This tutorial series will be a progressive journey through the Moai SDK. To a certain degree, each is a “micro” tutorial, covering a different aspect of ![Moai_thumb[3]](http://www.gamefromscratch.com/image.axd?picture=Moai_thumb%5B3%5D_thumb.jpg "Moai_thumb[3]")
Moai. Each tutorial builds on the last and when taken as a whole, once completed, you should have all of the information you need to successfully make a game in Moai.
This series doesn’t go into any detail about learning Lua, you will have to get that information elsewhere.
The primary goal of this series is to make learning Moai accessible to the masses and hopefully somewhat entertaining. This is aimed at someone with prior programming experience, but is by no means aimed at experts. You should have Moai installed and configured, if you need a bit of help in this regard, check this post about getting installed and running, then check out this post about getting a Moai development environment up and running ( Intellij IDEA ), making life so much easier on our intrepid programmer.
Without further ado, let the journey begin!
The Journey…
In which our intrepid programmer encounters nothing, finds it rather boring and decides to do something about it. By “something” that’s create
a basic application and open a window… full of nothing, pink nothing. Pink is the new black.
Topics covered: MOAISim, MOAIEnvironment, MOAILayer2D, MOAIViewport, MOAIGfxDevice, Creating a window, creating a viewport, setting the fill color, reading from the environment
Our brave programmer did bask for a time in the glorious pinkness, then as is the want of things, he grew bored. So he summoned forth a
sprite from the nether-realms. A sprite which looked nothing like the logo from the Watchman, just in case you happen to by a copyright lawyer that is.
Topics covered: MOAIGfxQuad2D, MOAIImage, MOAITextureImage, loading and displaying a sprite, props and decks explained
After brazenly flouting copyright law, with a new found taste for larceny our intrepid programmer decides to take a walk on the wild side, 
touching and clicking with wild abandon. Amazingly enough, our hero is still at large and much more knowledgeable about how to touch and click things.
Topics covered: MOAIInputMgr, MOAITouchSensor, MOAIPointerSensor, handling touch and click events
Flush with new found power, our intrepid programmer sets out to master the keyboard, and encounters his first small setback. No worries, 
our intrepid programmer wouldn’t be very intrepid if he gave up in the face of a bit of diversity, would he? Oh, he also covers displaying text on screen.
Topics covered: MOAIKeyboardIOS, MOAIInputMgr, MOAITextBox, handling keyboard support, drawing text on screen.
As is inevitably the case, our intrepid programmer finds himself in need of a button and a few scroll bars, looks around and finds none. A panic attack nearly sets in as our programmer friend begins to fear a large amount of work in his near future. Luckily, he finds a solution in the form of
moaigui, a UI library for Moai. Thanking the gods he doesn’t have to do any actual work, the programmer sets about creating some shiny buttons and stuff.
Topics covered: Configuring and using moaigui. Creating button, label and progress bar controls.
Our intrepid programmer is about to learn the ins and outs of playing audio in Moai by making a simple music player application. At the same time, our not so intrepid author is trying his hardest to not make the far to predictable “Can you hear me know” pun! We also use a few more
moaigui controls, create a coroutine and don’t make a single AT&T pun.
Topics covered: MOAIUntzSystem, MOAIUntzSound, playing audio with Moai, handling a checkbox and slider control.
Sometimes our intrepid programmer is shocked to find out how hard some things are. Things you expect to be easy that turn out to be anything but. The opposite though is so rarely true, where you set out to do something hard and go “WOW, that was easy!”. This is one such time; when our protagonist sets about creating a tilemap and succeeds with almost no effort at all!
Topics covered: MOAIGrid, MOAITileDeck2D, supporting different resolutions, creating and displaying a tile map
Guides and other stuff to help you on your journey
This is other information I have compile that will help you working with Moai, but doesn’t really fit otherwise:
This guide walks through setting up the freely available IDE IntelliJ IDEA to work with Moai, this includes full code auto completion and the ability to run your code from directly within the IDE.
Eventually you are probably going to want to build your application for Android. If you have no prior Android experience, let me just say, the process is kind a pain in the as… it’s annoying. You need to install a number of applications, set a number of environment variables before you can get anywhere. Fortunately, you only have to do it once and this trusty guide will walk you through this particular minefield.
Moai is also able to target Google Chrome’s Native Client, which is a fancy way of saying C++ application in the browser. You build a compatible host, copy your lua project to that directory, do a bit of configuration and voila, you’ve got an app running full speed and in the browser.
This is a list of available books and key websites for learning Lua and developing with Moai. I will keep adding to it as I discover new resources, books and sites.
This is a simple setup/installation guide, as well as a simple Hello World. I of course am required by law to submit a Hello World application, so here mine is. I am many things, but a criminal is not one of them!