Call the Monk and start praying—the Monkey IDE
We are just kidding here; there are no religious activities planned in this chapter. Even though sometimes you will find yourself praying that a new piece of code you have created works like it should.
Ok, if you haven't installed Monkey already, then it is time to do that now. We have covered this part in Chapter 1, Monkey — Huh?, already.
Why learn about Monk?
Monk is the code editor/IDE that ships with Monkey. It is the first place that you will fire up when you start using Monkey. So, it is important to know your first main tool, if you want to develop games with Monkey.
Starting up Monk
It's time now to start Monk. You will do this by double-clicking on the Monk.app icon on OSX or start Monk.exe in Windows.
Monk's user interface
Monk's user interface is divided into three sections:
- The toolbar
- The code editor area
- The info box
The code editor area
The code editor in Monk supports syntax highlighting and automatic casing of the basic commands in the Monkey programming language. Sadly, it doesn't highlight and auto-case the commands from the modules, which is something that could help tremendously. But, the usual suspects are all there—copy, cut, paste, search and replace, Block in and out denting, goto line, and Find in Files will get you a long way before you ask for more.
The info box
The info box is your navigation system, when it comes to Monkey coding. You can open your code files, and also the files included with Monkey, from the Nav tree view:
In the bananas section of the Nav tree view, you will find all the sample scripts that ship with Monkey. Shortly, we will go there and start a sample script from there.
The next tab header is the Code tree view. It contains all function and method headers of the included classes in the currently visible code file.
The last Debug tab is a relic from Monk's origins, being the native editor for BlitzMax. There, it has a built-in debugger, something that Monkey lacks at the moment. So, please just ignore that tab.
Ok, now let's do something. How about opening one of the sample scripts?