grass may be greener away from the flock, the sheep learns that the best place for him is under the protection of his shepherd who has loved him all along.
Keeping Sheep is also available in print form
