[gamemaker] watch me handcraft a video game

[voxn]

thought I'd try my hand at putting together a video series making a game in gamemaker. Its very basic stuff, but hopefully inspires non-programmers to try out gamemaker & make something!

 

 

 

[CrosswalkNorway]

Wow this video is really well done!  Great Job!  Looking forward to your next video!

[Lu]

Great initiative, voxn! Definitely keep it up.

[voxn]

walls walls walls

 

[dibs]

Ah, just finished watching the 1st and the 2nd is up:) That was great thanks!

Is there any reason to not use the Keypress Events and use the structure you have made? Do they operate differently?

[chummer]

I've been putting off getting into using Game Maker and actually starting a project, but now I feel that instructions have been placed at my feet and I'm just being lazy if I don't start.

 

I appreciate this. I'll be using this for sure.

[voxn]

  On 2/20/2014 at 10:02 PM, dibs said:

Ah, just finished watching the 1st and the 2nd is up:) That was great thanks!

Is there any reason to not use the Keypress Events and use the structure you have made? Do they operate differently?

 

There is a difference: key press executes the code only when the key is pressed, while my code constantly checks the keys to see if they're being pressed - and if they are, executes the code. The first is actually (minutely) more efficient for what I'm doing, but with a change of one word 'keyboard_check_pressed' to 'keyboard_check_direct' you could give an object constant movement by holding the key down. I figured the insignificant amount of efficiency lost was worth the clarity of being able to more easily modify the code, as this will (hopefully) be more of a springboard for other projects rather then a very specialized+efficient roguelike

[Blambo]

key_check_pressed checks to see if the key has been pressed in the step prior.

 

voxn: cool stuff so far! If you're considering grid based movement, you could look into logging player position on an actual ds_grid, if only for the benefits during level generation.

[sclpls]

Nice work voxn!

[voxn]

thanks fine friends. A tiny ass bird sat outside my window and watched me record this one which is maybe a good omen? or a bad omen? some sort of omen, anyway

 

[voxn]

[osmosisch]

These are super nice to watch, thanks a lot for making them.

[Giragast]

This is an excellent idea, documenting the project is awesome for keeping focus!

I was tempted to make my own ongoing project into a hybrid Let's Play/Let's Port on here but I'm a little too far down the line for it now.

 

Be careful with the Gamemaker beta channel, I halted another project because it can wipe scripts with renames :/

[boy]

I just wanted to drop in and say that this is actually super inspiring and enlightening; I was even motivated to give game maker another try til I realised that their Mac support is pretty lacking (I switched to Mac a couple months ago). I'll be sure to keep up with your videos though; keep it real!

[voxn]

thanks!

 

and I'll keep an eye out for the beta channel, though I've barely advanced to the point where I use scripts :x

 

zipped gamemaker file

[rahulricky]

thanks for doing these Voxn, I'm following along in an attempt to make a game for my friends. Wish YouTube had a better bitrate though, occasionally get confused with some of the code when it blurs. 

[voxn]

hm I was afraid of that happening. I'll upload a zipped gamemaker file alongside the videos now to reference if youtube chokes.

 

heres an up-to-date one as of the last recording

[voxn]

zipped gamemaker file

[Artichoke Sap]

Really enjoying this.  Hearing about some of the game creation discussions is part of what got me to finally check out the Idle Forums, and the pacing of these is perfect (for me).  Thanks for sharing!

[voxn]

good to hear! I tried running audacity's compressor effect on the audio this time around, so it (hopefully) sounds a bit better.

 

zipped gamemaker file

[Dualhammers]

Will you be doing more? These are great.

[rahulricky]

Yeah, I want to see where this game goes! 

I've gone a few steps ahead, making some changes in my game. Instead of a desert I've made it into a tall building, you've got to hit the stairs and that'll take you up to the next room; and instead of an action roguelike I'm trying to make it into randomly generated maze-like puzzles. I've not yet worked out how to have it certain that the random generation won't make the maze impossible, but I'm sure it's a solvable problem. 

[voxn]

ya I'll get back to it! I started working on a game jam, but wasn't super keen on recording, as it'd slow things down immensely. Gamemaker robot adventures will resume soon.

 

though maybe not for a bit longer, with dark souls 2 is coming out on the 10th ヽ(´ー｀)ノ 

 

 

  Quote

I've gone a few steps ahead, making some changes in my game. Instead of a desert I've made it into a tall building, you've got to hit the stairs and that'll take you up to the next room; and instead of an action roguelike I'm trying to make it into randomly generated maze-like puzzles. I've not yet worked out how to have it certain that the random generation won't make the maze impossible, but I'm sure it's a solvable problem.

 

cool! Randomly generating an interesting, solvable maze is a pretty solid programming challenge so you've got my sincere 'good luck' :