Introduction to GameMaker and Programming

Introduction to GameMaker and Programming Building Your First Game Before we begin, I want you to understand my philosophy on how to learn I believe that your very first time doing something, you sho.

Introduction to GameMaker and Programming: Building

Your First Game!

Before we begin, I want you to understand my philosophy on how to learn I believe that your very first time doing something, you should be walked all of the way through it, and then you should be let go completely and you should learn everything else on your own through researching, tinkering with stuff, asking questions, and developing It’s the way I’ve learned and I wouldn’t have it any other way I will walk you through what to do with this project, and I will explain my steps in great detail, but will not explain some things that are not needed for this project I will however, explain everything you are doing to build this project in detail This guide is as long as it is primarily because of the pictures, so don’t be alarmed by its length GLHF!

Install Gamemaker Studio: http://ccm.net/download/download-23641-gamemaker-studio-standard Open GameMaker Studio

Select New Project

Name it whatever you want and hit next

Screen should look like this after closing the news updates window (You may have a bar running across the bottom Don’t worry about it You can close it if you’d like.)

The left window is where everything in your game is stored I repeat, this is where literally EVERYTHING

is stored Scripts, pictures, music, everything

What is that stuff on the side bar???:

Sprites – This is a fancy name for pictures Pictures of stuff you want in your game

Sounds – This is where you just put all of your sound files This helps you stay organized

Backgrounds – This is where you put your background photos Again, helps you stay organized Paths – A much more advanced idea You can create a path you want some object to follow in

the game I recommend not worrying about this until you feel you need to So for now, ignore it I’ve never even used it myself

Scripts – This is an optional folder that you will not use for a while In game maker you can use

what is called drag and drop (D&D) or you can write code Writing code is much more powerful, however, you will find that Drag and Drop is exactly the same as programming, but is a little easier to get the hang of and still extremely powerful So, this is just where you would store code you write

Fonts – For when you have text in your game, such as a “GAME OVER” appear at the end of your

game, you can store fonts in these files and reference them later when you need it

Time Lines – I’ve never used these, so I’m not going to define it so I don’t give you wrong

information

Objects – This is where the magic happens Most of your game development will be done here

This is where you create game “objects” You create an object, and have to tell it everything to

do For example, this is where you would program the logic of an object moving, having health, responding to user input, giving it a sprite, making a sound when it hits the edge of the screen and then changing direction Things like this!

Rooms – This is where your level design happens These rooms are what the person who is

playing your game will see

I’ve never used Included Files, Extensions, or Macros before so I am not aware of what they are The big ones to understand are sprites, objects, and rooms I only wrote these definitions for you to reference You’re not going to truly understand what these things are until you take that first step in making games Once you make a game or two, you will have a solid understanding of what all of these things are! The first few games you make, this can be extremely confusing, and that’s something you should understand about anything in the STEM field WE’VE ALL BEEN THERE Things will get frustrating and difficult to understand, however, there is no feeling more rewarding than completing a project you’ve started Not only that, but the more you do it, the more you understand it

Now that that’s cleared up, let’s get started!

Game concept:

The game will start with an object completely stopped (a red square) When the user clicks the object, they get 1 point, the object randomly spawns to a new location and gets a little bit faster Each time, the user has 5 seconds to click on the object If they don’t click on the object, the game is over

LET’S BUILD THE GAME:

1 Create your main object sprite

a Right click on the Sprites folder in the menu to the left and click “Create Sprite”

b A window should pop up Where you see the “Name:” box, put

“spr_red_square”

c When you make a sprite it’s best to name it “spr_descriptive_name” This is totally up to you, but it will make your project much cleaner and much more organized

d Now, click the button that says “Edit Sprite” A new window should have popped up that looks like this:

e Click on the icon next to the green checkmark all the way to the left If you hover over this icon, it should say: “Create a new sprite” A window should pop up like this:

f Leave width and height each at 32 and hit OK This is in pixels in case you are curious

g When you click okay, it should take you back to your sprite editor, which should now look like this:

h Double click on image 0 The image editor should come up that looks

something like this:

i Don’t worry about what everything here does Remember that everything is here as an additional tool You could technically just use the pencil tool, select a color and do everything These tools are here to help you, not

k Click the green checkmark on the image editor, then click the checkmark on the sprite editor and you should return to the window with the title “Sprite Properties: spr_red_square” where you should click on the “OK” button and you’ve officially made your first sprite!

2 Now, do the same exact thing except call this one “spr_blue_wall” and make it a blue square You now have the only two sprites we’ll need for this game! Your project should now look like this:

3 Making our Wall object

a This object will simply be a wall When the red square hits it, it will cause the red square to change direction as you would expect in real life.

b Right click on the word Objects and select Create Object A screen should pop up like this:

c DON’T QUIT! We’re going to simplify what everyhting here is You only need to understand what is necessary for this project (that’s true even in professional development by the way Only learn what you need to to accomplish your goals).

d Where it says name, name your object “obj_blue_wall”

e So now we have an object named obj_blue_wall, but what does it actually look like? This is where sprites come in We need to tell the obj_blue_wall to look like the sprite: spr_blue_wall

f So, right under Name, there’s a box with the words “<no sprite>” in it Click

on the box, and a little menu will appear Select “spr_blue_wall”

g You’ve now told the object to take the form of spr_blue_wall

h The last thing we need to do is check the box that says “Solid” We only do this for objects that do not move as a rule of thumb This rule of thumb has never failed me I don’t recommend doing this with objects that are moving

i Click OK I’m writing this as I’m making the game, and I’m 99% sure we’re now completely done with obj_blue_wall” If we come back to it later, I apologize for telling you otherwise

j You’re not really going to understand these things until you actually make a few games, but here are some things that will help you understand objects:

https://docs.yoyogames.com/source/dadiospice/000_using%20gamemaker/008_defining%20objects.html

