In this InDesign® tutorial, we will create an interactive game for our fixed layout ePub project. We will build a hidden object game.

Any InDesign fixed layout ePub can have interactive games. You will use the same button and action process that you have learned throughout this course so far. You will be surprised at how much we can do with the InDesign features.

View Sample Project Hidden Object Game

The Graphic

The one graphic for this project is the full page-sized background graphic, as this graphic holds all of the design details including the hidden objects. So most of the planning and hard work is done in a graphics program. Then it's just a matter of exporting the graphic as a png and placing the png on a page in the fixed layout ePub (see screenshot).

The Game Mechanics

The game has two parts. One part is an interactive button and the other is the Disappear animation. At the bottom of the page are the names of the hidden objects. When a player clicks on a button placed on top of a hidden object on the page, the button triggers the corresponding name of that hidden object to disappear. When all five names have disappeared, all five hidden objects have been found and the player wins (see screenshot).

The Interactivity

As mentioned above, the background graphic is the foundation for the game but the interactivity is created using hot spot or hot link buttons placed over the location of the individual hidden objects. So we will have five hot spot buttons that control the visibility, or invisibility, of the hidden object names. A hot spot or hot link button is an invisible button, so as not to cover the hidden object.

In a previous tutorial, we added the background graphic to the page. Also an empty text frame was created when we created each page. So, we are ready to add the names and the buttons. In the example project, the names are placed at the bottom of the game area. We will use the empty text frame for the first name.

1. Open the project file and go to page 13.


2. In the Layers panel, move the text frame above the background graphic layer.


3. On the page, select the text frame and type the first hidden object name, such as Gingerbread Man.


4. Resize the page-size text frame to enclose just the text. Drag the text frame to the left side of the bottom of the page.


5. Click Edit - Duplicate from the top menu and move the duplicate text frame to the right of the previous text frame.


6. Change the text to Ball.


7. Repeat this for the other hidden object names.
   
   Bow
   Rocket
   Candle
   
   
8. Space the five names evenly across the page.

Next, we will add the hot spot interactive buttons.

Next

Index - InDesign Fixed Layout ePub

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