J! Code Academy

Hey everyone and welcome back to Jamango! Academy! In this video, we’re kicking off our obby course by placing platforms into the world — but more importantly, we’re learning how props work and why they’re such a powerful tool for building interactive games.

So before we jump in, let’s take a moment to understand the core creator concepts in Jamango.

Blocks are simple pieces of the world that are locked to the grid. You’ll mostly see blocks as cubes, but they can be sculpted by adding and removing their corners. Blocks always stay in place — they don’t move, and they don’t respond to physics or player actions. Think of them as a static building material, the backbone of your game. Blocks are fantastic for simple parkour challenges, but they aren’t the most interesting thing on their own. Where it gets fun is interacting with objects in your game, and that’s where entities come in.

Entities are dynamic objects that can move off‑grid. They interact with physics, are easily controlled through code, and can have traits attached to them using the wrench tool. Common entity types include:

• Props (we’ll focus on these today)
• Characters (avatars and NPCs)
• Box Areas (invisible trigger zones)
• Players (you!)

Every entity has a position and rotation in the world and can be placed anywhere in your Jamango game.

Now, props in particular are great — and they’re what we’ll use most in this tutorial series. Props are entities made from a collection of blocks grouped together, but the prop operates as a single object. That means we can move the prop anywhere, write code that affects the whole thing, and attach traits to it. Props can be scaled up and down to whatever size you need. This is how Jamango games get those cool models: you build with blocks, then transform those blocks into a prop. Props are reusable, editable, and programmable — they’re the main way we build interactive mechanics in Jamango.

An example of blocks and props in action is the “Your Obby” sign on the start island. The sign is made from individual blocks, but combined and shrunk to act as a single prop. Notice how it isn’t aligned to the normal block grid — that’s part of what makes props so versatile.

Don’t forget how important normal blocks are. A quick highlight: blueprints. If you’re building any kind of world in Jamango, you’ll probably use a lot of blocks. Let’s say I’ve built this grass platform entirely out of blocks and want to reuse it across my world as sections of my obby. I don’t want to convert it into a prop — that’s where blueprints come in. Blueprints let you save collections of blocks and copy‑paste them without converting them into props. They’re great for large‑scale building when you want to reuse immovable structures like houses, bridges, or statues. They remain locked to the grid, so if you’re planning big environments, blueprints are a great tool.

For this obby game, we’ll use pre‑made assets from the obby asset pack. I’m going to drag the Metal Platform prop into my inventory and place it in front of the starting island. You might spot the individual blocks the platform is made of, but when I move this entity, everything operates as a single object. I’ll place a few more instances of this platform to reach the next section of the obby. You can already see the game taking shape.

Let’s test by pressing TAB to start the game and try jumping between platforms. If the jumps are too difficult, add more platforms or adjust their positions.

Another important concept for props (and entities) is assets vs instances.

Prop assets are stored in your inventory — they’re the “master version” of a prop. When you create a prop, it becomes a prop asset in your inventory, which you can then place in your world.

When the prop is in your world, like these platforms, those are prop instances. Instances are copies of the asset and can be interacted with by the player. You can find a list of your current prop instances by pressing J to open the scripting menu and clicking the Instances icon. Each entry represents a separate prop instance with its own name and settings.

One final note: sometimes you’ll want a prop to stay in the air, but when you run the game, it falls into the ocean. That’s because the prop is using a Dynamic Motion Type — it’s affected by physics, especially gravity. If you change the Motion Type to Kinematic and run the game, it will stay in place and won’t be affected by gravity or players jumping on it.

You can use the wrench tool to change Motion Type for individual prop instances. If you want to change it for the asset, open your inventory, find the prop asset, click Edit, and change it there. Doing this at the asset level means any new instances you place will use that Motion Type.

I recommend playing around with these systems to get used to how they work. This is a simple start to our game‑making journey, but in future videos we’ll make things way more fun by writing code and creating our own traits to make spinning platforms and more. This is where props really come alive.

Drop any questions in the comments, check out the Jamango! Discord community, and get hyped for the next video!