4 Creating our first (and only) level

a Screen should currently look like this:

b Right click on “Rooms” from the left menu and click “Create Room” Should look like this:

c The first thing we should do is ignore everything we don’t understand (I expect that to be almost everything)

d This is literally what your game is going to look like, and this is where the designing happens

e Let’s rename the room to “game” by simply typing “game” in the name field We’ll leave the Width, Height, and speed alone for now

f Now, where you see the 6 tabs near the top left, (backgrounds, views,

physics, objects, settings, and tiles) click on objects Should look like this:

g Now that you’re in the objects tab, go near the bottom of tab and click on where it says “<undefined>” and select “obj_blue_wall”

h We now have our object selected and ready to put into our level You can click anywhere in your room to add the objects But them around the border

of your room If you hold Ctrl + Shift while holding down the left button on your mouse, you can actually drag your mouse to create multiple objects at once

1 [IMPORTANT NOTE] Your room is only the consistent gray squares, not the light and dark checkered squares outside of it There’s no need to design outside of the room in this game That is for games where objects come into the screen from off screen such as a turtle

in the Super Mario Bros series

i Your room should look like this:

j Click the green checkmark in the corner to save and close your room

k Now your project development screen should look like this:

5 Run the game for the first time!

a There’s a few ways to do this I’ll teach you the three I know although I

wouldn’t be surprised if there’s more

b Way 1: Simply press the F5 key

c Way 2: On the menu bar all the way on the top, click on “Run” and then choose “Run normally”

d Way 3: There’s a green and orange triangle that looks like a play button on your tool bar Click the green one and it will run

e Your game needs to go through some complicated build process that

thankfully, we will never have to worry about After a few seconds (about 10), your game should look something like this:

f Right now, you have technically made your first game! But there is work to

6 Making the red square object

a Create a new object and name it “obj_red_square” and assign it the sprite

“spr_red_square”

b Now, let’s head on over to the events area Events are what they sound like

To see the list of events, click “Add Event” I’ll go over a few of these, but not

all These are totally optional to read

1 Create – This event means, when the object is actually created in

the game Usually for small games this is as soon as the game starts However, you can do things that will allow you to add an object to the room (called initializing) at any time within the game This is done by doing an action called “Create Instance” This is not something we’ll need to do for this project I recommend you tinker around with these things afterwards however

2 Mouse – If you click on this one, a list of things that can happen

with the mouse will come up These are the events that the object will “listen” for as most developers would put it

3 Destroy – When an object is destroyed, sometimes you want to do

things like increment the player’s score or you want to tell the player they lost the game Stuff like this

4 Step – This is one of the most important ones and it took me a very

long time to wrap my head around it, and looking back, I really don’t know what I found so confusing Recall that when we were creating our room, there was something called “Speed” that is by default set to 30 This means that the step event will be called 30 times per second for every object in the room A lot of your development for future projects will be done here

5 Collision – When the object collides with some other object that

you define If you click on this, you’ll see a list of all of your game objects In our case there are only two, but we will use this

6 We’ll also use the alarm event later, but that will be easier to

understand once we get there

c For now, our goal is to get this square to just move around inside of the room So the first thing we should do is tell the square that it should begin moving at some speed in a random direction as soon as it’s created So here’s how we do that

1 Under Events: click on “Add Event” and select “Create”

2 Now, where we move on over into the meat of the game The actions menu First I’ll show you how to do this with drag and drop, and then I’ll show you how to do all of this with code

3 There are 7 tabs on the right that are sideways (move, main1, main2, control, score, extra, and draw) Make sure you are on the Move tab Should look like this:

4 Now that you are in the Move tab, let’s choose how we want our object to move In our case, we want our object to move in a

random direction at some speed

5 In the “move” tab, there’s a subcategory called “Move” inside of the move tab that has 3 rows and 3 columns of images that

represent actions I’ll walk you through all of them as if you were reading (Left to Right and Top to Bottom)

a Move Fixed – Allows you to define a speed and choose a

direction (Left, Right, Up, Down, Up-Left, Up-Right etc…) to move your object in

b Move Free – A more advanced version of Move Fixed This

allows you to define a speed and choose a direction in degrees

to move your object

c Move Towards – Move towards a specific x and y coordinate

We won’t be using this for this project, but this is useful to know if you want to make a game where enemies will move straight towards your player, shoot bullets that move towards the player, or the player shoots a homing missile at an enemy With programming, you can do whatever you want You’re in control

d Speed Horizontal – The horizontal speed of your object

e Speed Vertical – The vertical speed of your object

f Set Gravity – Gravity on Earth pulls you towards the center of

the Earth In games, you can pull your player wherever you want If you set gravity the opposite direction on Earth, we’d all fly off into space, enjoy the few remaining moments of our lives flying, and die In games, you can set the gravity to

whatever direction you want

g Reverse Horizontal – Used for changing the direction of your

object We will use this when the player collides with a wall

h Reverse Vertical – Used also for changing direction of your

object We will also use this for when the player collides with a wall

i Set Friction – The best way to learn this one is to just use it

one time You just set friction to some value, and it will slow your object down The higher the friction, the faster it slows your object down

6 So, we’re going to use the Move Free action since we want a

random direction So, click on the move free icon (the grey one with

8 arrows pointing outwards) and drag it over into the actions menu

A pop up should come up that looks like this:

7 We should decide on a starting value for speed I’m going to go with

5, although you can really do whatever you want

8 For direction, we will use our first function called

random_range(n1,n2) which takes two parameters - parameters are