Tuesday 8 March 2016

Game Maker Progress 2: Platformer


Hello everyone,



So this month I decided to refocus my attention onto the Game Maker Engine. Whilst the engine does not use Java for coding - I had gained some insight into how to better organise my code and felt like it was a good time to apply it to Game Maker's own coding language. I had already learned and practiced Game Maker; as those of you who read my blog know with the asteroids-type game ICON. So this time around, I'm working on a small platformer. 

To do this; I am following the udemy course of Hearthbeast Studio's Benjamin Anderson. Since I had previous experience with the engine - the first part of the course is mostly a refresher for me before I get into the new stuff. After the course - I will simply go ahead and re-build the game itself with my own touch. I'll work with making new levels, adding new assets and so on. This way I can gain knowledge by both practice and the tutor's own guidelines. I do encourage you to do the same - it is quite invigorating adding and changing your creation's aspects from your own personal touches. 

Much of what ICON includes is elements that I myself added - that includes the art, the health and difficulty features as well as the different types of weapons and ammo counts for them. Whilst small - I made those by my own capabilities and that helped me and motivated me to go for bigger achievements during my own practice and experimentations. Benjamin Anderson has a youtube channel, a book on GML coding as well as two courses at the time of writing this article on Udemy which I definitely recommend checking out. If your getting into Game Maker - it is a very good place to start off. 

I will post images of my progress later on! If you saw my previous pixel art update - the tiles I posted were ones I was thinking of using for the platformer once I get into re-hauling the artwork. Coupled to that I still need to add more tiles to add variety, and a character. Moving from there - I will work on enemies and on improving the interface. Bit by bit, element by element - I will be adding to create something that is personal to me - just as ICON became after I modified and added all the features it has today.

Until next time,
Dylan

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